Being Organized Post Networking

I attend a lot of networking events to:a) meet new people,b) meet old friends and acquaintances,c) talk about business,d) learn something that will help my business (possibly), and/ore) be inspired by the speakers.Being in the village of Dubai, you get to meet the same people, but there are always new people to meet and talk to about my business.I am not an advocate of forcing my business card at people I meet, but if people ask for my details or say they need to book me for my decluttering and organizing services, I always give them my cards and take theirs. I am sure you do the same when you meet people. But what you do once you have left the event? There is a way to being organized post networking with those business cards and this blog will provide you with the tricks I use to organize those cards post networking:

1. When you have a chance after receiving the cards (usually when a speaker is on stage) write a small note about the person so you can remember who they are later. If you discussed meeting up, sending information about your business, etc, make a note of this.
2. Once you get to your office or home, separate the cards into 3 piles
   • Cards you want to save digitally, connect on Linkedin and email.
   • Cards you want to connect with on Linkedin - you want to keep in touch, but you do not want to meet them or communicate with them currently.
   • Cards that you have no interest engaging with - sometimes you get given cards from people who were incredibly rude or you do not want in your networking sphere. Throw these cards away or shred them.
3. Once separated, I save the piles of cards listed in the first group on Evernote. As you can read in this previous blog, by storing the cards on Evernote, you have them saved digitally to access anywhere, can connect with the person on Linkedin via the app and also save their details into your phonebook. All this can be achieved with a few taps on your phone.
4. I have a template email (saved on Evernote) which I use to send to anyone I want to meet again or were interested in my services. The template is amended for each person, but includes information on our discussions during the networking event, that I have reviewed their business online (if possible) and details of my business so they can pass referrals to me. If I would like to meet them again to possibly collaborate or because they were nice people, I will organize to have a coffee within 7 days of our first meeting.
5. With the second batch of cards, I add the person to Linkedin. To save time, I use the template request from Linkedin unless there is something I want to mention whilst adding them.

I generally get about 5-10 cards at an event so the exercise above takes around 30 minutes to complete.  In my defence I have met a lot of people now at these events and I would rather find out about the person I am talking to than rush around the event collecting cards. If you complete the above exercise straight away you will get rid of the pile of cards before they take over your desk and also the person you are contacting is more likely to remember you and respond back (if you wanted a response).If you haven't been organized previously and want to clear the business card backlog, click on this link to book your first session with me.Do you have any tricks and tips for dealing with your business cards after networking events? If yes, please let me know about them.[twitter-follow username="decluttrme" scheme="dark"]

© 2013-16 Decluttr Me | All rights reserved - This post is provided for the convenience of Decluttr Me readers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited.