Every time you hand out your business card, there is potential.  Potential that this person knows someone you know, that you share a common sports team, that they need your service or you need theirs.  You just never know where it will go — sometimes the people or “leads” that seem least promising turn out to be one of your most valuable connections.

So I thought it would be interesting to show how valuable any one person can be.  The mantra that every customer is important is very true, and I think this illustrates it pretty well…

In April of 2010, I made a fantastic connection.  I’m going to leave names out of this for illustration purposes, so let’s just say that Bob at Company A hired Dodeline to fulfill all of their graphic and web design needs.  I was very much in the infancy of this business (not that I’m not still, but much  more so then) and had yet to make many connections in the Charleston area.

I thought it was best illustrated graphically how the referrals and leads spring from that one happy client…

Believe me when I say…

1. Every item on here is representative of a real client and project I completed. This took awhile for me to put together :-)
2. This is not even a complete list. There are scads of other people and companies that resulted directly or indirectly from that one connection.
3. I could do this for multiple people I’ve worked with. Sure, not every client is a huge referral source, but everyone has the potential to be.

What has your experience been? Do you strive to foster referrals in your business and/or refer businesses with which you’ve had good experiences to friends and family?

  • http://www.tiffanylanehandmade.wordpress.com Tiffany

    That’s awesome you made all those connections (and more) from one person!

    • http://www.dodelinedesign.com SarahR

      Pretty amazing! :-)

  • http://www.why-girls-are-weird.com Krysten

    That is SO cool, I loved how you laid this out for us and it’s so fun to see how it all works.