Your business contacts: help yourself by helping someone else

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I started the day by asking a friend the following question: do you recommend your business contacts? His answer was, “well, it depends.” I understood his point of view of not wanting to recommend substandard service providers, but when I thought about it later on, I think a more appropriate question would have been "do you believe in sharing your contacts?"  To be specific, I am only talking about the ones that you would recommend.

I think some of us are not really open to sharing what we know. Is it because we assume that the person we’re sharing this information with will gain more out of it than we will? I think this is a good enough answer for some people, but to tell the truth, I love to recommend people. Why? Because in the long run, they’ll return the favor and nowadays we need as many favors as we can get. 

I get a lot of people walking in and out of my workplace daily and someone always needs a phone number, whether it’s for the a/c guy, the lawn guy, or the printing guy. Trust me when I say I’m glad to pass my contacts on because I know I'm going to get something out of it; whether it's that "feel good" feeling or something else.  The saying “it’s not what you know but who you know” is even more relevant today than it was two years ago and this is where "the something else" comes in. 

For example, we have a great a/c guy that we use in the office from time to time. I recommended him to a neighbor, he got the job, but within an afternoon of the recommendation, we had ourselves a faulty a/c. Normally, it would take him a day or two to get in because he is always busy. Not only did he come in the same afternoon, but we ended up getting a freebie on his normal rate.

This is the reason why I would encourage everyone to pass on their business contacts. If that person knows you’re recommending them, they’ll (1) put your business first (2) give you greater service, and (3) save you time and money in the long run. If not for any altruistic reason of helping someone else out, think about it from a business point of view; it’s good for the bottom line.

Questions and comments. Email me at miamiworkplace@yahoo.com.