Dear Kathi,
What do you recommend for organizing business cards? I have filled up a card box and divided them by organization but am now out of room! I like the idea of the plastic sleeve, but not sure I want to go that route.
Debbie, Encinitas
Debbie,
Plastic sleeves are great if you use a three ring binder with pre-made alphabetical tabs or categorical tabs that you create yourself.
With the alphabetical tabs, when you fill up a page containing a popular letter like “s” (“s” always seems to fill first!), you can simply add a new plastic sleeve and keep filling. The hazard of the alphabetical plastic sleeve is that if you forget the company name, you have to go through the entire binder.
Card boxes are good until you run out of room, at which point you are faced with deciding whether to subdivide or begin anew.
If you do create a new box or binder, what will differentiate one from the other and how will you remember who is where two months from now?
The ultimate plan of attack is to maintain a contact management list (such as using Outlook, Act or Entourage) on your computer. These programs store all of your contact information as data so that you have numerous options and fields to retrieve your information from.
A contact management program combined with a business card scanner will take you light years into the future. Business card scanners work quickly by saving your data into fields. Some even save the business card logo and image! It takes a while to learn the technology, but in the long term for helping your business grow, this will be one of the smartest investments of your time.
Kathi is a professional organizer, image consultant and event planner based in San Diego California.
Please submit your questions to: [email protected].
San Diego Professional Organizer
