Do you still perform the age-old ritual of shaking hands with your prospective client and subsequently, exchanging a rectangular glossy pretty-looking piece of paper, something you’re very proud of, in the hope of cracking the deal you’ve been waiting for since the inception of your organization? Did you just say ‘yes’? or you have tried a classy app having a digital business card to exchange your cards.
Well, a few months later, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, you finally receive your dream text with just three letters and one digit, “Meet today at 4 pm”. You’d probably want to scream with rejoicing, right? Just as you gain a sense of the moment, you ask your beautiful secretary to assemble all the details of the client within ten minutes and report it to you. As you prepare your presentation, your gorgeous secretary looks over her table for the cardholder, flips through a hundred of such miniature pretty-looking pieces of paper, which your client must be very proud of, and voila?
No, she doesn’t find it. The clock is ticking, you, in the meantime, have cleared your throat several times, mentally revised your notes infinite times, sipped your coffee twice, thrice, walked up and down your cabin in desperation, perspiration and are still waiting for that vital information which would lead you to your dreamland anytime now, before 4 pm! Your secretary is too competing with you in numbers.
She has flipped through the cards twice, thrice, and still is, with varying speeds, first slowly, then extremely slowly, and finally, with all patience lost, wildly! Its 3.45 pm, you rush out of your cabin, yelling madly, hopping from one place to another with tie loosened till your belly, head hot enough to boil a cup of water, and eyes all red. The clock was as ruthless. It struck 4 without sympathy and you felt like running to your mother, crying, complaining so that she would pacify you with her warm words and love.
Though, face it. You, the dreamer, the aspirer, the fighter, or whatever, “you. just. lost. that. Million. Dollar. Deal!” Why? Your idea was dumb? Your skills were not up to mark? Hell no! You lost that huge opportunity, no don’t blame the beautiful lady, I repeat, you lost that life-changing opportunity because of a trivial reason. Give it a thought before I spill the beans. Go silent for five seconds and now tell me. Yes, you’ve got it right. Only if you’d known where to go for the meeting, only if you’d had the details, the vital information, that is, only if you’d found the prestigious paper-made business card.
Pause, take a deep breath, and gain your true self back. Now, did I scare you? This wasn’t just your story. It’s the story of every entrepreneur. Poor Contact Management, the technical term for the blunder you just committed in my imaginary world. Hopefully now for the next few minutes, you’ll be as attentive as a seahawk.
So far you’ve understood what havoc paper cards can create in your life. I’ll discuss many other limitations of using the conventional card system. Before I begin, I want you to keep the door to your cognitive side of the brain open as I’ll take you through imaginary journeys every now and then. Therefore, fasten your seat belt and here we go.
Here are the Limitations of using paper visiting cards
- Perishable
Your traditional Business cards are perishable. How much ever you love the logo of your organization neatly printed on paper, water, tea, coffee, or your favorite cocktail, all have the power to dissolve not just the logo but also your business.
- Bulky
Even if you are as perfect and organized as Monica from F. R. I. E. N. D. S, there is every possibility you’d have a nervous breakdown while handling hundreds of cards. Yes, there are many apps and software’s available which make your task easy, but are you in a position to spend 780 dollars per user per year on a Customer Relationship Management software? Before you reply in the affirmative, look east, look west, and now walk.
- Play a game: Lost and Found
If you’re one of those who has written several assignments in high school, then you must be familiar with the game of lost and found. You may have misplaced the 9th sheet, or misarranged the pages. Those still used to be 20-30 pages assignments, but in business, you have several contacts. I know, you’d love to have tracking chips installed in your cards so that each time you leave it on a hotel’s reception desk or in a washroom (yes! Maybe! ), your card could be so tech-savvy as to trace its path back to you. Reality check! Come out of the fairy tale.
- Wastage of money
Say, despite the above shortcomings, you ‘re still not discouraged to use paper business cards for the propagation of your business. You opt for professional graphic design services, pay her 70$ per hour, and after a mind-boggling phase of rejections and revisions, you finally make an effort to accept (with a heavy heart and an exhausted mind) what she offers you. You get thousands of those cards printed by a printing press, smiling from within, thinking how would you present your identity to your clients, with the right hand or left, holding it with your thumb and forefinger or gabbing it with both hands.
While you are engrossed in your own mind palace, your business cards arrive at your desk in bundles ready to be blessed by the twinkle in your eye. You cut the knot, pick up your baby, turn it over, and, you go numb. No, not because you are awe-struck, but because you are horrified! Yes. Your organization’s name is misspelled. What would you do? I’ll suggest something. You may request your talented designer to correct the spelling whenever she has time and recheck it once, costing you 70 $ per hour, again, then send the sample for printing thousands of those cards, again. You may continue this cycle until you become bankrupt. A million-dollar suggestion, right? Don’t blame me, you still didn’t seem convinced. Now, you do though. Don’t you? There are yet two more reasons to go.
- Ecological stress
If you’re an environment campaigner (which we all should be), saving trees must be on your priority list, and providing you with sustainable business solutions is on mine. Therefore, I honestly suggest you go paper-free.
- Limited opportunities
Going paper-free will not just help in curbing environmental damage, but also open up a wide range of opportunities that were otherwise invisible to you. Let me take you through another imaginary journey. You are dining in a restaurant with your girlfriend. Your eyes are admiring her beauty when suddenly the entrepreneur in you compels you to shift your gaze on to the person who enters the restaurant.
He is a business tycoon, a possible client, and the man you wanted to get in touch with. You walk over, introduce yourself, and surprisingly he seems interested in having a conversation. All good so far. In the end, you slip your hand inside your pocket to hand over your business card. You dig in deep, but all you find is a diamond ring(yes, your girlfriend will return home happily at least, relief! ). You smile meekly. He stares at you. The end.
Hence, the basic question in today’s world of the digital revolution is this-“How far can paper cards take you?” You want to go global, right? Do you want recognition? Do you want a market presence? Gosh, you are so demanding! You should stick to your paper cards and see the world through that small lens of yours. What? Yes. No? Wow. For the nth time, you don’t agree. However, this disagreement is a boon for you as well as for me.
Now, what should you do? You want to go digital, You want an edge over your counterparts, You want to expand your organization with just one click, You want to… Wait, what did you just say? With one click? Well, your wish is my command. A one-click solution to your problems. A free business card maker app. V card hub. As the name suggests, it will create a hub of all your contacts and their details on a global platform allowing you to expand your network.
Assuming you’ve already fired your designer, the app also provides you with pleasant designs to customize your own digital business card within minutes or to choose from a number of free business card templates. You can upload this card to your social platform for your client in Antarctica as well. Did you make a typing error? No worries, you can edit it and the information will be updated in all your cards saved with your clients within seconds! Whether you are at a conference or on a vacation, you need not carry a deck of cards to circulate anymore.
Vcard hub generates a QR code for your card, which when scanned by your client in her device, will automatically save the card and the details in the repository. Moreover, a smart touch enables you to directly make calls or text to the contacts and navigates you to the address for a meeting. In a nutshell, Vcard hub gives you the following reasons to opt for digital business cards-
Smart card-
If you want ‘Alexa-like experience’, interactive business cards would certainly cater to some part of it. “One-touch call, mail, and navigation”, all in one. With smart e-cards, you cannot just search, but you can also contact your client and navigate to the address with just a single click.
Quick and efficient-
You can save and share a card anytime, anywhere, even while on a vacation by simply scanning a QR code. The QR code scanning function is freely available in several apps. Voila!
Vast business opportunities-
Your organization can go global within seconds by making digital cards public on various platforms. Using the app, any updated information would become visible to the entire network without any efforts at all.
Eco-friendly- Save trees, go digital!
Concise-
All your clients would be in a single place, that is, your palm! It is identical, in a positive manner, to the old Hindi saying, “Pooriduniyaaapkimuthimein” (translation: The world is in your hands). Growing your business would never be so easy, owing to the high-quality of communication and business networking.
User-friendly-
Virtual cards would end the dependence on professional graphic designers and printing firms. Many freely visiting card maker apps are available which offers features to build custom business cards with your company logo, providing a range of pleasant designs to choose from. You can revise the information innumerable times without worrying about the reprinting and circulation costs and time. In a nutshell, it helps in communicating clearly and professionally casting a good impression.
Secure-
While you’d keep the paper cards in your pockets or in cardholders and scanned images of cards in your phone’s gallery, digital card apps, on the other hand, would keep your information safe and secure. The digital business cards would not be stored in your sim card or your phone’s memory, rather on a common networking platform. This would allow you to keep up privacy and stay safe.
Multilingual –
By now, your clients are spread across the world. No? They will be once you become a part of the V card hub family. Hence, there will be times when your client understands French, but your card displays information in English or vica versa. Keeping this in view, the app builders have created the app in fifteen languages. Aaah… I have been waiting for this very smile all through the while. Finally.
So, pause, take a deep breath, keep smiling, open Google store, and grab the opportunities, switch to digital business cards, waiting to be opened at your doorstep.
