Some things take effort in life, whilst other things come naturally. It takes effort to find people, you know! We have natural skill but it is still tough to keep up our 100% crack rate! We have been tested recently with our fair share of adoption cases, in various guises. One of those was the birth of someone named Jones (at birth) who wanted to know more about their birth mother (and father ideally, but sadly he was not named on the certificate). I have to confess that for a brief moment, I thought ‘Oh heck, I am not going to be able to say that we have a 100% crack rate any more’…. but in three weeks, I have tracked down which Miss X X Jones she was and traced her life from start to finish. [If only her initials were X X, my life would have been much simpler!]
We do our fair share of networking at FWL and sometimes, in quite subtle ways. We have ways of making people talk and this has been hugely beneficial to our cases this week. It is as much about your manner with clients and how you make them feel, as what you say and what you have to offer. If you had four Heir Hunters contact you to tell you that you were a potential beneficiary, you’d pretty much know you were, right!? So, who do you choose to act for you? The double glazing salesman who arrives at your door unannounced? The impersonal letter which has your surname incorrectly written or just plain wrong? I’d say neither of those! No trade secrets out of the bag today (you didn’t really think we’d give the game away, did you?!) but our team are natural networkers. We are members of two networking organisations – BNI and 4N – and, although our Heir Hunting work doesn’t generally come through those gates, a huge percentage of our other work does. Why do people refer work to us instead of other family historians, genealogists, probate and intestacy researchers? We have an outstanding reputation in the field and people see us out and about, know us and trust that we will do a fantastic job.
I called one household today and asked to speak to Mr Y – the lady who answered the telephone said “You are”! Slightly stunned, I reiterated that I was needing Mr not Mrs and Mrs Y laughed her socks off at her mistake. Straight away the ice was broken and Mr Y was enormously helpful in the case. Mrs Z (cousin of Mr Y) returned my voicemail later in the day and I picked up the telephone saying “Hello Mrs Z – it’s Kirsty @ FWL!” She was so surprised and once again, hugely assisted me with the matter we are dealing with.
Natural, that’s all you need to be with people. No hard sell. That’s what sells FWL.
