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Be Wary of Giving Referral Names to Pushy Salespeople

by Jennifer Gniadecki on July 24th, 2008

Fun story.

I met a woman and she was a client for a while. I did a few things for her and since everything I do is project based she didn’t have anything for a while, but we continued talking.

She listened to some of what I had to say about networking, plus she follows salespeople and networking experts that are superstars – so she knew how to thank me for my fine work besides just paying me.

I was excited, and thought, hey, this is how networking can be a dream for a business!

Until she sent me an email letting me know who she sent my info to.

Her financial advisor.

He called me. I answered because I thought maybe this guy doesn’t know an Internet marketer can’t help him a whole lot if he’s, you know, not his own boss but owned by the company and the legal department of a huge ConglomoCorp.

The conversation revolved almost exclusively around him. Other than me saying, “Oh” and “I see” a whole lot. I did manage to interject that my husband had been a financial advisor for two years before the strain of pushing crap on people who couldn’t afford it made him an insomniac. He then switched the topic of conversation to my business buddy, Beth, that gave him my information. “Beth told me I really needed to talk to you.” I responded, “Yes, she told me she gave you my information, you’re her financial advisor?” He said, “Yes, I like to think some of her business success is in some part due to working with me.”

I tried not to laugh, because at this point Beth had moved to downgrade her home and her credit cards were maxed out. She was NOT in a good financial position…and here this guy thinks I don’t know…so he’s lying to me! That’s about when I decided that if I ever did want a financial advisor, it wouldn’t be this guy.

So he talked about meeting me, mentioned he never went to the suburbs so when could I come up to meet him in the city, and talked about when we could get together – really wanting to get me in his datebook.

I told him, “Well, you know I am severely limited in what I can do for you by your corporate legal department, right?”

He laughed and said, “Oh, you know about that! Well we should still get together.” I said okay and that I’d let him know the next time I had a networking event in the city and maybe we could have coffee beforehand.

But…you see…I never got that whole sentence out. When the words “networking event” got out of my mouth he interrupted me cold and said, “What do you expect to get out of our meeting.”

I let that hang, completely stunned by how offputting this whole conversation had become. Finally I said with a smirk that I felt but did not let show in my voice, “Nothing. I can’t imagine what I would get out of our meeting.”

He said that he would explain to me this and that about financial investing and how it could set me up for retirement. I said, “LIke you did for Beth.” He said (with a satisfied tone), “Exactly!”

I said I would call him.

He called four times over the next three weeks.

I finally sent him an email reminding him I said I would call him and to please stop calling.

The worst part? Beth sincerely thought she was helping me by making this “connection” – she had no idea that from the moment she gave him my name it was a one-way street…and he never thought to tell her differently.

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POSTED IN: General Networking