3 replies
We do extensive amounts of traveling and visiting national trade shows to not only market ourselves but expand our relationships with partnering organizations.

Along the way, we collect professional contact info and business cards. Thousands of them. So many to the point where sometimes I literally have no idea what to do with them all. Some turn into clients, some referral partners, some get shoved and lost under the desk.

We've been at the point where we are busy enough where I cannot get back to following up with could be potentially advantageous leads. How do you all get productive use out of the stacks of contacts and business cards you've accumulated?
I am curious in finding out what others are doing to capitalize off what's literally turning into a simple waste of good card stock.
#contacts #show #trade
  • Maybe try using the badge scanner instead of goin for biz cards. Then you will have the data online and can pass on to your sales team to work the contacts .
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  • Yeah we've done a combination of both, getting them onto a digital format helps. I could have my assistant manually format the data on to a spreadsheet or salesforce, but I'd literally want to blow my brains out if such a task was given to me.

    I know I know, business cards are old school but any time-honored approach to get your name out there is effective in my book.
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  • Profile picture of the author Aaron Doud
    I don't know all the details of your business but you need to have a team that handles the leads and attempts to turn them into more.

    You don't want to miss any opportunities but you don't want to waste time and money having someone chase tails. For this reason you need to put in place a specific follow up procedure.

    Once they are a lead they are assigned and go through the procedure "until they buy or die". The key is to have a path that kicks people down to a lower level of follow up and higher one depending on interest.

    You might have 3, 4, or even 10+ follow up tracks. Think of them as an inter connected group of tracks. The key is that you follow up with 100% of the leads 100% of the time based on the procedure you create. Then have yourself or a manager verify that the people handling these leads is doing their job. I normally suggest filtering in a few fake leads based on people you know or even google voice numbers. That way you can see how they handle those.

    Of course salesforce like any good CRM will give you the tools to track this.

    If the leads have value you can't ignore them. If they don't have value why are you collecting them? So spend the money in payroll to get them done. A business can never grow too big if you are always scaling up as needed.
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