Business cards and lead sheets collected away from the office
A new contact's value decays from the moment it is created, and it decays fast.
A card in a shirt pocket is worth less every day it sits there, and it is losing value while nobody notices.
Not every business has this problem, and some should leave it alone.
Most of these can be done better. Whether it's worth doing is a separate question. What follows is one common form of the problem, described in general terms, because your version will differ. These are possible challenges, not a description of your business, and some should be left exactly as they are. If it sounds like your week, that's worth a conversation.
Watch: How Paper Gets Into Your System
Sound familiar?
- A stack of cards from last week is still sitting in a bag.
- A conversation worth remembering has already been forgotten by the time it's typed up.
- A card got lost in the wash and nobody will ever know it existed.
- Nobody was assigned to follow up, so nobody did.
What it looks like
Somebody meets somebody: at a trade show, a supplier counter, a job site. A card changes hands. It goes in a pocket, then a bag, and at some point a stack of them gets typed up. The stack is small and the typing is quick, which is exactly why it waits.
What it costs
Unlike an invoice, which is worth the same whether entered today or next week, a lead decays fast. It is worth the most in the hours right after the conversation, while both people remember it, and considerably less a week later, because the other person met several people that day and remembers Tuesday's conversation clearly, Friday's vaguely, and next month's not at all. The identical call three weeks later starts from nothing. There is a second loss on top: a lost card is the cleanest example of something unrecoverable, because there is no record it ever existed and nobody will notice its absence.
Where it goes wrong
- The conversation is not on the card. What made the person worth calling was in the conversation, and it is gone by the time anyone types it up.
- Nobody is assigned. A contact entered is not the same as anyone deciding to call.
- Entry is deferred until there is a batch, and the batch is always a few days away.
- Nothing distinguishes the good ones. A stack entered at once looks identical, promising and polite alike.
What a better version looks like
Capture happens where the conversation happened, not later at a desk: a photograph of the card produces the record, and a few words about the conversation get added right then, while it is still in mind. The follow-up gets a date and an owner at the same moment, before walking away, when the decision costs nothing. The photograph is kept permanently as the original.
Questions worth asking about your own operation
- How many days pass between a card and the follow-up call, on average?
- How would you know if a card was lost before it was ever entered?
- What's usually lost between the conversation and the write-up?
If this sounds familiar
Bring me the version you actually have. I'll learn how the process really works before I suggest anything. If it isn't worth changing, or isn't a fit for me, I'll say so. Talk through a problem