I had a chance to see one of America’s best small business coaches, Marc LeBlanc, over the weekend. Mark runs a company called Small Business Success, which offers guidance and weekend retreats to help small business owners become more successful.
Mark was speaking to an audience of professional speakers and he made a profound statement as he started his presentation. He said..
“I don’t want anyone using the “E” word today.”
We all looked at him, wondering what this e word might be. He went on to explain that the E word he was talking about was “Economy.” He made the point that many people are using the “Economy” as an excuse to put off making sales calls, develop new business, and generally retreat and hunker down.
Mark looked around the room at each one of us and then he said something profound…
“I want you to use the “O” word instead… Opportunity.
He then gave us a challenge…
“I want you to write down on a sheet of paper the following…
I will book X number of speeches for X amount of dollars over the next month.”
It was a simple challenge, yet for many in the room a revelation. He made the point that it was necessary to bring in those long term yearly goals that so many business people have and write down a monthly achievable goal. Something that you could take action on today.
Since I am in the process of putting a speaking business together, I decided to take Mark up on his challenge. When I got home, I found that I needed to create a simple prospecting card to make calls with. I put my trusty blank business card template in my word processor and went about creating some simple customer cards in MS Word.
The front side of the customer opportunity card has a place for basic customer information including, name, address, phone etc. I also included a line for miscellaneous notes.
The back side of the card is just a simple table of numbered boxes to put the results of my calls…
The resulting business card sized template is simple to use and works great for me. I fill out the front side in MS Word and then print out one sheet at a time from my laser printer. I break the cards apart and as I make each call, I fill in the backside with a pen or pencil and record what the results of the call were.
This type of customer opportunity card might work for you too.
I’ve created a front and back customer card template that works with the standard Avery 10 card style business card.
Just download the free contact card template, unzip it and open the front and back sheets in Microsoft Word. You can leave it blank and fill them out after printing, or fill them in using Word. (I’ve included .docx templates for Word 2007 and .doc ones for older versions.)
These simple cards work great for making sales calls, customer updates, and keeping track of all of your business contacts. I like to keep a few blank ones in my wallet, so if I meet someone at a business meeting I can write down their information right then and there.
The small size makes them easy to carry around in your pocket or purse. Why not print out a set today and put some opportunities to work this month!
Question: What will you put on your customer opportunity cards?
