’300′ – My Epic Battle with Networking

Have you ever seen the movie ’300′?  Well I haven’t…  well kinda!  It’s almost like ‘It’s a Wonderful Lif’e'…  but kinda!  Let me explain.  Back in the 70′s, 80′s and into the 90′s, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ was in the public domain.  Around Christmas time, it was shown literally 24 hours a day on multiple channels.  I had seen every scene from that movie at least 50 times but never in order (I have now since my wife made me buy it!).  It’s the same with ’300′.  It on multiple channels like History, NatGeo, TMC and more.  I am sure I have seen the whole movie but not in sequence.  ’300′ is about 300 Spartans who go into battle against Persian “God-King” Xerxes and his army of more than one million soldiers. I won’t spoil the end like I did with my step Mom when we watched ‘Titanic’…  ”Ma… I hate to ruin it for you… but in the end… the boat sinks!”.

OK…  So you’re asking yourself…. “Self?  What does that have to do with marketing or computers?”  Well I had my own battle of the ’300′.

Last week was like most, filled with networking and speaking and teaching. If you are like most business people, you pass out and collect business cards.  A few weeks ago I was at a presentation by Tom Wieczorek from Sales Automation Specialists who calls himself  ’The Act Pro’.  He talked about how everyone collects contacts but most of us do nothing with them. He was right!  I collect them all the time but only act on the ones that I tagged as ‘HOT’.  I was missing out on communicating to a potential referral.

So I dug through my briefcase, my portfolio, my desk and a few other places (my wife found some in my coats) and stacked them all up.  There were over 300 cards!  I was not about to type all these in.  Being a two finger typist, it would have taken me the better part of a month!  I did buy an IPhone app called ‘Business Card Reader’.  It works by taking a picture of the business card and then the software reads the text by OCR (optical character recognition) and enters it into your address book.  The concept is cool, but the IPhone blocks the light source and it’s hard to hold the IPhone still enough to get a clear shot. Using OCR is not an exact science… and trying to make corrections on the IPhone keyboard is not exactly quick and easy.

So I bite the bullet and got a Neat Scanner for Mac.  I thought about just getting a business card scanner but you have to feed them one at a time. For just a little more cash, this puppy can scan a stack of at least 10 at a time (along with receipts and documents).

It’s has some quirks but overall I’m happy with how much time it saved.  It’s also pretty amazing how the software can differentiate between eMail or web address, first and last names, addresses or a business line and mobile phone. Some of the issues I had were… The slot is a little oversized so when you drop the cards in, it sometimes skews the card scan. The software did lock up a few times causing me to restart my computer.  And finally OCR works well only you have clean and clear typesetting on the card.  I would say only 1 in 10 cards did not need any tweaking.

A week later all cards were scanned and entered into my database.  After my final networking lunch on Thursday, I was able to scan 10 cards, tweak them, and send a personalized eMail to each person there.  I guess I finally get it… I have to practice what I preach…  Thanks Tom!

Killer Creative

I did learn a lot about business and card design last week.  Some people get a little overly creative to try to stick out (in my humble opinion), but once it gets into your pile, it has lost it’s edge.  Speaking of the edge, the cards that are portrait (tall) vs landscape (your normal wide) are harder to scan.  Those black cards with dark blue and green type were a mess. There were these oversized or odd shaped cards that I had to cut to scan or fit into a card holder.  Some cards crammed so much info on them, that the type was too small to scan or read without a magnifying glass.  Double sided (even 4 sideed) cards often have two completely different looks (some work well though). And finally…  I can’t believe how many people had missing information like an eMail address or have doglover123@freemail.com as their business address (even though they have a website with my-business,com).

I’m not perfect (insert laughing wife here), but I would suggest that you make it easier for people to contact you and tell them what you do.  Make the type larger and clear (these older eyes don’t do well with 4 point type). If your name happens to be a creative logo, repeat it somewhere in type for clarity. If you are like me, and access these cards days, weeks, months (or years) later…  it will be appreciated.  Neither of the above samples are any good… so that’s why it pays sometimes to hire a designer who understands all of the above (right Lisa?).

Now What?

Now that I have all that info…  I have to do something with it!  I finally broke down and signed up with a broadcast eMail service.  I teach about them, I set them up for clients, but I have avoided them since I (and my blog readers) liked the simple eMail I sent each week.

The advantages are:

1. People can subscribe and unsubscribe – making it easier for me to manage my eMail lists.
2. It provides metrics of how effective your eMails are – I could track the blog page but not where people were reading it from.
3. It will allow me to promote more in the same space – I can add links to speeches, news or project examples.

If you get an eMail from me about this blog and you prefer to to get the new eMail News version – Click Here and Subscribe!

Bonus Video of the Week

I am all about target marketing and bending over backwards for clients but this is just incredible!  Enjoy…