Your Virtual Business Card
In a previous post, I explained the virtues of the lowly business card. Every business needs an ample supply of cards to give to customers, potential customers, friends, acquaintances and anyone else you run into. You simply cannot hand out too many business cards.
You also need a virtual business card, too. “What!?!”, you say. Yes, you also need a business card for the virtual world. I’m not talking about your website, this is in addition to it.
People are spending more time online than ever before and its not likely to change. Search habits are getting more refined. With social networks on the rise, your name is likely to be Googled more than you think.
Here’s a screen shot of my virtual business card, click it to go to the url (a new page will open).
Notice how clean, simple and direct the message is: who I am, what I do and how to contact me. This single page website appears in the top 10 rankings of Google when my name is searched for.
The title bar says it all: “David Tinney’s virtual business card”. This page gets a lot of the traffic that’s looking for David Tinney.
Domains are relatively inexpensive now. You should own your name and take advantage of a virtual business card.
Collecting vs Connecting
I see a terminal disease in some salespeople. Those who are only in it to collect the check. They only see the client as a means to ‘collect’. I would like to shake the marbles out of their brains and scream, “You’re missing the whole point!”
Here’s what I mean. ‘Connect’ with the client. Find something in common, a thread of commonality that will bind you together in friendship. After all, people like to do business with friends.
Yes, it takes a little bit more work to actually converse with a client as opposed to the recitation of your canned sales speech. Thought has to go into the asking of engaging questions that encourage your client to open up and reveal a part of themselves. And, it requires one to actually listen to the response received from the client.
Once you travel this path, you’ll find you look at clients in a different light. They become real, more than just a means to collect a check. I found this way more enjoyable than a stale sales process.
The reward is worth way more than the effort. A connection is made, a friend is found. How valuable is that? Connecting is far better than just collecting.
