Posted by Brent_IL on August 16, 2003 at 13:21:40:
I like the bird dog suggestion. It’s much better than having separate cards.
I’ve always looked at cards as portable billboards. Instead of printing an image that simply describes what we do, in our case it might be a house, I’d use a diagram of a house similar to the kind Bob Allen uses to explain his examples. Then we could use our card to explain what it is that we do to casual acquaintances.
I’ve used cards as the basis for mini-sales talks with outstanding results.
One problem I had when I first started putting more information on the card was a consequence of their cost and poor thinking on my part. Twenty some years ago, my first batch of sales-oriented cards cost 40 cents a piece. They would have worked, but I didn’t want to “waste” them so I saved them for special clients, and used the company cards to pass out. The problem was that I had no special clients and was unlikely to find them by passing out cards with only a company name and telephone number printed on the front.
When I left the company I still had most of the cards.
When I realized the stupidity of what I had done, I came up with a slightly oversized fold-over card printed on four sides with four colors of inks and some gold stamping. I could give five sales talks using the card as a prop.
This was before the days of laser printing, so everything had to be typeset. One thousand cards cost me almost $900.
I gave out the cards to anyone who asked me what I did for a living. They all got a mini-talk. Which one depended on the circumstances of our meeting. I didn’t keep track at that time, but I would say that over a period of time more than 20% of those who received the cards called me to set up a meeting; maybe it was a lot more.
What happened was that the cards made the recipients feel special because they had never received anything like it before then. I didn’t have to call attention to anything. It was too big to fit in their card case, and they couldn’t bring themselves to throw it out. Many people told me that every time they moved it from one spot to another, they would recall the discussion and eventually they were at a point where they decided to call. One guy telephoned me six years after I gave him a card. He was cleaning out his desk, found the card, and picked up the phone.
I could write fifty pages on using sales props with RE presentations, but the lesson I learned here was that the cost of excellent cards is miniscule when compared the profits they generate by making us stand out of the crowd.
Thanks again for your suggestions.