the episode

When you come home from a networking event with a stack of business cards, you either have something incredibly valuable, or a pile of garbage. What makes the difference? It’s not the cards themselves, but what you do with them.

Do you take the time to sort them and pull out those handful of people who you really need to follow up with? Do you track those conversations over time, so that periodically when things get a little slow in your business, you go to your contact list and start making a few phone calls to reach out or reconnect? 

Do you take the time to purge people from your mailing list.  After years of networking, I’ll go through my list and find names of people that I don’t really remember meeting and whom I’ve not had a single interaction with since the first time I met them. If you have contacts like that is is ok to let them go. If you reconnect, you can always add them back.

Treat your database like a valuable resource. Take time to cultivate and curate it and you will be able to rely on it to grow your business.

about the marketing minute

Each week, host Lorraine Ball shares just a few words on a marketing topic. She boils down creative ideas, practical tips, and decades of real-world experience into a mini podcast which is always less than two minutes.

Look for these mini bits of marketing inspiration every Sunday.  Then come back and enjoy the longer interviews every Thursday.

Look for the mini podcasts and full episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and wherever you listen  to podcasts.