Those of you who belong to NAEA have probably received your e@lert newsletter which mentions a service called Referral Key. For those of you who don't know, Referral Key is a business oriented networking site where members refer potential clients to each other. For example a stock broker might refer one of his clients to a tax professional. The troubling point from where I sit is that on this site referrals are made by one professional giving referral name and contact information to another professional rather than by one professional giving contact information of another professional to a contact who is also presumably in most cases a client of the first professional.
Has anyone on this board been successful using Referral Key? I know of course that if I wanted to give contact information on one of my clients to another business I would need first a privacy policy that allows me to ask for written permission to do so and second I would need the signed permission. Is there any reasonable way for me to legally and ethically ask clients for permission to give their info to other businesses without alienating clients? Am I not much better off with my present policy of asking a select group of non tax financial professionals to keep me supplied with their cards so that I may pass the cards along to clients of mine who need the relevant services? And why did NAEA turn me on to this organization?
Has anyone on this board been successful using Referral Key? I know of course that if I wanted to give contact information on one of my clients to another business I would need first a privacy policy that allows me to ask for written permission to do so and second I would need the signed permission. Is there any reasonable way for me to legally and ethically ask clients for permission to give their info to other businesses without alienating clients? Am I not much better off with my present policy of asking a select group of non tax financial professionals to keep me supplied with their cards so that I may pass the cards along to clients of mine who need the relevant services? And why did NAEA turn me on to this organization?
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