Four Tips for Smart Business Card Use

Your business card is the most powerful business tool--dollar for dollar--you can invest in, says Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chairman of BNI, an international referral networking organization.

Upland, CA (PRWEB) July 26, 2006 -- Your business card (www.bni.com) is the most powerful business tool--dollar for dollar--you can invest in, says Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chairman of BNI, an international referral networking (www.bni.com) organization. The business card is compact, energy-efficient, low-cost, low-tech, and keeps working for you hours, weeks and even years after it leaves your hands.

Make Your Cards Accessible

Keep a small box of your cards in your glove box, your jacket pocket, your briefcase, wallet and computer bag. Don't leave home without them. And never run out.

Seek Business Card Exchanges

Seek opportunities to pass your card to prospective clients and potential referral sources. Likely venues: one-on-one meetings with someone you haven't seen recently; mixers; conventions; trade shows; visits to non-competing businesses that might attract the same people you'd like as customers.

Cards Go the Distance

Communicating with someone in writing? Send a card if it's appropriate to the occasion. After any telephone call in which business was discussed, follow up with a letter and your card.

Be Creative

Hand-write something on your card, such as your cell-phone number or secondary e-mail address. At a restaurant, leave your card with the tip and write a personal thank-you on the back. Pay the highway toll for the Mercedes behind you, and leave your card for the driver!

Take maximum advantage of your business card's full potential. And never, ever, be caught out without it.

Misner provided these tips in his recent monthly column for Entrepreneur.com (the online home of Entrepreneur Magazine). Read the whole story online at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,327832,00.html.

For more information about the power of networking, visit www.bni.com.

BNI (www.bni.com) is a referral networking (www.bni.com) organization, with over 4,000 groups in more than 30 countries worldwide. BNI's Founder & Chairman, Dr. Ivan Misner is the author of several book's including the NY Times best-seller, Masters of Networking, (www.MastersofNetworking.com) and the recently released #1 best-seller, Masters of Success (www.MastersofSuccess.biz). He is also the Senior Partner for the Referral Institute (www.referralinstitute.com), a referral training company with operations around the world.

Contact:

Michael R. Drew

Phone: 512-858-0040

Fax: 512-857-9428

16208 Crystal Hills Drive

Austin, TX 78737-9009

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