You’ve just gotten off the podium and, naturally, there’s an enormous lineup forming to meet you. In many cases, people just want to thank you for the presentation or ask you a question or two.
Well-intentioned as they may be, this is not the time for you to answer any more than the most basic of questions — some people’s enthusiasm get in the way of noticing that other people are waiting to speak with you as well.
Most commonly, people will want you to email them your slides (something I never do — if they want to see it again or show it to another group in their company, they should pay me to give the presentation again, in my opinion) or have you get back to them on something.
Since I’m a crappy note-taker, I’ve developed this system of folding the corners of business cards so I can remember what each person wants when I get back to my hotel room. Here are my hints; feel free to invent your own:
- Top-Left: Potential client (I always ask their preference and have the corner point at either their email address or phone number, depending on how they prefer I contact them.)
- Top-Right: They want more info/stats/references from my points
- Bottom-Left: Potential client — Tell agent to call them
- Bottom-Right: “Friend” them on Facebook
If you need more tabs, don’t forget you can fold the corners over backward and you’ve got four more. You can get another four by folding horizontally or vertically, either toward or away from the printed side. I’ve found, though, that four positions is more than sufficient.
Regardless of what they talk to you about, hand them your business card and ask for theirs if you don’t have it yet. You want to put your card in the hands of as many people as possible. It’s just good marketing.
