Thanksgiving lands twice on this continent (Canada marks it in October, the United States in November), which means for about six weeks every fall, someone on both sides of the border is pausing to say thank you. We’re taking advantage of the overlap. Gratitude isn’t a once-a-year event around here; ask anyone on our team, and they’ll tell you it shows up in ordinary conversations, most weeks, without any occasion attached. But autumn gives us a good excuse to say it out loud instead of just feeling it and moving on. So, this month, across Canada and the U.S., we’re saying it, starting with the people who make our business possible before a single file ever reaches us: our referral sources.
When a lawyer, an investment banker, a restructuring professional or an accountant introduces a business they know to a lender they know, they do more than forward an email. They’re putting their own name on the line. Warren Buffett’s take on reputation gets quoted to finance people so often it’s practically wallpaper, but it still holds up.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Every referral source we work with lives with that risk each time they pick up the phone on our behalf. (Taylor Swift built an entire album around the same anxiety and titled it, simply, reputation. Turns out it keeps you up at night whether you’re in Omaha or Nashville.)
“They are staking their reputation on making that introduction to Garrington as a company that can come to the table, answer the need, create that relationship, nourish that relationship. That, to me, is huge. It’s a tremendous trust.”
Tammy Kemp, President & Chief Credit Officer
So, what does it look like to actually earn that, past the point of just being flattered by it? It isn’t a blunt no and nothing else. For Tammy Kemp, the standard is honesty about how we can help and how we can’t. When the answer really is no, that means doing the work of explaining why and pointing a referral source toward someone else who might be able to help.
The alternative is stringing someone along, and Erica Axani, Executive Vice President & Chief Risk Officer, has no patience for it.
“Nothing will make them mistrust you more than stringing them along and not giving them the straight goods in the best way possible,” she says.
A no that is fast, honest and explained takes a little extra time and care, and it’s the kind of thing a referral source remembers. It isn’t one transaction. It’s a relationship built one honest conversation at a time.
Sometimes that trust develops over a longer timeline than anyone expects. One of our recent restructuring financings came from a referral source who had been bringing us opportunities for years before one finally fit. Each time, we gave her a clear answer and never made her feel that the question was unwelcome. When the right opportunity eventually came, it wasn’t luck. It reflected the trust built through every respectful conversation that came before it.
Other times, the payoff is immediate, and considerably more dramatic. A referral partner brought us an opportunity; we moved quickly with a term sheet, and their prospect had questions about the terms. They called to talk it through 15 minutes before they were scheduled to meet the prospect in person. We pulled our investment committee together on the spot, worked through every point and got a revised term sheet back to them within that same call. Five minutes after we sent it, we had an agreement. It was a mad scramble on a Friday afternoon, but it’s also exactly the kind of afternoon a referral source remembers the next time they have somewhere else to send an opportunity.
To every referral source who has picked up the phone on our behalf, vouched for us to a client or allowed us to earn your trust, thank you. We understand what you are placing in our hands with every introduction, and we do not take it lightly.
If you’d like to discuss, please feel free to contact us: