For a wedding photographer, referrals are generally a wonderful thing. Clients in general are often a bit weary of choosing someone for such an important task without being assured by those that they trust. It’s understandable too - I mean if you were in the market for a car and you saw a model you’d never seen before but absolutely loved its look… would you go out and buy it even though that snazzy machine might turn out to be a total lemon?

Well, you might.

But if someone close to you had one in the past .. loved it.. and couldn’t find a thing wrong with it, you’d be a lot more likely to make the investment - and feel a whole lot safer about it. Heck, if a random mechanic at your local service station tells you it’s a great car, you’re probably going to take the plunge

About 65% of my clients are referred to me by previous clients. And I’m extremely grateful for that - referred clients tend to be much more trusting and comfortable around me and have a much better idea of what to expect in terms of the photography itself as well as the final product (prints, albums, etc).

Some of my clients are also referred to me by other wedding vendors that I’ve met in the past. This is a good thing as well .. but only when the vendor has made the referral without any expectation of reciprocation.

One of the ugly aspects of the wedding business that occurs almost everywhere is the mutual back scratching of referral trading or commissioned referrals. Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about:

1) A popular wedding venue maintains a list of preferred or exceptional photographers (or DJs, or caterers, or decorators, or planners) that they happily show to clients who are interested in booking. What the clients don’t know or often don’t think about is that any photographer can simply pay to place their name on this list. Someone whose never taken a good photo in their life might very well be on this list. However, the clients, trusting that such a top notch wedding venue would obviously only showcase the best, often fall for it and, thus, lose out in the end.

2) Any wedding vendor may offer a cash (or similar) incentive to clients to refer them to their friends or acquaintances. I don’t know about you, but to me, this reaks of desparation. If your clients are happy, they’ll tell others. If they’re not, they won’t. It’s pretty simple. Have I ever given a gift to a former client whose sent plenty of referrals my way? Yes, absolutely - thanking those who’ve gone out of there way to express their happiness with my services is often a given - but those clients never had any expectation of a gift nor were they given any reason to believe that they might receive one.

3) Two vendors of the same product or service agree to toss each other referrals to clients whom they are not available to serve for whatever reason. This isn’t always bad - if those two vendors are aware of and truly respect the work of the other .. however in reality, much of the time, this is simply done to feed each other more business with little concern given to the quality provided to the client.

4) A vendor offers to refer another vendor (providing the same service or a different one) to clients in return for a percentage of the ’sale’. On the flip side, they might also offer the vendor a percentage of their own sale if the other vendor referred clients to them. Once again, quality is generally of little importance .. lining pockets is the primary goal.

Let’s face it - similar schemes can and do corrupt various industries all over the planet. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours is not a new concept. But the level to which this concept permeates an industry differs from industry to industry and from place to place.

So why am I posting about this? Is the wedding industry really this bad in Alberta?

It never used to be. It’s been my obvservation (mostly in Edmonton) over the past many years that there are far more vendors that don’t subscribe to these sorts of practices (at least in a damaging way) than there are that do.

But that might be changing…

Over the past year, for the first time ever in such magnitude, I’ve been approached by more than a dozen different vendors asking me to take part in one or more of the ‘arrangements’ listed above. Vendors whom I know little or nothing about and likely know little or nothing about me. I don’t know if these people are having much success in finding likeminded vendors (I’d like to think that most feel the way I do about it), but if they are, this represents a nasty shift in the way the wedding business goes down in this province.

The 2008 wedding season may be the first one in Alberta where a significantly higher percentage of brides and grooms begin falling victim to these sorts of schemes. For them, very little can make up for what was lost. And sadly, while word of mouth will eventually catch up to poor vendors, it’ll take a long time before many engaged couples stop automatically trusting referrals given by those people or businesses they perceive as trustworthy.

If this does become a big issue in Alberta’s wedding industry, there are no quick fixes for it. As vendors, we need to resist any sort of participation and make it clear to any vendor that does participate without engaging in a thorough and completely objective quality evaluation that we feel they’re propagating a terrible standard. For clients, my advice is to make sure that - on your own - you diligently investigate the product or services offered by any vendor you choose for your big day - regardless of who talks them up to you beforehand.

Cheers,
Jason