Are Business Cards Really Necessary?

Business cards. The must-have fashion accessory for any self-respecting business person. Not only do they provide a practical means of exchanging contact details with others, but they are also a vital part of conveying your business brand to potential clients.

As such, woe betide you if your business cards are not thick and luscious and full colour and professionally designed to make you stand out from the crowd. And heaven forbid that you should pitch up at a networking event without any business cards. It’s akin to committing professional suicide. A cardinal sin.

Or is it?

Are business cards really necessary?

I’ve been conducting a little experiment for the past five months. It all started back in January, when the first networking event of the year rolled around and I realised that I had run out of business cards. I’d heard all the advice about how important it was to always carry business cards with me, plus all those dire warnings about how my business was sure to die a horrible painful death as a result of my ineptitude as a business owner who couldn’t even get the basics, like business cards, right.

But, I didn’t exactly have a choice. So I went along to the event unarmed.

And nobody noticed. Nobody cared.

When it came time, during conversations with people, for the business card swap, I simply said, “I don’t have any on me at the moment. I’ll email you tomorrow with my details.” No-one batted an eyelash. Only once did I encounter a gentleman who also didn’t have any cards with him. No problem – each of us wrote down each other’s details in notebooks that we had on us.

Of course, the possibility exists that my fellow networkers thought terrible thoughts about me or muttered to one another about me behind my back. But I don’t think so. Here’s why: That first networking event without any business cards was one of the most successful (in terms of connections made and business generated) that I’ve ever had. In fact, since I stopped taking business cards with me to events, I’ve felt a definite shift in how I approach networking and in how others relate to me.

The reason why networking without business cards has worked for me is because it has opened up a space for me to be more myself in networking situations. I love chatting to people, finding out what they do and why they do it. Formal networking with business cards makes the process very transactional. The point seems to be to swap details, collect cards, work the room. Networking without business cards, on the other hand, makes the process a bit more informal, a bit more social, and encourages genuine connections. I found I had far more in-depth conversations with people without feeling any pressure to exchange business cards.

When these conversations ended naturally and the time came when business cards would usually be exchanged, I took others’ cards and promised to email them. And followed through on my promise. It allowed for a way to renew the connection we had made the previous day, and I’m betting (even though this wasn’t the aim of the exercise) that I stood out in the minds of people that I met as a result, more so than just being a name on a card in a pile of many collected.

I’ve only capitulated once in the last five months, taking business cards with me to one event where I was the speaker. I needed a quick and easy way to hand out my contact details to people who came up to chat to me after the event. It worked – in that situation. But, following my experiment, I now know that the conventional wisdom regarding business cards doesn’t necessarily work for me. I now know that I can break some of the so-called cardinal rules and not only get away with it but actually prosper as a result.

What are your thoughts on business cards? Do they work for you?