Should I always reciprocate when someone gives me their business card at a business event? Even when I am not there to “network” or meet people? Sometimes I am just there to support a friend who is speaking. While chatting with people I have been given business cards from people I am just making small talk with. Should I always reciprocate? I tend not to, but I am now wondering if I am being unintentionally rude. Or are they being pushy by handing out their cards to a casual stranger?
Thoughts?
All I know about Business Card Etiquette I learned from watching King Of The Hill.
Sure, and it wouldn’t be rude, just say ‘here, let me give you one of mine, too’. It’s no ruder than them giving you theirs, especially if it’s unsolicited.
This goes doubly if there’s any chance that they could use your services at some point down the road. The more you give out, the more people will remember you.
A salesman I know stops in at my store to grab food once a week or so (he sells lightbulbs/fixtures, not exactly an everyday purchase). He’ll usually say hi to me, if I’m not there I’ll find 5 or 10 cards on my desk.
I asked a co-worker about it and they mentioned that he drops the card off so you know he’s spending money here and he gives you so many so A)you remember him and/or can always find one and B)So if someone asks you about lights, you can give them one of his cards. In fact, I think he does such a good job that I actually keep a handful of them and often give them out to people looking for a ‘light guy’.
And that brings up a similar point. Even if the person you’re talking to would never need your goods or services, if someone calls him, it’s nice if he can say “Actually, I have a _____ guy, let me dig up one of his cards, give him a call”.
TLDR, yes, hand out cards, they’re about the cheapest advertising you’ll find.
No, it’s not rude to not give someone a business card. I go to lots of events where I meet people whose business I can absolutely assure you I’ll never need. “Thanks, but we can’t use your services.” I’ve had the same email address since the late 90’s. I’m on too many mailing lists as it is. I don’t consider it rude to say “let’s not waste your time and mine”.
I agree that I could reciprocate with my own card, and if I was interested in a business relationship with the other person it would be a good idea. My question is if I don’t expect/want a continuing relationship with the other person-nothing wrong with the idea but our businesses are just too unrelated and I am not looking for work right now, should I reciprocate just to be polite?
BeeGee indicates not. Why expend the resources (time and cards) on something I don’t expect to continue. I can see that. But the expenditure is minor and politeness counts for something.
Any comments from other posters?
If a card is proffered to me at a conference*, I’ll say “Thanks, afraid I don’t have any of mine.”
Never once has anyone said “Oh, that’s too bad. I really wanted one.” If they had, I’d’ve scribbled my name and email on a blank card that I carry around just in case.
*In fact, most of those conferences are Design Conferences, for people who design, among other things, business cards. So I usually say “Thanks, afraid I don’t have one… [sheepish shrug] never got around to designing those.”
The last time someone asked me for my card, I looked through my wallet but didn’t have one. I did, however, have a card for a free Subway sandwich. I got a strange look in return.
During my traveling days (1978-1985) the company I worked for had some guidelines for this very topic.
(A) If traveling to a training or other educational conference we could pass out our own cards.
(B) If traveling for the purpose of training customer personnel, pass out your own card and cards with tech support contact info.
© If traveling for the purpose of installing equipment at a specific customer site, do not pass out your own card. Pass out the tech support card.
(D) If traveling to a trade convention, where vendors might have a product the company could use, we would obtain a bunch of cards from the regional salesperson and pass them out. Sales was always supposed to be the point department for anything involving money.
To finally respond to the OP: I only solicited cards when involved in scenario A.
And me…I learned from American Psycho
Because you never, ever know when five years down the line someone in the other person’s office will ask, “does anyone know anyone in the left-handed frumhotz adjuster industry?”
Don’t you normally have business cards run off in lots of 500 or 1,000? The card expense is not just minor, it’s insignificant, the time expense is maybe three seconds on top of the time you’ve already spent on conversation, and yes, politeness counts even more than 3 seconds and 0.01 cents.
Someone needs to invent the pocket-sized “BizCard Salad Shooter”.
Sweep it across a crowd of salespeople, inundating each of them with a dozen cards. With your choice of Uzi or Lightsaber sound effects.
I’ve been in the tech and digital marketing spaces for a few years now. I can’t remember the last time I handed out or received cards at a pitch presentation or a meeting with established clients. The younger folk on my team all say business cards are for old people who don’t have LinkedIn.
LinkedIn would mean you have your phone at the ready wherever you go. I guess that would describe “the younger folk” who have their noses in their phones constantly.
Business cards are cheap, and they are a legitimate business expense.
The whole idea of networking is putting yourself “out there,” making contacts, building a net to catch contacts. The “lefthanded frumhotz adjuster” example upthread is exactly the type of contact you want to make.
Networking is hard, boring, quite thankless work. It does pay off, but you have to have patience. And you have to be persistent. The folks who have neither patience or persistence need to get out of the lefthanded frumhotz adjusting business.
For the younger folk who see LinkedIn as the best way to promote lefthanded frumhotz adjusting, ask yourself which adjuster you’ll remember: the one with his nose in his phone, or the one who handed you a card, looked you in the eye, and shook your hand?
~VOW
Twenty-something years ago, I was doing business with some of the large Japanese electronics companies and in the preparation for these meetings learned that there is an etiquette about business cards in their culture. As I remember, you’re supposed to take the card with both hands, look at it and carefully put it away (as opposed to just shoving it in a pocket without so much as a glance), because the card is a representation or extension of the person.
And then during the meeting, the Japanese executives laid the business cards out in the same order as the people whose cards these were. That was a way of keeping track of who was who.
(And I think they had English on one side of the card and Japanese on the other.)
Since the mobile-device led group has chimed in I’m going to second VOW’s last observation and offer something else. Way back in the day I purchased what I will call a card book. Three sleeves per page and about thirty pages. Mine is full, and I’ll allow that 50% of the cards are useless for contact info. But:
(1) I don’t need any technology to look someone up.
(2) Old cards stay in until culled by newer ones. I have a built-in long term memory that will not be erased by a dropped or lost device.
Somewhat unrelated, but it came to mind just now: a college friend once remarked to me: “Paper is a truly random access device.”
I did business in Japan for more than 20 years.
This is correct. You are to treat the business cards very carefully. Japanese are really into ranking and such and it’s important to be respectful.
Back when I was still a student, I was interpreting for a group of Japanese businessmen and some people in museum of natural history at my university. The Japanese were having some dinosaur replicates made.
The associate curator was a paleontologist who spend a lot of time in the field. While the discussions were going on, he was getting somewhat bored and picked up the business card belonging to one of the Japanese gentlemen, and began to absentmindedly play with it. The whole Japanese team started to get visibly upset. I waited until I was interpreting something from the Japan side, and told him to put the card in his shirt pocket and not touch it again.
The Japanese side let out a collective sigh and the meeting resumed.