![\"\"](\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/hl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/we-love-referrals-300x294.jpg\" "\\"we-love-referrals\\"")
There\u2019s no better way to secure free business than to gain a referral.\u00a0 And the finest examples of fruitful referrals I can think of, aside from the standard client references, are the ones where it takes some detective work to figure out just where the referral came from, or one which could only have happened by being in the exact right place at the exact right time.<\/p>\n
About two years ago I received a voicemail from a prospective client from Arizona who mentioned a name in her message \u2013 presumably the name of the person who kindly referred her to me.\u00a0 The story would end here if I even half recognized the name of person she though referred her.\u00a0 Please trust that the irony is not lost on me that this new client happened to be calling from an Alzheimer Institute!\u00a0 Nevertheless, I looked up both the prospective client and the supposed referred on both LinkedIn and my trusted Facebook, and lo and behold I would begin to unravel the mystery.\u00a0 Though I recognized neither, it did appear I had a mutual friend with the referrer.\u00a0 However this mutual friend was a rather distance acquaintance.\u00a0 He was a former associate of mine during my high school days, the president of a rival high school\u2019s debate team who I\u2019d met during my stint on the Junior Statesmen of America.\u00a0 But the story cannot end here.\u00a0 He was also the best friend of one of my client\u2019s husband\u2019s.\u00a0 The moral of this story is that I was able to close a piece of business delivered to me by the assistant of the cousin of the best friend of my client\u2019s husband.\u00a0 That\u2019s at least four degrees of separation and it ended in positive revenue for Hotel Lobbyists \u2013 and who knows, maybe even another referral.<\/p>\n
My next favorite example is much simpler but it speaks to the power of being in the right place at the right time as well as associating with people who are good connectors of other people.\u00a0 I got an email the other day from another prospective customer whom I\u2019d never met.\u00a0 She needed help securing rooms for her wedding block in San Francisco.\u00a0 How did I come upon this referral?\u00a0 This woman was seated next to my cousin on a flight from San Francisco to San Diego.\u00a0 Apparently they got to talking about their respective lives and when the woman mentioned her upcoming wedding, my cousin had the wherewithal to dig deeper, see if she\u2019s secured her room block and if she hadn\u2019t, here was Hotel Lobbyists\u2019 contact information.\u00a0 I\u2019m dazzled.<\/p>\n
Referrals like these replace what would otherwise be an outside sales force and because neither of my \u201csales people\u201d were selling, the sales process was that much easier.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take referrals like this any day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s no better way to secure free business than to gain a referral.\u00a0 And the finest examples of fruitful referrals I can think of, aside from the standard client references, are the ones where it takes some detective work to figure out just where the referral came from, or one which could only have happened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n