Referals and refering
 

When your already booked and the customer asks you if you can refer them to someone else, how do you all decide as to which other video company to refer?? Do you pick some one in your own price range? Do you pick someone whos higher priced then you or someone whos lower? This has always been a tricky thing for me to do, because most of my leads are from other vendors in the industry, ex. Photo, DJ, Florists ect. Lets just say for example you've done a brides wedding and one or two of her bridesmaids and now the third calls and the date is booked, depending on where you send them you can possibly loose any potential futher girls from this click because of your referal. I only book one wedding per day and as much as I appreciate the fact that I'm busy I always get the "do you have anyone else you can send me too?" Just not sure as to where I am to send my leads that come to me. What do you all do and how is it that you came to decide as to where you are sending them. Thanks in advance.

I send them to our state videographer association website and tell them to look at the member list.

Unfortunately I do not know of ANY other videographers in my area!! I do notice that there are a few on here from my area but I haven't really established any kind of "you scratch my back" kind of relationships with any of them yet. At this point I don't even have an "emergency" back up videographer to call on if needed.

However, I am interested in finding another in the same boat so if anyone else is interested.....

Is it safe to assume you all do not refer them to anybody??

I dont want to refer them to others in my price range as I dont actually like any of their videos (big head). I tend to refer to fxfilms if there in his area as we are a huge admirer of his work and hes a lovely chap.

Last thing I want is to recommend somone local and have them botch up their vid only for them to give him bad press and then me for recommending them. FX always seems to produce the goods. He does the same for me.

However, were leagues apart, people going to me tend to want cheap and his clients are willing to pay that extra few quid to get the quality and style he offers.

Also because some of our competition have played dirty tricks by giving bogus reviews on certain websites, fortunatly for us I know how to trace such things and found out exactly who they were (the benefits of running your site from a dedicated server is you see all).

I think the first thing to remember is that if a couple comes to you for videography and you are booked, then they are going to find someone else to do it for them whether you refer someone or not. So as for losing future business, don't worry about it.

Secondly, I do refer to other videographers in my area, but there is also one that I caution brides away from. My thought here is that I want my market to have a better perception of videography, so if I'm booked for a date then I want to refer the bride to someone else who I think can do a good job.

Third, I'm openly honest with a bride when giving a referral. If I think a videographer is overpriced for his work, I'll mention that. If I think he's reasonably priced but his work just isn't all that awesome, then I'll mention that. If they have different styles I'll mention that. What I don't want is for my referral to turn into some kind of an "endorsement" for a videographer. Because if the bride takes my referral as such and then has a bad experience or is unhappy with the videographer/video, I don't want a single ounce of blame coming my way. I always stress that although I'm referring someone I haven't been a client of theirs and I haven't seen enough of their work to consider my referral an endorsement.

Finally, I believe there are plenty of weddings to go around. I try to stick to one wedding per weekend because I work them like a dog and I don't have much left in me the next day. So I can't do every wedding, and I might as well refer to other videographers and get referrals from them.