Business Cards are Outdated!

On a business trip a few months ago, I met a VP for another company at a mutual account's sales convention.  We realized we had similar interests and started talking about the possibility of teaming up for a large new project.

When it was time to go into another presentation, I pulled out a business card and handed it to him; he looked at me like I had just pulled out an old flip phone from 1996.  He said, "man, nobody uses business cards anymore, send me your vCard."  I had no idea what he was talking about and just looked at him with confusion.

He grabbed my business card, typed in my cell phone number and hit "send" on hid phone.  My phone alerted me that a new text message had arrived.  I opened up the message which said, "vCard for John Doe," no, not his real name, but as they say on TV, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.   So, I opened the vCard, his contact information was immediately imported into my contacts list.

WOW!  No more digging through my desk drawers searching for business cards from someone I met on a trip.  No more worrying if I have enough business cards when making a trip or working a buying show.  This absolutely amazed me, and I have been doing this every sense instead of handing out an actual business card.
The set up is easy.  You store your contact information in your phone under your name, I usually add "business" to the end, for example "Franklin Wagner-business."  Then under your contact you can list your company name, company website, email address, company mailing address, fax number, cell number, direct office line number, etc.  Basically, all of the information on your business cars, you store under your name in contacts.

Now when you meet someone you want to give a card to, you can either look at their card and send your information to their cell phone number listed.  Or, you can simply ask for their cell number, and send the information.

As far as the step by step directions, it varies by phone, but most phones work about the same.  When you are going to send a text message, touch the "attach" button, a list should come up with choices like photo, video, etc.  On that list somewhere should be vCard, or on my driod it is listed as Contact(vCard).  Attach the information, hit send, and you have electronically given your card to the other person.

That person never has an excuse to not reach out to you.  As we all know, there is an almost surgical attachment we all share with our cell phones.  While we may leave someone's business card on our desk, we will NEVER be without our cell phone!