davidpoulos.com

Tag: business

  • Is Your Business Card Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool?

    Is Your Business Card Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool?

    Think about it: Every meeting you attend outside your company, every business function you attend, every group you join, even casual encounters at sporting events, concerts, classes and athletic competitions like races and charity bike-a-thons, the one thing you can use to conveniently provide your contact info and your business “story”  to a new acquaintance is your business card. It carries your company brand, it carries your professional reputation, your phone number, e-mail address, website URL, physical address, even a level of achievement and professional status – that’s a lot of heavy lifting for a piece of card stock 2″ x 3.5″!

    For small businesses, the many choices made in creating a business card are each vitally important to be sure it can carry all that weight effectively. Nice layout but thin, flimsy stock says I’m just starting but don’t have the resources to spring for the good stuff (sending a subliminal message that maybe I’m not concerned with other details of my company’s image, either). Standard white with black type might send the message that basic is good enough, I don’t care enough about appearances to even pay attention to subtle design cues and engagement that some color can create. Way colorful and “cartoony” might make it difficult for the recipient to grant your firm the importance and weight of consideration it deserves. Lots of type and images of you might come off as narcissistic if over done. Too “designy” might reduce the impression of seriousness and business acumen that goes behind your creative decisions. Type too small to read, too much information packed in illogical order, funny, multiple or odd type faces that make it difficult to read or absorb quickly, are all poor choices, and we’ve seen them all at one time or another. All these choices are critical to convey the message in just the right way that really makes you memorable, carries your brand effectively, and connects that person who receives it with the way you can somehow help them achieve their goals, no matter what they are. Like I said, a lot of pressure for a small scrap of paper . . .

    With all that going on, it’s usually best to leave the design, layout, and production choices to a design professional who has a reasonable portfolio of business identity work. That doesn’t mean your new sister-in-law who just graduated from art school can’t take a crack at it, depending on what type of business you’re starting or promoting, but her input should be able to stand on it’s merits, not on her attendance at Thanksgiving dinner. There are basic design tenets that should be adhered to when crafting an effective business card (and other identity materials), but those tenets leave a huge margin open for creativity and ingenuity! Don’t feel boxed in by convention, just give due weight to the experience of those who are successful at creating these little buggers.

    For the money, business cards can be your most effective weapon in the battle for recognition, growth, brand awareness, new customer acquisition, and professional networking success. Its certainly the oldest, and most valuable dollar for dollar. Sure, digital elements are global, changeable, adaptable, mobile and modern, but the lowly business card travels further, gets kept longer, is more portable and shareable, carries more information and meta-information, more memorable tactility, and more engagement than a web banner ad URL could hope for on its best day!

    Next time someone hands you their business card (hopefully you asked for it first), take a moment and study it, feel it, read both sides, absorb it for a moment, then look up and connect all that information with the person in front of you. Does it all hang together, is it “as expected”, or is it in jarring contrast to the person, company or position you’ve encountered in the person you’ve been speaking with? That jarring disconnect is to be avoided at all cost, as it reduces that attachment, that engagement, that connection and memorability that are the card’s main job. If the card looks and feels just like you’d expect after speaking with the person for a few minutes, observing and listening to them, then its a winner, and carries that person’s brand, their status, their stature, their ethos and of course, the way to continue the conversation later, perfectly packaged in one small fragment of wood pulp. Not bad for a few bucks and some thought . . .

  • Networking Events Can Produce Results, But Common Interest Cements Relationships

    Networking Events Can Produce Results, But Common Interest Cements Relationships

    We’ve all been there . . .

    You go to an event, be it a conference, a seminar session or annual meeting, and you meet different business people, discover some common ground outside the theme of the event, and you keep in touch for a while after the event, but unless you work at it and nurture it, that relationship fades into the background, not serving either party. Occasionally, you run into someone that really has a lot in common with you, has some business reason to stay in touch and that relationship grows and flowers and produces solid business gains for both sides and lasts years. What made the difference?

    I have a theory, and statistics gained in our work promoting events will back this assertion up to a certain degree: “The more closely aligned the business goals of the parties are, the less likely they are to form a longer-term relationship.” On the surface that may seem counter-intuitive, but keep reading.

    What drives business relationships is gain – profit, cash flow, commerce. Each side has to have a clearly defined role and those roles need to be complimentary, not unidirectional, for the relationship to be productive. Gains are made and money moved when something is sold or bought. Seven times out of ten, what drives that relationship is the desire to sell to the other guy! Two salesmen can get together and banter and share a beverage, but chances are that relationship will develop a competitive or adversarial nature. But if one is a salesman and the other is a mid-level executive in another role, something can be sold there, business moves, transactions done, and the relationship works for both.

    Two top executives can get together and share common issues, maybe even work on the same committee to solve an industry problem, and if there’s no chance of them being in a competitive situation, and with nothing personal underlying it – tough conditions to fill – that relationship might come in handy from time to time, but it probably will not be terribly productive. No chance to sell to the other one! No chance to beat the other one, either.

    Networking meetings in general have been overused and relationships forced upon business people for a long time, and they still serve a useful function, especially for those new to an area or industry. But without the quantity of time required to care for and nurture those relationships, and a good business reason to do so, in today’s superficial and time-starved environment, most are short-lived and unproductive. The way to get the most out of networking meetings is to introduce yourself to a few key people, or better yet, have someone else introduce you to a few key individuals, and take the time to investigate them further, see if they are worth pursuing, and take the lead in keeping them fresh and alive.

    If you meet ten people and stay in touch with just one really solid business individual and keep that relationship growing, you can consider that meeting a success. At that build ratio, you’ll need to attend a significant number of meetings to start a functioning network from scratch. But if you put in the time, make the investment in your own business future, you’ll find it pays off in spades over the years.

    The best technique that we’ve seen success with is to let such relationships develop naturally through outside interests other than business. That fellow soccer coach, that neighborhood association committee member, that dinner companion of a college friend, that last-minute fill-in in your golfing foursome, that guy who has season tickets right next to yours at the stadium or the theater – that’s how relationships get started, and have no surface business purpose, but after getting deeper into them, you find common business ground if you’re open to discovering it. It’s old-school, but it works! It’s less contrived, less forced, more comfortable for everyone, and you don’t have to go out of your way, or wear a name tag for them to be productive!

    Next time you’re at a networking function where the specific reason for attending is to meet other people to do business, think back to other similar situations and count the number of people you regularly do business with, and ask yourself how many of them you met at such an event. The answer will likely be Zero! Now examine those same people you regularly do good business with, and ask how you met them initially. The answer is usually that you were introduced by someone you both knew from somewhere else.

    Try this at your next social outing or sporting event: try and steer the conversation you’re having so that it includes no clue about what your job is or what business or industry you’re in. You’ll be amazed how difficult it is, and how intriguing it makes you to others. But think of the information you’ve gathered.

    Now you know more about them as people, and can make a more informed decision about whether to pursue that relationship further, and find some common business ground. My guess is that the resulting business relationship will be stronger and last longer than the one derived from the forced, contrived situation at the hotel.

    Write to me with your networking stories, we’ll compare notes . . .

    If you found this helpful, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog and get more weekly right in your inbox. And, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”