Business Cards: The Smart Way to Communicate with Technophobes

Are business cards really necessary today? In a world where electronic communication is the norm, why should people carry around those small pieces of card with their contact details inscribed on them? Why not exchange all that contact data at the business meeting through a Bluetooth link between your portable device and the client’s? Or why not just send an electronic business card from one cellphone to the other? Wouldn’t that be so much easier?

A Statistic Worth Thinking About Before Cancelling Your Order of Business Cards

An alarming statistic recently revealed that a fifth of all household heads in the United States have never used e-mail. Let’s take the “head of the household” to mean the main breadwinner of a family. That means that twenty per cent of the people in America who pay for most of the family expenses such as food, gas, education, clothes, and all the other necessities and sundries, haven’t yet felt the need to use electronic mail in order to bring home the bacon.

It’s not just low income families or older people who lack the urge to go online; many celebrities and politicians claim ignorance of the electronic world. Some cite the inconvenience of not carrying around a cell as being far less trouble than being within easy reach 24-7. People value their privacy, and the ring of that cellphone requires immediate attention.

E-mail is regarded by many as a scourge rather than a boon in the business world today. In 2006, PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services, a Georgia based company, introduced a “no e-mail Friday”. Increases in productivity and greater customer satisfaction were the result. Many corporations are considering similar e-mail bans to see if productivity improves. Greater social interaction and a friendly voice at the end of the phone would be just two benefits of such a cut down on computer to computer communication.

Moreover, e-mail bans make sense in terms of productivity if you consider that every time you leave your desk for five minutes you end up with ten new mails in your Inbox. Five mails require urgent attention and a further five have to be addressed by tomorrow. How are you meant to get to the work you’re actually supposed to do in your regular hours? Stress levels increase and suddenly the office makes you feel miserable. Further, it’s been suggested that the nuances of conversation are lost with e-mail – often, more direct communication is necessary to make sure everyone’s “on message” and the job is done right.

So evidently, a lot of people don’t see a reason to complicate their lives with computers and cellphones, and some are considering cutting back on these modern “conveniences”. Their lives are cluttered enough without the headache of e-mail and cellular technology. Business cards are a way to introduce yourself to these people without showing up their lack of techno-smarts. Such people can be encountered in all types of business, even today. Given that a fifth of the breadwinners of the world’s superpower don’t use e-mail, business cards are still a legitimate and necessary expense.

Article created on 9/15/2008

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