Professional
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Tammy Sagastizado CEO at
http://www.organizeworkorhome.com/ offers a
quality service for offices and homeowners.
She wants clients to treasure her business cards and
she illustrated how to present her business card to
make it more memorable, "as if it
were a rare treasure you share only with friends." I suppose that is all very well and good in special circumstances like hers, but the most important thing I want to be on my client's agenda when I'm presenting a business card is the earnestness they see on my face. It's a generation gap, maybe 2 of them. I'm from the old school where shoe leather counted for half the transportation cost of getting my card in front of the right person so they would keep it more than 2 days. Another friend of mine would put a string through his business cards and tie them to a full-sized brick. That made a lasting impression, for sure, but he didn't stay in business very long either. I used to sell nothing else but business cards and so long as I sold nothing else I made a good living. Thus I was able to observe at first hand what kind of people were buying the better cards and how well those cards were working for them. |
| Business cards
are meant to be handed out to strangers and kept for
future reference, not to produce orders on the spot. Business cards are almost always printed on some form of card stock, usually a bright white. Back in the old days if you didn't have a raised print business card to hand out you could just about count on the rest of your sales literature to be tossed into file 13. |
| When I found a supplier for full color
business cards I could charge $129.95 per
thousand for them. I could get $500 for 1,000
layered cards,, they had ball bearings that
rolled all over the card depending on which way
they were tilted. I had 8 or 9 other actions to
choose from and this was almost 30 years ago so
you can tell that I was on the cutting edge of
technology.
What cards cost you has nothing to do with how effectively they work for you. It is the combined effect that does the selling for you, a sale meaning, enticing the client to putting your card where they can find it later. The words, the logo, the ink and the card stock must all contribute to reaching that objective. In the United States you can think of your business card as a small billboard on the side of the road. What are the 5 most important words you want motorists to remember? “We fix broken toilets” would be a good example for a small town plumber. What's next? Your phone number – or at least how they can reach you. “Find Me On Facebook” or “Follow Me On Twitter” might be better in this day and age. For me, all my business card has to include is my web site, either TALEWINS.COM or BROWZERBOOKS.COM Lately I prefer to write it out.. “TALEWINS DOT COM.” What about the www stuff? That's not necessary if you own your own domain, but if you only have a page on some domain, then yes, you would write it out: “TALEWINS.COM/LinStone.htm” But if your typical client won't even know what part of the store to find the Internet in, then you will want the full and complete nomenclature so there is no room for error: http://www.talewins.com/LinStone#sales for example. Another very dramatic card in my line was a brilliant black surface with both white and gold ink for the message. I could sell this version for 5 times more than I could engraved cards. I remember selling engraved cards going and coming for $14.95 per thousand. My retail clients on a cold call would often demand to pay me in advance to make sure that was the final price they got charged with. Lately there is a move towards a service
something like the yellow pages on steroids.
“Contxts is so
much more than a professional social network.
It's a way to make meaningful connections while
out and about. Business cards are so 2007. What
with the environment in shambles do you really
want to be that guy who is handing out chopped
up pieces of bleached trees? We here at
Contxts.com think that our site will solve this
problem and more. By using the SMS, now built
into every mobile phone, you can easily and
rapidly distribute your credentials.” That sounds wonderful, but I personally don't put any faith in the outcome being cost effective for the usual run of customers.. Unless your clients already know your kind of services are a necessity for their survival there is really no need of saving all your details on their hard drive. But it is an entirely different matter if your “cards” are only displayed to a specific region for people looking to buy, What about those print-your-own that come in a pack of 12 sheets printing out 9 cards at a whack? A professional's eye will pick those dudes out 99 times out of a hundred from 30 feet away; so I must imagine that at least a few bad vibes will lodge in the hearts of most clients. In a word, don't use them unless you are cutting grass for a living or digging out rotten sewer lines. I have an expensive, full color lazer printer and I still won't use them for professional purposes. However, they might be of use if (in your line of work) you have been called in to look at a problem and the customer says s/he will think about it; then yes, a throw-away card can be handed out and you haven't lost that much.
Networking cards can help you in
networking and marketing yourself. Today a professional business card will sometimes include one or more aspects of striking visual design and creativity. VistaPrint, for example, provides: Rubber Stamps, Websites, Online Search Profiles, Electronic Business Cards, Checks, Foil printing, Mailing Services, Custom Credit Cards. Moo has some distinctive business cards to offer. Got Print offers business cards as well as about 50 other products.
Overnight Prints specializes in fast service. Business Cards from BusinessCards.com lets you Create custom designs & print your business cards, letterhead and envelopes with our online editor. More than just an ordering system, putting creative control in your hands with powerful desktop publishing features. I even found one company that was marketing cards using DNA for ink. There used to be a lot more competition out there. |
