There’s a learning lesson in today’s world on how not to forget phone numbers. Put them in your phone right away. It’s taken me a long time to learn this. And I still don’t do it consistently.
When cell phones were just starting to become ubiquitous, I remember meeting someone at a professional meeting. He didn’t want my business card. He asked for my phone number, pulled out his cell and tapped in my contact information. Bam, done.
It didn’t even register with me what he’d done. I remember thinking, “Okay, that’s unusual.” Typically, at that time, you’d take someone’s business card and slide it into your wallet so you could pull it out later.
Last week, at a session on changing business culture, I ran out of business cards. I’d handed out a few and was down to my last one, when one of the attendees said, “Here, let me take a picture of it so you can hang onto your last card.” I guess that’s the evolution of the business card from 10 years ago to today – going from tapping the information into your phone database to taking a picture to input it.
What I’ve struggled with is the behavioral change. In those types of networking sessions, you need to REMEMEMBER, “The information should go quickly into my phone.”
If it doesn’t, then you lose it. In the old days, you’d lose the card and the contact. When it got to tapping the information into the phone, you needed to immediately remember to do so. During those days I would find myself saving more and more numbers and never sitting down back at my office or home and spending time inputting the information of new colleagues. It seemed unimportant.
But the reality was and is that it’s important. If you don’t capture contact information of someone you want to stay in touch with, you ain’t gonna stay in touch with that person. So, you need to stay on top of it and get that stuff inputted.
I’m getting better at this, but it often still seems like a trivial task and I get more wound up into the conversation with someone new, what she or he is talking about, and the whole concept that “this is someone new I’m meeting and if I want to stay in touch, then I better write down their contact information” gets lost as I listen intently to their story. One of those weaknesses if you’re a good listener – you can forget the follow-up logistics.
The past year or two I’ve made a much more concerted effort when I come home from meeting a group of new people to check their cards (I’ll still a card guy) and tap in their contact information (I still don’t take the picture of their cards) immediately into my phone. It appears I’m not a photo-taking person, but at least I’m slowly getting more responsible on the old school front.
I try to stay up with technology, but often seem a step behind. Can you send me the YouTube video?
When cell phones were just starting to become ubiquitous, I remember meeting someone at a professional meeting. He didn’t want my business card. He asked for my phone number, pulled out his cell and tapped in my contact information. Bam, done.
It didn’t even register with me what he’d done. I remember thinking, “Okay, that’s unusual.” Typically, at that time, you’d take someone’s business card and slide it into your wallet so you could pull it out later.
Last week, at a session on changing business culture, I ran out of business cards. I’d handed out a few and was down to my last one, when one of the attendees said, “Here, let me take a picture of it so you can hang onto your last card.” I guess that’s the evolution of the business card from 10 years ago to today – going from tapping the information into your phone database to taking a picture to input it.
What I’ve struggled with is the behavioral change. In those types of networking sessions, you need to REMEMEMBER, “The information should go quickly into my phone.”
If it doesn’t, then you lose it. In the old days, you’d lose the card and the contact. When it got to tapping the information into the phone, you needed to immediately remember to do so. During those days I would find myself saving more and more numbers and never sitting down back at my office or home and spending time inputting the information of new colleagues. It seemed unimportant.
But the reality was and is that it’s important. If you don’t capture contact information of someone you want to stay in touch with, you ain’t gonna stay in touch with that person. So, you need to stay on top of it and get that stuff inputted.
I’m getting better at this, but it often still seems like a trivial task and I get more wound up into the conversation with someone new, what she or he is talking about, and the whole concept that “this is someone new I’m meeting and if I want to stay in touch, then I better write down their contact information” gets lost as I listen intently to their story. One of those weaknesses if you’re a good listener – you can forget the follow-up logistics.
The past year or two I’ve made a much more concerted effort when I come home from meeting a group of new people to check their cards (I’ll still a card guy) and tap in their contact information (I still don’t take the picture of their cards) immediately into my phone. It appears I’m not a photo-taking person, but at least I’m slowly getting more responsible on the old school front.
I try to stay up with technology, but often seem a step behind. Can you send me the YouTube video?