Trustbuilder Cards Business Networking Conversation Starting Cards
Category: Printable Cards For Business Networking
Date Published: Q1 2017
Background
I have done a lot of business networking in my professional career. Hundreds maybe 1000 cup of coffee or beers after work with a fellow business owner building relationships and see if we can close a deal.
While I've gotten quite comfortable, have an in-depth conversation with complete strangers, that's not always the case for my interlocutor. So I created this printable deck of flashcards with good business networking, prompt questions on them. I keep this in my glove compartment and bring it into meetings that I expected to be a little crunchy.
It turns out it caught on and turn into a little bit of a thing.
Feel free to download these photos and print them out on cards. I recommend Moo Square Business Cards.
Key Features:
- Printable Cards: These Square Cards can be printed on Square Business Cards such as through Moo.com.
- 4 Types of Cards: You'll find 4 types of cards in the Trustbuilder deck. Each with a different theme:
- Personal Tidbits: Share a bit about your personal life. Connect as humans.
- Story Time: Tell a story to build a connection.
- Core Questions: Get to the real issues your business solves and look around inside the head of your networking partner.
- Action Card: Less talk and more action. With these cards, you're prompted to take action right away.
Benefits
- Keep Conversation Flowing: Keep the conversation flowing instead of getting stuck in an awkward silence by flipping over a new card.
- Skip The Small Talk: You've got a real human in front of you who's sharing their time with you. Don't waste it! Have a real conversation and avoid mundane topics like the weather.
Usage Instructions
You can either download these cards and keep them in a dedicated picture album on your smartphone, or if you want to get serious, you can download the cards and then have them printed on Square business cards available at a variety of vendors.
Next time you set up a networking meeting and you need to keep the conversation going, pull out your deck of cards and take turns flipping one over, asking your conversation partner the question.
Try to keep your answers to 60 seconds or less and make up any rules that you want to. There aren't any rules to this game. Kind of like… there really aren't any rules that aren't made up in life..
Impact
Have used these cards, myself in dozens of conversations and they became part of the curriculum at Caerusnet which is a relatively large business networking group. Several hundred people have used these in several thousand business networking conversations.
Download Link
I've uploaded JPEG photos of all of the trust builder cards to this Google Drive file so you're able to download them and get the conversation started.
Update Log
- Q1 2017 - Launched
- Q3 - 2018 - Integrated with the Caerusnet training.
- Q2 - 2019 - Large batch printing of Cards
