How to Turn a Business Card Into a $50 Bill

January 01, 2008 Comment

50 Dollar Bill Yesterday I listened to a conference call from a very successful salesman, and I was immediately intrigued by this headline - who wouldn’t be? And since I’ve written articles and sold ebooks about business cards since the 1990’s, my ears really perked up.

Here’s the gist of his story.

A business card, at its most basic, is a small piece of sturdy paper with some writing or a few pictures on it. You pay maybe 5 cents for each one (printing costs). And for a lot of people, that’s about as much value as they assign to the card. A nickel. (Most business cards are thrown away, usually the same day they’re received.)

Okay, we’re trying to turn a business card into a $50 bill – and we’ve established that its cost is about a nickel.

Now, how much business could you expect someone to do with you if they stayed with you over their entire lifetime? What’s the monetary value? Let’s say that over a lifetime, if you acquire Jane Doe as a customer, you’ll make $5,000.

So let’s pretend you’re new in town, don’t know anybody and want to get your business going. So you set a goal of meeting 100 business owners – maybe by visiting their stores, maybe by going to a trade show - but you’re not doing any selling. You’re just saying “hi, I’m new in town, hope to get to know you, may I have your business card?”

So now you have 100 business cards, and you use them to follow up to your initial meeting in one of the following ways.

You make a quick call to each person, saying it was nice to meet you the other day. One is impressed, becomes your customer.
You make a call to each person AND send a follow up greeting card with your picture in it. Two are impressed and become your customers.
You invite each business owner for lunch. Three of ‘em become your customers.
You send each business owner a gift or brownies – now four of them become your customers.
You send each one of them some business – a referral! Now five of them say, Wow, this guy’s great, and become your customer.
You stay in touch with each person over the course of a year – and six become your customers.
You do ALL of the above – and seven become your customers.

If you get ONE lifetime customer, you get $5,000, right?

So divide that by 100 (the number of business cards) – and each business card is worth $50 to you! You’ve just turned it into a $50 bill.

Get TWO customers from the 100 business cards, and each card is ultimately worth $100 in business to you.

Get THREE customers from the 100 business cards, and each business card is just like having a $150 bill (if there were such a thing.)

Get the picture? If you KNEW that, according to the numbers, whenever you collected 100 business cards and followed up with their owners, you’d make at LEAST $5,000 every time – would you do it?

I know, I know, there are other costs I didn’t mention – it get can expensive to buy lunch or send brownies to 100 people – but even if you didn’t do that, you’d come out ahead. WAY ahead.

And this doesn’t even take into account all the REFERRALS you’d be getting from these 100 business people, who are really impressed with you for your consistent, friendly, “how can I help you?” follow-up, and who tell their friends.

The salesperson I was listening to makes $100,000 a MONTH following this system.

Hmmm… now where can I lay my hands on 100 business cards?

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