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Business cards are the most underutilized and
misunderstood marketing tool in business. Many
people spend the bucks for cards and don’t make an
effort to get them into the hands of those who can
hire them or buy from them.

Everyday people throw away stacks of undelivered
business cards. Money down the dumper.

Your goal is to design and use a memorable card
and get so many delivered you have to re-order.
Forget about those clever articles about what to
do with stacks of leftover cards.

The only time you should have cards still in the
box is when something on the card becomes outdated
or obsolete.

If you designed your cards as a marketing tool and
planned your distribution, tossing unused cards in
the trash should become the exception rather than
the rule. If one item on your card changes the
cards are obsolete and should be pitched.

Car dealers are famous for finding ways to save
money on business card expense. With the revolving
door turnover of salespeople, many dealers stopped
ordering individual cards for new hires. They
print a master card with color dealer logo and
phone numbers and leave a big space in the middle
for the new salesperson’s name to be penciled in.
That way, when the would-be fast talking, glad
handing flannel mouth doesn’t work out, no new
cards need be printed.

A swell image: handwritten business cards.

It would be interesting to run the numbers
on how much money was saved at the printers versus
how much business went somewhere where the
salespeople appeared more professional. With car
dealer margins, one sale would buy a lot of
business cards.

Worse is using a business card with a black or
blue marker blotting out a line of type and a new
name,address or phone number written (or typed)
above the black line. Ugh!

Some people painstakingly cut itty bitty strips of
computer labels printed with the new information
and stick them over the old just to save a few
bucks. Calculate what your time is worth and the
savings turn into an expense, not to mention what
the “corrected” card does to future business.

Dig out that stack of business cards you have been
collecting for years and flip through them, you
will see at least one with a correction.

If you are in any business and venture outside
your cubby-hole for any reason, you should carry
business cards at all times. You should be able to
“whip one out” without diggout out your wallet and
digging thru pics of the kids, or plunging to the
bottom of your purse past the hair spray.

You card says a lot about you. And you say even
more about you when you offer your card.

Say it in business-like, professional style.

For more about buiness cards, get my article
“What Does the BACK of Your Business Card Say?”

©2005 BIG Mike McDaniel All Rights Reserved
Mike@BIGIdeasGroup.com
BIG Mike is a Professional Speaker and Small
Business Consultant with over 30 years experience,
http://BIGIdeasGroup.com

eMail: BizCardBack@BigIdeasGroup.com

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 9:44 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.