Comments on: How to Turn Business Cards Into Revenue

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:20:19 +0000

J.J. - The "experienced" folks are hard to find. You can post a free help wanted add in our career center (www.mspmentor.net/careers). And you can find educational sales materials not only from our Resource Center (free registration required) but also from MSP University (www.mspu.us). Erick Simpson is CIO there, and can offer more info if you visit his site.www.mspu.us

By: J.J Dudley

J.J Dudley — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:49:13 +0000

I am a start-up managed IT company.Wanted to know are there any resources to find experienced managed IT Salespeople or do I have to train individuals myself?

By: rseavey

rseavey — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:18:18 +0000

I agree with jmamon….exploit any angle available to increase your marketing efforts in a slow economy. Google didn’t build my business and I’m certainly not relying on them to find new customers.

By: jmamon

jmamon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:59:09 +0000

I think things are going to get worse before they get better so ANY function – from business cards to blogging – is worth the effort. Now is not the time to go in a shell – market your company and services fiercely! Everybody sells!

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:08:10 +0000

Dominic: Those are fantastic suggestions but I would debate your claim that Google is "recession proof." Have you seen their stock this year? It has dropped more than 50 percent this year, according to our SaaS 20 stock index. One challenge facing Google is the fact that so many start-up businesses have been using Adwords, but now some of those start-ups are dying in the current economy. Google has a great business model, but I will repeat my claim that NO business is fully recession proof.

By: Dominic Monkhouse

Dominic Monkhouse — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:56:06 +0000

Collecting business cards and building a CRM system? Oh how 1980s! Not knocking getting the whole company galvanized to search out new opportunities or the use of low tech solutions. We are doing just that at the moment – called “4 a day”. We need to find 4 new sales opportunities from existing customers and when we get to 200 we will give the social committee £500. A huge white board on the wall tracks the progress and followed by a daily email update. BUT for some years Google has been the only game in town in terms of opening new relationships with companies needing IT support, more so in a recession. That’s why they (Google) said they are a recession proof business.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:30:50 +0000

John: Blogs are a great way to develop conversation. We’ve bet our media business on blogs.

But those business cards are also nuggets of gold. They represent relationships and contacts a business has in place — but has failed to organize and leverage.

During my annual travels, I collect roughly 1000 business cards. Imagine a company that lets those cards collect dust rather than having an organized method to gather customer lead info from every employee who returns from a sales or business meeting…

By: John

John — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:58:28 +0000

Gathering business cards and creating contact lists seems like a very laborious and expensive way to find prospects.

I would think that MSPs would be capable and could efficiently attract customers through blogs and online content they create. Use that to get good position in search engines and links from around the web, and have qualified prospects contacting you.