Here's My Card: How to Network Using Your Business Card to Actually Create More Business

by Bob Popyk

How many business cards have you given out over the years? How many have you received? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many of those people do you stay in touch with on a regular basis?/ You could probably count them on your fingers. The rest were the people who were happy to give you their card during a few magic moments when your lives crossed. And then they were gone. Vanished. Never heard from again. Maybe you did business with them. Maybe you didn't. Maybe there was a reason, even if it was fleeting. Now if all of those people who gave you all of those cards don't call, don't write, or don't contact you in any way, think of the enormous opportunity you have if you contact them. You do the networking. You do the schmoozing. You develop and maintain your own platinum pipeline. You control your own golden database that could result in a lifetime supply of business. Business cards are a start. Personal linking is what makes things happen. If there's no follow-through, nothing happens. That's what this book is really about.

Genres: Business

3 pages, Audio Cassette

First published April 22, 2000

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3104522.html

I this book fairly cheap in the hope that it would refresh my thinking on networking. Well, it didn't really. First off, it's aimed at people whose business model is very different from mine - the entrepreneur, selling a particular hard product or service, whose customers generally live within a reasonable travel distance. Since I started in my the line of business where I needed a client base, I've barely had any clients based in Brussels. (A lot have Brussels representation, of course, but the relationship is normally owned by headquarters.) Most of the business I pick up are useful contacts in the policy or business world, without much prospect of becoming clients in the short to medium term, and that is the spirit in which I hand mine out also.

Second, the book is barely conscious of the internet, with the injunction to have your email address clearly and correctly on your card almost the only reference. I had to check the publication date in disbelief. (2000.) I think even Popyk's target audience now would have Facebook pages set up for their business outreach, and frankly will find that much more useful as a driver of business than business cards.

Also one of the pieces of advice given is to go a bit gimmicky with your business cards, scenting them or making them odd shapes or using odd fonts. Personally I find this a bit annoying. You have to explain unexpected scentedness to your partner and colleagues, and it's tricky to scan oddly designed business cards into the system.

So basically this book was not for me.

[Sheree · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives you lots of good ideas on business cards and design. How to polily accept a business card and how to hand one out.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will help you to add more value to your business cards.