Business Cards SUCK!
I hate business cards, sure they are pretty and glossy and include a picture (usually an outdated one) but do they really have any value for real estate professionals? Today I received a call from a client, he said “hey, check your email”, so I did, what did I find? 5 different revisions of a potential business card he wanted to use. Different colors, different layouts even different pictures. He was stumped and he was asking for my help. You know what I told him?
“Business Cards SUCK!” He says, “huh” I said you heard me, “Business Cards…..they suck”. I said “Joe, (that’s not his real name of course his real name is John), why are you wasting so much time on what your business card LOOKS LIKE?” I don’t get it. In my 10 years as a title rep here in the Phoenix Metro area, I have seen a lot of things come and go, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why business cards are not one of them. To go that is. Let’s look at your own personal experience. When someone hands you a business card, and sometimes 3 (which is comical all on its own by the way), when someone hands you a business card, what do you do with it? Well, if you are like me, it goes into your pocket, the when you get home you empty it into “the drawer”, and everyone has one. In my drawer you find all kinds of STUFF including a burial ground for business cards.
I put the business cards in the “drawer of death” (I call it that because once it goes in there it ain’t coming out except to the garbage when I go through the ritual of cleaning out the drawer every six months or so) and I never really see them again. When you give your business card to a consumer, they put your card (if they don’t throw it away right away) into their own “drawer of death” never really to be seen again. If in the off chance that they have a real estate need even in the near future, are they really going to go and look through the dark abyss of their drawer? Probably not, they like me, are going to go to the search engines, most likely Google since 67% of all searches occur on Google. That is where they are going to find a real estate professional and it will most likely be a real estate agent tied to a property that THEY researched. (that’s the trend by the way, consumers actually do their own research before calling you). That’s why I say Business Cards SUCK! Instead of wondering what your business cards should look like, focus on what it DOES, which is very little by the way.
So, what are you to do? Well, start putting your efforts into where the consumer congregates. Online. That’s where they are and that is where you should be. When someone asks me for a business card, ya know what I say? “GOOGLE ME”, and when they do GOOGLE ME they will find my blog, and twitter and facebook fanpage where they can read comments from other real estate professionals that have worked with me in the past, and that my friends says a hell of a lot more about who I am and my value proposition than a business card. So next time someone says, can I have one of your business cards, tell them, “GOOGLE ME”.
Side note….. and yes, I am being silly when I say this-but not really: You should have some form of web presence and a favorable one at that before you encourage anyone to look for you online. You would look pretty ridiculous if they couldn’t find you or even worse, found people from your past that have worked with you, complaining about your service levels or incompetence. If that is you, I have a great business card vendor I can refer you to 
BURN.
I help real estate professionals "get found" on the internet
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