Three Key Points for Increasing Sales Performance by Leveraging Business Cards
Conducting Effective Follow-ups Based on Business Card Information
After acquiring business cards, it is essential to follow up at the appropriate time. Even if you send a thank-you email immediately after exchanging cards, if the interaction ends there, you may lose track of the prospect's status, potentially causing them to drift toward competitors without your knowledge. By accurately measuring customer interest levels, tailoring your approach to their specific readiness, and providing relevant industry information and case studies, you can expect to increase customer trust. Maintaining frequent contact with prospects at the right time and continuing to promote your company with a positive image will lead to increased corporate sales.
Improving Customer Service Through Knowledge Sharing
To improve sales capabilities at an organizational level, it is crucial to eliminate the reliance on individual sales representatives and promote the sharing of expertise. By managing not only the large volume of business cards sitting on desks but also the approach strategies, interview details, and key person information gathered during exchanges as centralized customer data, you can build a structure where the entire sales team works toward increasing revenue. When business card information and the expertise accumulated by individual representatives are shared across the team, you can respond to prospects more quickly and never miss an opportunity to close a deal. By managing business cards as a shared organizational asset rather than on an individual basis, you can facilitate the sharing of critical corporate information and professional know-how.
Expanding Your Network by Categorizing by Industry and Job Function
Business cards are more than just tools for tracking contact information; they contain elements that can lead to increased sales. It is a missed opportunity to simply file acquired business cards in alphabetical order by company name. By categorizing and organizing them by industry or job function, you can utilize them as a tool to research untapped, similar companies. While categorization by genre is important, you must also implement management methods that prioritize efficiency and ease of access, ensuring that you can quickly locate necessary information within a large volume of cards.
Digitization Is Essential for Leveraging Business Cards
Simplifying the Process Leading Up to Follow-up Activities
One of the major reasons business cards are not fully utilized is the lack of time to list and manage them. Even if the importance of creating a list is understood, the process is often time-consuming, leading to delays and preventing timely follow-up activities. If you can digitize cards quickly and leverage the data, your entire team can collaborate to conduct effective follow-ups.
Sharing Information Is Difficult with Paper-Based Business Cards
When relying on paper-based business cards, they remain the personal property of individual sales representatives. Even if information is noted on the cards, keeping them stored away by the representative can lead to missed business opportunities. By digitizing business cards and facilitating smooth information sharing with other sales representatives and departments, you can transform business card data into valuable corporate assets. While it is possible to share information by centralizing the storage of paper cards, this requires representatives to be physically present in the office to access the data. Digitizing business cards allows anyone to access necessary information quickly, even when working remotely.
Efficiently Categorize by Industry and Job Function Through Digitization
Categorizing paper-based business cards is time-consuming. Even after filing them, finding specific information remains difficult. When analyzing information from business cards, reviewing different formats for each company is exhausting, and checking both sides of cards or filtering out unnecessary data can lead to a massive waste of time. By digitizing business cards, you can perform classification and searches quickly and organize only the necessary information in an easy-to-read format, making corporate analysis much easier.
mSonar: The Optimal Business Card Management App for Leveraging Business Cards
Quick and Centralized Management of Accurate Business Card Information
For digitizing business cards, we recommend an app that allows for centralized management of all corporate information to prevent data from being scattered. mSonar is an app that allows you to register up to six business cards at once, saving you time and effort. It also supports various registration methods, such as importing from saved photos, allowing sales representatives to choose the method that best fits their situation. By enabling registration on the same day cards are received, mSonar encourages the active use of business card management apps within the organization.
Integration with CRM and SFA
Implementing a business card management system that integrates with CRM and SFA leads to more efficient sales activities. As you digitize business cards, sharing not only corporate information but also the unique know-how held by individual sales representatives enables a team-based, organizational approach. Since mSonar integrates with CRM and SFA, it is highly effective for analyzing customer data. It also allows for efficient segmentation of prospective customers, enabling speedy follow-ups tailored to their level of interest. Furthermore, by managing and sharing the history of business card exchanges internally, you can avoid overlapping sales efforts, thereby preventing potential damage to your company's reputation.
Business Card Management App Utilizing a Corporate Database
By implementing a business card management app that utilizes a corporate database, you can link corporate information simultaneously with the digitization of business cards. By leveraging one of Japan's largest corporate databases, mSonar does more than just store business card information; it supports B2B sales activities and contributes to increased revenue. You can also acquire information on prospective companies with whom you have not yet exchanged business cards, significantly improving the efficiency of your sales activities. Industry information related to prospective customers is also derived from the corporate database, allowing you to view comprehensive corporate information while digitizing cards, which drastically reduces the time spent on corporate analysis and information gathering. Additionally, when there are errors in registered information, duplicate entries, or changes in company names or addresses, the system automatically updates the data using the corporate database, allowing you to focus on sales activities without the hassle of manual data maintenance.
*The latest business card management application currently offered is mSonar. Meishi Sonar is the former name of mSonar used prior to December 2023, or it refers to the service formerly known as "THE Meishi Kanri Business" provided by NTT DATA NJK Corporation, which was rebranded following the service transfer in December 2024.
