Are you taking advantage of the referral network in your area? Are you linked into other photographers who are sharing their leads?

Every job that I can't take, I give to someone who can. About 50% of the clients who contact me are actually referred to another photographer because I'm already booked. I feel like I've disappointed a client by telling them I'm not available, so I want to make sure that I'm referring them to someone who IS available. Going out of my way to provide this extra service to clients insures that they will be taken care of and that their future referrals will stay in my referral network.

I wanted an easy way to know who was available. In the past, I had to visit several different websites or email photographers just to make sure I wasn't sending the client to a dead end. How depressing for a client to be rejected twice in a row! But now all I have to do is check my calendar.google.com and I can see the availability of many different photographers all at once! I can easily see who is and isn't potentially available, making it quick and easy for me to send a referral onto the client. Because calendar.google.com has made it so easy to find out who's available, I'm 10 time more likely to refer someone in my google calendar over someone who's not sharing their calendar on google.

This is a win-win-win situation. The client wins because they get great service from me and they find another great photographer to work with who will take care of them. The other photographer wins because they get a highly qualified lead that has a greater chance of hiring them based on personal referral and a new urgency to book soon. I win because I have just kept a potential client in my network of friends, knowing that future referrals from that client may come directly back to me! This is why your biggest competitor should also be your best friend- especially if their style is most similar to your own. The more people you connect with, the more you will see that there's plenty of work for everyone.

If you're already part of a local photographer's group, than you already have a great group of people to help you start a shared calendar network. If you don't have a local photographer's group, or would like to start sharing with another photographer in your area whom you've never met, I suggest making your first contact with that photographer a request to send business to them. You have to be willing to give referrals, not just receive them, in order to have a strong network. If they aren't sure about the idea, send them the link to this post. ;-)

I've tried several different calendar sharing solutions and I've found Google Calendar to be the easiest cross-platform solution to use, with options for syncing to your cell phone, ipod, outlook, and ical. It also has an incredible amount of privacy protection allowing you to show details or just availability, and to make it public or only available to those you invite to view it. To link into other photographers already using this network, first set up your <a href="http://calendar.google.com">calendar.google.com</a> by <a href="http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=37097&topic=8605">importing your photography calendar from a program you already use</a>, or by entering the information manually. Once you're ready to make your calendar available to others, simply <a href="http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=37082">add their email to your shared calendar list!</a>

I hope that you find this useful - I'll be copying this post to my photolovecat.com blog and maybe in the future I'll add a video tutorial on using google calendar, but for now I really just wanted you to start setting up a referral network with the other photographers in your area.

I share a calendar with a couple cool Asheville girls...it's great how it works out. Oh yeah, there's a guy in there now too! But I also hate to tell people I am booked so I feel better helping them out and in turn helping out a friend!

Anne, I though I've told you about this:

www.BanquetBuzz.com

Calendar
Friends (like MySpace)
Internal mail
Rating system
Blogs to share recent events,
Message boards to ask questions and share ideas
Galleries for pics


and it's not just for photographers, we welcome coordinators, florists, DJs, anyone in the industry

Eric

PS
FREE

What I like about google calendar is that I don't have to maintain it. It automatically updates with spanningsync whenever I change my ical so that I don't have to go and update another calendar.

Out of curiosity - does anyone else have other referral programs in place for their local area?

Not that I'm aware of around here....we certainly need one. lol I know there's a whole bunch of us here and it would be super helpful.


Great post, btw!

good thread anne, and i think it needs a bump.

the calender idea sounds great. we have a referral network going on in NY that's worked out extremely well. after all hopefully a decent percentage of our business comes from referrals from clients and photographers. that's usually the best kind. our network is very informal though, and i usually pass it off to whoever i know that's in the area and in their price range (if they tell me where they are getting married you can get a feel for what their budget is going to be).

I bet that a LOT of photographers in your area could benefit from one another!!



I was doing that as well for quite a while, and occasionally when everyone on my calendar is booked, I still do that. I'm sure people have seen me on this board a few times looking for people to refer my out of town clients to when I didn't have any referrals I could think of. After a few clients responded to my referrals saying that they were disappointed and feeling hopeless that all of my referrals were already booked, that's when I became more careful about trying to only refer people who were available. Now I get emails thanking me for helping them find a great photographer.

I love this idea! Our PUG group is great about passing on referrals (a select few of us in particular), but being able to just check the calendar rather than having to contact everyone or sending your client out to people who may be booked is a great idea! Thanks so much, Anne - I didn't know this was possible. As of right now we "blindly" refer or will send out an e-mail to see who's available first. This is also a great idea for when you need a second or have an emergency - a friend called me today wanting to know if I could help her out this Friday - she said she had already called 10 people. I was available. A calendar would make this a lot easier too!

I'm hoping to get my PUG group more involved as well - right now we have organized meetings.. but there's very little collaborating outside of the PUG.

HEY! I've been on there for a long time, just havent updated!

You are sooo right Anne! I have a referral group - we use google - works great.

That reminds me. I really ned to update that thing. I will make sure it gets done today or tomorrow!

I'd love to get something like this going, the only problem being my prices are less than the other photographer's in my area. I know they don't want to refer to someone who's charging less, so I'm kinda on my own right now.

I think the calandar sounds like a fantastic idea, and I'd love to see it implemented in this area!

I would LOVE to do this, but photographers in my area are NOT open to this sort of thing. I've tried!

It really stinks that some can't see the benefit in this sort of relationship.

You don't need to have only photographers. Coordinators, Floriss, DJ's, even officiants can get you BIZ.