Follow Up with New Business Contacts Easily

The conference is over and you have a pile of business cards and the monumental task of saving the information and following up with these contacts. Alex Moore, CEO of Baydin Software shared his tips and tricks for staying in touch after the conference with TheNextWeb.com.

It can be overwhelming. "If you're anything like me,you have a giant stack of business cards you've accumulated at conferences and events somewhere in your office." writes Moore, " I've got two such stacks, and I never contacted the majority of the people in them, nor do I remember anything about who they were or why (even if!) they were interesting."

Moore has streamlined this process into a system that helps him quickly and efficiently contact everyone he wants to follow up with and, he says, "Saves me time and keeps my perfectionist instinct from kicking in."

To use his system you will need to download these tools to get you started:

Canned Responses from Gmail Labs
CardMunch from LinkedIn (iPhone is available today, Android is coming soon, I hope!)
Boomerang for Gmail (full disclosure, we make this one)

Canned Response:

FIRST: Create a "canned response" letter regarding the conference or event you attended. Using keywords or contact names, this system will automatically send a reply.

Moore includes, "It was great to meet you..." and suggests you add a reminder about who YOU are in case they forgot. Save the message in the lab to use for later.

SECOND: Sort through your stack of business cards. Moore uses these four categories:

VIP: People you really need to contact to bring in more business.
Useful: Interesting people who might be able to contact us to other people, service providers we need.
Marginal: People to contact when you have time.
Unhelpful: Well, you get it, timewasters who have their own agenda. Sweep these into the trashcan right now.

CardMunch:

Using real people, transcribing the information, CardMunch helps you digitize each business card into your address book or on CardMunch. This is only available for iPhone now, but Blackberry is coming soon! You can also send a quick contact request through Linkedin.

FIRST: Start with your VIP cards and insert customized information into the canned response letter. "Include one clear ask in the message if you have one." says Moore," and since this stack is your VIPs, you probably do. Keep the message short and to the point, just enough to make it clear how you'd like to proceed and remind them how you met. " Save this letter as a draft to be sent in a few days (Moore usually starts sending them 4 days after the conference).

SECOND: Capture the business card information on CardMunch. "Take a picture of the business card, and in about 10 minutes, you'll have all the person's contact information transcribed automatically for you." says Moore, "It will be on your phone whenever you need it, along with a picture of the business card itself, and you won't need to sift through a giant stack of cards the next time you need to contact that person."

Continue this with all your VIP cards.

Boomerang:

Boomerang is a free plug-in created by Moore's company for Firefox and Chrome that lets you control when you send and receive emails.

FIRST: Go through the "Useful" stack of cards and customize the canned response letter much like you did with the VIP cards and save as a draft. "However, for most of these cards," says Moore," I will have either no explicit ask, or an ask that is less impactful. It's less important to get these messages off quickly, so I typically use Boomerang to schedule contact emails to go through over next couple days."

Then use CardMunch to save the information.

SECOND: If you have time, handle your "Marginal" cards the same as the "useful" cards, but prioritize who you choose. "I'll pick as many...as I have time to contact," adds Moore," and schedule messages to go out to them in 2-3 days."

Use CardMunch to save the information, even if you don't contact them all.

FOLLOW UP: After 4 days, "Reach out again - you can politely say that you wanted to make sure they received the message, or that it didn't get lost in the spam, or just repeat that it was great to meet them." writes Moore. "About 2/3 of the time, I find that they weren't trying to ignore me, they just were busy, and the second email solves the problem. In the other case, if they don't reply to email #2, I typically don't follow up again."

Moore's system for following up after a conference is an efficient way to manage all those contacts and get those business cards off your desk. "Remember," he adds, "if you're not going to build any relationships after a conference, why bother going?"

Read more about Moore's system: How to Follow up with Everyone You Met at a Conference" on TheNextWeb.com.

photo credit: carlaarena