CLUTTERMEISTER
  • home
  • virtual services
  • clutteraware
  • speaker
  • clues
    • blog
    • audiovisual
    • publications
    • in the media
    • testimonials
  • contact

Business cards

28/2/2017

 
Picture
Whenever I walk into someone’s office, I see piles of business cards – that person’s own cards as well as collected cards from all sorts of business events, client meetings, or simply chance encounters. As business people, we accumulate those mementos of connections with other business people, of course, but what do we do with them afterwards? How can we make use of them properly?

Here are some tips to stay on top of your collection.
Take notes

You want to be able to link the card to the person. If you have met 10 people at a business do and all have given you a card, you may walk away with ten cards and no idea who is who. It’s important to be able to not just have the card, but being able to recognise the person as well, or the connection will be very tenuous and ultimately useless.

If you can, write down a couple of key words – including date and place of encounter – on the cards after each separate encounter. I realise this will be impossible in many situations, but try nevertheless. If you sit down after meeting ten people, you’ll probably find that you cannot place some of your cards already. Don’t worry too much, but let it be a lesson for next time…

Organise your cards

It is not enough to collect those cards and put them down anywhere in your office. Not only should they go into one designated location, but you should really be able to find a particular person without having to go through piles and piles of cards. While a small pile of cards allows for that option, you will need a better system pretty quickly.

At the very least, you want to arrange your cards alphabetically, into one single pile, maybe simply separate by first letter and group them with rubber bands. You may choose a card holder box and place your cards in there, with riders to separate the letters of the alphabet. Another option is to create some kind of card separator in a drawer and follow similar lines of organisation.

Plastic sheets of card holders in folders are a common way of doing this, but they tend to multiply quickly and use up a lot of space. Also, if you put cards in alphabetical order (and that is recommended, by the way), you may end up shuffling those pages and cards around every time you add new ones.

Use a database

While organising your cards alphabetically is a useful way to sort them, retrieval of a particular person is not very easy. Just imagine you are looking for an investment broker whose name escapes you at the moment!

A database could be useful, and that could be a full database where all the information is entered (time consuming) or a mix of a scan with a smattering of base information like the name and profession of each person (manual retrieval of additional information like phone numbers or email address). There is a payoff to be considered, and it pays to think about the use you will make of your database in the future. If you wish to make use of the email addresses for mailings, or the phone number for calls, you may want to consider a full database, time consuming as it is), if you only occasionally fall back on the cards, scanning them might be enough.

There are contact management systems out there in all shapes and sizes, as well as apps that allow for scanning of cards, and entering a series of basic information for search purposes. And a lot of options halfway in between.

The important thing is to not neglect your cards, for business reasons, and to keep the clutter at bay. The information in those cards could be worthwhile sometime, and you are better off with a decluttered desktop – it’s a no-brainer really.

Comments are closed.

    Ask the ClutterMeister

    Picture
    Hi, my name is Tilo Flache. My mission: help clients declutter mind and space.
    This blog contains pointers for your journey towards a happier living experience.

    If you want to share a post, please add a link to the original post. Thanks.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    November 2023
    July 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016

    RSS Feed

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
All information refers to Tilo Flache t/a ClutterMeister.  © 2015-2024
  • home
  • virtual services
  • clutteraware
  • speaker
  • clues
    • blog
    • audiovisual
    • publications
    • in the media
    • testimonials
  • contact