Sure-Fire, Guaranteed Way To Build Business In A Tough Economy

By Terry L. Brock

The whole point of Relationship Marketing is to connect with people where they are and meet their needs for profitable business. Having instant access to important contact and reference information is vital. Today’s mobile professional needs access to email, phone, cell numbers and that important tid bit of information about contacts. This information needs to be available on a laptop, a mobile Smartphone, iPhone or other portable device.

Well, I’m excited about a new device that is custom-designed to build your Relationship Marketing. It is the new CardScan for Mac. This tool can make money for you. I use it on my MacBook Pro and you can use their similar products on your computer.



To test this for you, I entered several business cards into my Mac with CardScan. The cards scanned rapidly in less than 5 seconds on average. Since business cards don’t follow a standard format there is always going to be a challenge reading them optically. However, I was able to do a quick visual scan and correct even the most egregious misreads within a few seconds. This is not bad, when you consider that these cards represent real people who are real important and can lead to generating real business.

CardScan has the ability to quickly scroll through business cards using their image view feature. This is a great tool to jog your memory about key people. It is similar to Leopard’s Coverflow. Imagine being in some distant hotel room trying to drum up business. Rather than carrying thousands of cards, you have the images, as well as parsed details, available with a few taps on your keyboard. This is great to connect with important people and strengthen relationships.

I was able to sync with Address Book and Microsoft Entourage quickly. I found that when I entered the card into CardScan, verified it and then selected Export to Address book, I had an immediate copy of it in Address Book and Entourage. Nice! Further, when synched with my iPhone all the newly entered data transferred for immediate availability. Total time for a new card from scan to available on my iPhone? About 3 minutes and that included updates on all my iPhone podcasts!

An area where CardScan disappoints is with groups. Group creation would be easier to target and segment contacts. This is more effective marketing. Instead, all contacts come into one large heap of names. Segmenting by groups would be most helpful. Hopefully the next version will allow this.

My system slowed considerably when I exported my Address Book (with 3,685 contacts). This impedes doing business and needs to be corrected whether this is a problem with my system or a bug in the new version.

Overall, this is not just a way to quickly scan your business cards. Yes, it does that extremely well. This tool is a serious way to increase business, organize your life and build your business not only in a tough economy, but any economy. A mobile professional who is serious about business would be short-changed without CardScan as a business-building tool.

(CardScan for Mac, $259.99, 1.800.640.6944, www.CardScan.com)

Building Business In A Tough Economy

That leads to a very important principle. Whatever technology you use, it is vital to stay in touch with important people. During tough economic times the average person will get depressed, have fear about the future and feel like all is lost.

The successful salesperson and business owner today has those same feelings. This is normal. However, the successful person goes beyond that and has the determination to acquire new skills, build new contacts and embrace a “do whatever it takes to grow out of this” mentality.

Be the successful person you know you can be. Yes, we’ll embrace new technologies as they come. But remember the solution is NOT in the technology. The solution is in your mindset and the attitude you have to learn, grow and get up when (not if) you fall down.

Acquire the necessary skills. Be willing to pay the extra time, money and effort it requires to learn and grow. The first step to success is having an indomitable spirit in the face of any challenge. That principle is needed today and will be in the future.

Terry Brock is an international marketing coach and columnist who helps businesses market more effectively, leveraging technology. He shows busy professionals how to squeeze more out of their days using time-honored rules and practical technology tools. He can be reached at 407-363-0505, by e-mail at terry@terrybrock.com or through his website at www.terrybrock.com.
2 Responses to “Sure-Fire, Guaranteed Way To Build Business In A Tough Economy”


Wayne Berry Says: 
October 4th, 2008 at 1:32 am 

Terry, another excellent video. I watch every one of them. What you are talking about in this one is so true. In my platform presentations (I’m a professional speaker from Australia) I have been sharing this same concept for years since it helped me turn the adversity I was facing in 1989 into an opportunity. We had an airline dispute in Australia that year which went on for nearly 1 year with no airlines flying domestically in Australia. It was commonly called “the airline pilots disputer” of 89 /90. Then Australia also fell into a huge recession for about 3 years. People lost their jobs, their homes, their businesses. When faced with adversity we can do what 90% of people do - winge and complain that “someone” should do something to fix it - called “laying blame”. But in doing so we abdicate taking any responsibility for improving our own situation ourselves. The answer of course is to take 100% responsibility for where we are at, and then 100% responsibility for where we want to be. Once I learned this, in 1990 I launched a new division of my then 13 year old company and took a new direction to help sales people and business people to gain more business by serving others more professionally in tough times. This was the birth of my very succesful TOP GUN Sales Academy (www.wayneberry.com.au) and my company is now in it’s 30th year, and again these tough times create an opportunity for us to help sales people and business people to improve their skills to gain more business and as you said, it’s time to improve our skills now so we can prosper in tough times. Keep these great ideas coming. I really like the videos too and you have inspired me to turn my 15 year old email newsletter into a video blog and my clients love it and prefer the video to the written text. We have also moved with the times and now train and mentor sales people and sales managers all over the world through our on-line programmes. We combine video learned with support from a “live” coach helping them to implement the ideas. Enjoy good times ahead Terry and thank you for the inspiration you provide to so many of us around the world today.
Dr.YKK Says: 
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 pm 

“Be willing to pay the extra time, money and effort it requires to learn and grow. The first step to success is having an indomitable spirit. ” Well said, Terry. I still remember the words of Robert Schuller when he gave a talk during the Asian finnancial crisis. He said, “Don’t worry about the recession out there. Just make sure there is no recession up here (pointing to his head).”
Dr.YKK

http://www.terrybrock.com/2008/10/sure-fire-guaranteed-way-to-build-business-in-a-tough-economy/