How do I ask an SP to be a reference? Do they care about it, e.g. not providing it to not lose a client or not wanting to waste time with it?
Clueless questions I know
edit: will most of SP's (as in that's a convention) refuse if I saw them just once or twice?
When clients give me providers names as a reference, most of the time, I have no way of knowing if the person was asked or not. There's a provider who advertises here that I keep getting as a reference from clients, and although she is super sweet I am paranoid I am bothering her.
Many providers do not give references or get very upset if their names are given without asking... It makes me feel very anxious, because I've had providers I didn't know get very angry at me over text. I really recommend asking the person.
My feelings about this is that if I've seen the client recently, he can use my name as a reference without asking once or twice. Otherwise, I feel uncomfortable.
When the same client keeps using my name multiple times as a reference, something feels off. Particularly if I haven't seen him in a long time, and specifically if I've only seen him once.
It's not because I want to keep clients to myself, I just sometimes don't have that much to remember about someone I saw for a very short period of time many many months ago. Also, clients treat us differently.
That being said, a lot of Indy Companion members are totally ok with having their names given as a reference to other members because we are a collective