“Call me old school if you want, but I still love to exchange business cards — especially in an event setting,” Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing, blogged recently. The exchange of business cards, Heinz says, is “the start of a fast, proven and scalable system that helps me more consistently follow up, stay in touch and ultimately convert more of those new contacts into partners, referral sources, customers and more.”
Without a strategy, many trade show attendees return home with a stack of cards that stay wadded up in the bottom of a laptop bag indefinitely. Heinz offers these tips for converting those cards into an active network and pipeline:
Take photos of name badges. Another option if they don’t have a card is to take a quick smartphone photo of their name badge. At minimum you can use this to remember and find them on LinkedIn later.
Process them on the flight home. Working through business cards is a high priority for me on the flight home. I’m typically behind on other work as well, but time is of the essence on those new relationships and follow-ups. The faster I follow-up, the more likely I can continue the momentum of the conversation into something more meaningful sooner than later.
Have a specific “processing” checklist. For me, this includes connecting on LinkedIn with a customized message, adding them to my newsletter list, adding them to CRM, and following up with whatever deliverable I promised (sending a copy of an ebook, making an introduction, whatever). I typically batch these activities, such that I’m doing the LinkedIn and deliverable follow-up first, then the CRM and newsletter integration last.
Set a reminder to review the business cards again in two weeks. This can be done in your office, and is a quick reminder to follow-up on any loose ends from your initial outbound connections on that flight home.
“The lesson reinforced for me [from Heinz’s blog post] is that many — if not most — business practices never really become obsolete,” commented sales consultant Todd Youngblood. “Sure they need to be updated, adapted and tuned to take advantage of new technologies, but the fundamentals remain in place.”
