You shouldn’t need a magnifying glass

Recently I’ve been having some challenges at home because my beloved has been in hospital, it seems forever, following a heart attack. (As I type this, and after nine weeks, he is home now. Yay!) Now, you may be wondering “Why is she telling me this?” Well I think it is fair to say that my patience, which I have never had in abundance, has been even more lacking of late. I have a very familiar follow-up process when I network. I spend time afterwards getting in touch with the marvellous people I have met the previous week and adding their info to my database.

Most of the time this is a nice, relaxed process—a lovely cappuccino or two, maybe a familiar TV programme on in the background as I input to a spreadsheet. (Love a spreadsheet.) Anyway, in the last few weeks some cards have not made it onto the spreadsheet. (You might be thinking “Why does that matter?” Well I meet literally hundreds of people in any given month and not being on my spreadsheet means if someone says “Do you know a widget-maker in Scunthorpe”, or whatever, wherever) I won’t find the widget maker from Scunthorpe that I met ten years ago. It often happens that I have to look at a website to find out what someone I have met does, and, it has to be said, sometimes I still don’t know because their website is full of “management speak” but that is a whole other rant, so back to the current one.

Some of the reasons they do not make it to my spreadsheet?

In no particular order, (although if they are nearer the top than the bottom this is probably because they irritate me more). They have:

·??????a sparkly card, usually with a sparkly, but different sparkly lettering. I like sparkly, but not when it makes the information illegible

·??????very little information on the card (I refer you back to website comment)

·??????cards which have no name and/or info/sales/enquiries@Idon’twantyoutogetintouchwithmepersonallyreally.com

·??????tiny, tiny, tiny writing on the card.

My rule is if I have to get out a magnifying glass to try and read your card then it probably won’t make it onto the spreadsheet. OK, now all the above might just be me, however when we pay good money to have business cards designed and printed, we probably want people to keep in touch and for people we have met to be left with a good impression about my business. If the magnifying comes into use, then these goals have probably been missed.

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Have fun,

Glenys