I was talking to an old university friend about a potential new client last night and asking her opinion of what I could explain to her about them so far – what do they do? It’s an often repeated question.
She asked me how Upstairs had been introduced to them. I explained that the chain of recommendation had started with one client 8 years ago (2000, previous life) who had got in touch in the early days of Upstairs (2004) recommended us to his old colleague who had talked to us about one project that never happened in 2006 and then, she had remembered us last year (2007) and we are working for her and her team now (2008) and she talked about us to her old client who is now going to be working with us (to come) … I’m sure my friend wished she hadn’t asked.
This ‘chain of recommendation’ got me thinking about a number of things – how old I am (narcissism, immediately). Also, the importance of reputation in everything we – who need to work for a living – do. In fact, how actually these ‘champions’ of our business have moulded what we do and without them, well, we’d be smaller, anxious, spending ‘working’ time talking about hot, warm, cold and frankly vanishing act contacts and that really, they should be recognised. We do make sure ‘you’ (blog readers each and every one we are sure…) are thanked, or try to… So, just after our fifth birthday, we have worked out a simple way of naming each and every one of ‘you’ while minimising the risk of really upsetting those we don’t remember to name – see our ‘Supporters’ section in About.
The bizarre, polite version of the ‘chain-game’ 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon can then be played across, around and up and down our ‘we’re glad you thought of us’ list…and we would be surprised if any chain actually gets to 6…that might take another 5 years. By which time we’ll all be tired and ancient.
More, on what our (confirmed, now) new client really does too…