What you are actually selling

A review card is a plastic card with a small chip inside it. The chip holds one thing: a web address. When a phone touches the card, the phone opens that address. The address is the business's own Google review page, the one with the five stars and the text box.

That is the entire product. There is no app, no battery, no wifi and no subscription inside the card. The chip is powered by the phone's own field for the half second the two are touching. It cannot see who tapped it, it does not count taps, and it does not send anything anywhere. Owners ask about that, so learn it now: the card is a printed link, and the printing happens to be electronic.

Why anyone would pay for a link

Watch what a customer has to do without one. They unlock the phone. They open Maps or a browser. They type a business name that probably has two or three similar results in the same town. They pick the right one, scroll past the photos and the hours, find the reviews, tap the stars. Standing at a counter with their keys in one hand and a bag in the other, that is a lot of steps to ask of somebody who is doing you a favour.

The card deletes the middle of it. Tap, stars, done. You are not selling plastic and you are not selling technology. You are selling the removal of one specific friction at one specific moment, and the price of that has nothing to do with what the card cost you.

What the business gets, stated honestly

Not reviews. A shorter path for the reviews the business was going to earn anyway. Whether that path gets used depends on two things you do not control: whether the staff ask, and whether the service was good enough that someone wants to say so. You can improve the first one, in five minutes, at delivery. You cannot touch the second one, and any pitch that pretends otherwise is a pitch you will have to defend later.

This is not a weakness in the offer. It is the offer. If an owner has already been pitched something in this area, the fastest way to sound different is to be the one who says plainly what the thing does not do.

The shapes it comes in

• A wallet-sized card, sat in a small stand on the counter. The default.
• A sticker or disc, fixed to a till, a window, a menu holder or a fuel-door-sized flat surface.
• A keyring tag for a mobile trade, so the card is with the van keys instead of in an office nobody visits.
• A table tent for hospitality, where the ask happens at the table and not at a counter.
• A card that goes in the check presenter or the invoice folder, handed over with the bill.

Choose the shape by where the ask happens, not by what looks best in a photo. If the customer is standing at a till when someone thanks them, the card goes at the till. If the customer never stands anywhere, because the work happens at their house, the card lives with the person who does the work.

Why beginners pick this one

• The materials cost is small enough to test with pocket money, so the risk is your time rather than your savings.
• It is physical. You can put the thing in a hand, and the demo takes ten seconds instead of a slide deck.
• The buyer is on a street you can walk to, which means you can practise the conversation for free, as many times as you are willing to be told no.
• There is nothing to build. No code, no inventory system, no shipping, no returns from strangers on the internet.

Why it is harder than the videos make it look

Because the object costs almost nothing, the price is a price for a conversation, a correct link and a delivery. That means the whole business is the conversation, and the conversation is the part that is easiest to keep putting off. There is also a rule you can break without meaning to, in the first week, by copying a pitch you saw online. That rule is the next lesson, and it is the reason to read this course rather than a thread.