BRX Pro Tip: Connecting vs Collecting
Stone Payton: And we are back with BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I love it when you tell people it’s about connecting, not collecting. Talk about that a little bit.
Lee Kantor: Sure. Back in the day, everybody had a business card and that was the way that—you know, that was kind of the goal to get as many business cards as possible. Then, you plug them into some CRM system and then, you’d kind of blast them out different types of materials over time. But in today’s world, most people don’t have business cards that we can see. How many times have we done shows where we ask for business cards, the man’s business card?
Stone Payton: Right.
Lee Kantor: It’s a lot more efficient and effective, I think, to connect with people on LinkedIn and use that platform. Everybody’s on LinkedIn nowadays. It’s pretty easy. There are some ways you can even connect with them automatically with the LinkedIn app right there in the room. So, I would recommend connecting on LinkedIn rather than asking for business cards because this gives you a lot more control over the relationship.
Lee Kantor: If you’re asking for a business card or they’re asking you, you don’t know if they’re going to contact you. You don’t know that—things are out of your hands at this point. But if you’re connected with them on LinkedIn, you can now send them a message through LinkedIn. You can see who else they’re connected to. It opens up a lot of doors. That way, there might be opportunities for them to introduce you to somebody. You can tag them on a LinkedIn post that ask them to share the interview that you just did with them.
Lee Kantor: There are lots and lots of ways to stay connected and actually nurture the relationships through LinkedIn and that platform. And you can also at that point get their email and then, put them into an email database where you can send them your newsletter or do other things like that. But I think in today’s world, it’s much more efficient and effective to connect on LinkedIn rather than collect a bunch of business cards that are going to sit in your drawer and you’re never going to look at it again.
