CHAPTER 15
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
for Specific Audiences
and Circumstances
Most of the ideas in this book can be applied directly or adapted to professional practices, but there is natural reluctance for some professionals to apply “commercial” or “product” ideas to their areas. Understandably, professionals are so turned off by “crass commercialism” that it can be difficult to take product ideas and hold them in mind long enough to adapt them to the kind of extremely individual, personalized service inherent in a professional practice. So, let’s directly address “building a practice” through word of mouth.
Let’s take a very broad definition of professional practice, which includes the following:
Formal professions, such as physicians, lawyers, psychologists, accountants, or architects
Consultants in management, marketing, marketing research, finance, or time-management
Agents, such as real estate agents, literary agents, or theatrical agents
Tradespeople, such as a plumbers, carpenters, or appliance repairers
Various other “practices” in which an individual or small group gives personalized service of a highly individual and often idiosyncratic nature.
The following applies to virtually any service or the practice of any idea, so don’t take everything literally. Instead, apply it to your situation.
These types of endeavors are almost totally dependent on word of mouth, even more than the other businesses mentioned in this book. Why? Because, in a professional practice, your “products” are usually intangible services. They are the results you create. And the results you create—your value—are a direct result of your personal competence, so they reflect on you personally.
In contrast, the value of most other products is the result of a complex interaction of teams of people designing, manufacturing, delivering, and servicing the product. The focus is appropriately on the company, the product, or the service. These products are often more easily evaluated directly because they are known beforehand. They are often standardized and predictable. In a practice, people are buying you—your knowledge, experience, competence, ethics, and personality—not some specifically predetermined output, product, or even service. Usually, they are buying your ability to diagnose problems and create solutions.
Sometimes it’s as vague as some of my recent consulting assignments, which amounted to, “Find my best opportunities to make my customer decision process easier and figure out what I need to do.”
This is an inherently more uncertain process than one with products. This extreme uncertainty means that prospects and customers need extreme amounts of reassurance and vicarious experience—the kind that conventional marketing cannot deliver. After all, how do you test out a surgeon or a life insurance agent? In the first case, you can’t let several surgeons cut “a little bit” and then pick the winner. And, in the case of life insurance, dying to see if the policy will pay off isn’t practical. The only way to try is vicariously, through someone else’s experience. The sharing of experience—as we’ve seen earlier—is often an overlooked function of word of mouth.
An additional reason that these practices are so dependent on word of mouth is that it is often prohibitively expensive to advertise, it’s considered unethical (or at least frowned upon), or it’s impossible to put into an ad or brochure what you really want to say. Remember, you are selling you. How do you say in any credible way that you are the most caring, smartest, most ethical, most responsive, most clever, most creative, most knowledgeable, and just plain nicest person on the face of the Earth, or at least in your profession? It’s pretty hard to do without either boasting or putting your competitors down. When you say it, it’s empty bragging. But when your customer says it, it’s a testimonial.
So, how do you get to the top of the heap in your profession, craft, trade, cottage industry, or consultancy? You get there by creating what Ken Blanchard calls “raving fans”—in your case, “raving clients.” Satisfied clients are not enough. They have to rave about you in order to spark a word-of-mouth explosion. How do you create that? The same way as I’ve advocated in the rest of this book: by being outrageously remarkable in a focused way and by making sure that people know it and communicate it.
How to Develop a WOMworthy Differentiation in a Practice or Profession
I’ve consulted with a lot of professionals in building their practices. They are almost totally focused on being better, not on being different. Above all, you need to give people something—preferably outrageously remarkable—to talk about.
Differentiate Yourself
They are invariably more differentiated than they realize: different in their skill sets, different in their practice preferences, different in preferred clientele, and so on. Often, they try to be generalists—even within a specialty. They try to take on all clients.
I have them step back and fantasize. What would your practice look like if you could wave a magic wand and do things the way you would really like? What kind of clients would you have (the people, the tasks, the severity, the time frame, etc.)? Would you emphasize diagnosis, treatment, teaching, writing, etc.? Where would you practice? What kind of fee structure would you have? You must get in touch with these things without listening to the part of you that says, “But that’s not practical.” First identify what you want, then modify or dial it back until you can make it happen.
It’s through a process like this (which can take an hour or a year) that you get to change your practice into something worth talking about. Identify the areas in which you can distinguish yourself, such as service, responsiveness, friendliness, or expertise. Then take these areas several outrageous steps beyond where you are now, in the direction of what you most like to do and what you get most passionate about. If you’re the most knowledgeable, write articles, give speeches, and chair committees. If you’re the most personable, make video-tapes, network, and have phone hours or live seminars. Make sure everything you do in your area of distinction is surprisingly beyond expectations.
In case you think you are not able to distinguish yourself, you need to realize that most people—even in the highest level professions—are satisfied with being average, despite what they say. If you make yourself one of those very few people who try to be the best they can be in a different kind of way, you will quickly put yourself beyond most of your competitors. And you don’t have to be beyond everybody. If some people are raving about you, and other people are raving about someone else, you will both have more business than you can handle. All you’re trying to do is keep your practice filled easily, at high enough fees so that you can also have the time to enjoy the rest of life, both on your terms.
Here are some specific suggestions and examples, to be modified according to your circumstances, your clients, and most of all your personal style and abilities. For instance, if you speak well but write terribly, stress speaking, get writing coaching, or hire a writer who can pull the information out of you and put it into writing.
First of all, get a copy of Dr. Paddi Lund’s Building the Happiness Centred Business. Yes, “centred” is spelled correctly if you live in Australia, which Paddi does. He is a dentist who hated dentistry and his life. He spent all his professional time causing pain and dealing with staff and clients who didn’t bring him satisfaction. He was literally about to commit suicide when he realized that he needed to make some major changes. So he rethought dentistry. I don’t want to give away too much of his book (if you are in a professional practice, you have to read it), but in summary here’s what he did.
He talked to his patients and his staff to find out what they didn’t like. Then, he totally rethought all of the assumptions about how a dental practice was supposed to operate. He replaced the reception area and its counter with individual lounge areas where “care nurses,” who were responsible for all aspects of patient care could interview the patients. He actually took a chain saw to the counter one weekend.
He realized that most dental procedures could be accomplished in one several-hours visit instead of several one-hour visits. So, he takes only one or two patients a day. Instead of taking weeks to work on most people, he takes less than a day!
People told him that the thing that they most hate about dentistry (aside from the pain) is the smell. He experimented with everything he could to mask the smell, and the only thing he found was the smell of fresh baking. So, he hired a baker, who meets people with baked goods that they prefer and offers to bake anything they want, since they’ll be there several hours.
He has “fired” all his patients who were headaches and won’t keep an employee who is not having fun. He has a referral-only practice. There is no sign on his door, except one that says that it is a referral-only practice and that someone in need of care who has not been referred will happily be referred to another dentist. He has an unlisted phone number!
He works about 23 hours a week, and makes three times more money than his most successful colleagues. People fly to him from all over the world! Read the details in his book. His website is www.solutionspress.com.au.
Paddi is successful because he is totally focused on his customers’, team’s, and own happiness. How could people not talk about him? How could patients not refer people to him? Yet, I’ve told this story to thousands of physicians, dentists, and other professional practitioners. Instead of asking me to tell them how to get his book and dropping everything to find out more, most of the time their eyes glaze over and they change the subject or, if it’s in a speech, they start fidgeting and stop taking notes.
I think it’s because most people don’t have the guts to do the things that will make them stand out. In fact, we disparagingly say, “stick out like a sore thumb.” People are afraid to stand out above others in the pursuit of excellence. We all know that if we stand out, many people won’t like us. You may even have to rise above strong cultural norms. If you’re reading this in Japan, you have surely heard the expression, “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
Read about Paddi Lund, adapt his methods to your situation, and then be prepared for all the grief that happiness brings you.
On a more modest scale, one of the country’s leading ophthalmologists, Robert Snyder in Tucson, has been a guest expert on many of my word-of-mouth teleconferences. He has advocated to thousands of other ophthalmologists that they call every surgical patient the evening of their surgery. He does it and reports that patients are bowled over. They are amazed. They never had a doctor call them and express concern. Although he’s world renowned, he says that it is the best practice builder he has ever discovered. His patients don’t care as much about his international reputation as they do about this simple expression of concern. They tell their friends. It takes eight minutes a night, but his practice has a big backlog. And, I might add, it’s not a manipulation. He really cares, and it shows.
The most amazing thing about it is that he tells me that very few ophthalmologists have taken his advice. I don’t think it’s because they are lazy. I think it’s because they just don’t want to be outrageous. They don’t realize that they can be constructively outrageous!
Then, there’s Alan Weiss. He is the author of Million Dollar Consulting, Money Talks: How to Make a Million as a Speaker, and many other popular books. He’s an extremely busy consultant and speaker. Yet, he returns phone calls within 90 minutes. (So he says, but he’s always returned my calls within 30 minutes!) He gives his clients unlimited access to him, even on weekends. Yet, he manages to live a balanced life, working at his pool and having plenty of leisure time. How? He realized that people don’t waste his time. They have better things to do. He has learned to have efficient conversations. In fact, they don’t call him on weekends, even though he has given them permission to call if there is an emergency. (I’ve always done the same thing, and in 30 years I’ve had one Sunday call, from a client whose product was going to be attacked on “60 Minutes” that night!) People don’t make him travel to their offices more than is reasonable because they can’t afford to spend the time. When you call him, you reach him. He does many other surprising things that are too numerous to mention. Read Million Dollar Consulting if you are a consultant. I was so impressed that I hired him myself as a consultant. The unusually valuable things he does make people recommend him, as I am doing now.
Always focus on value: What can you give people that will make what you do more beneficial to them? Give seminars. Write useful booklets. Write newspaper articles. Put up a genuinely useful website. Give, give, give in the area you are concentrating on. You love it, so give, give, give some more. If not, get out.
Get continual feedback from your customers on how you are doing. Do surveys, have other people do phone interviews. Ask people how you are doing. People who complain actually care. The others walk. Ask for suggestions. Reexamine all of your assumptions. Why do you do business the way you do? Do you really have to? What if you didn’t accept the constraints that you think you have to accept?
Another example: There are a growing number of physicians and psychologists who are opting out of so-called managed care (it’s actually “managed cost”). They were forced to practice in a suboptimum way dictated by cost considerations. Their professional judgment was co-opted by people whose standard was not best care, but cost-effective care. Some physicians are accepting a flat rate to take care of people’s routine medical needs, charging a fee for additional service, Some are making a little less money, but enjoying their profession more. Others are actually making considerably more money. It doesn’t take much to perform the wildly extraordinary service that gets people to talk about you. It is now called “concierge medicine,” with a USA Today television program called Royal Pains. Incidentally, since USA Network has no vested interest in the adoption of concierge medicine, that program itself qualifies as word of mouth. It’s sort of like a product placement, but without the product and without the placement.
You might consider a “referral-only” practice like Paddi Lund’s. You pretty much have a referral-only practice anyway. Why not weed out the people who don’t give you satisfaction and ask the others to refer to you the kind of people for whom you will provide loving care?
Give people genuinely useful materials that they can give their friends. That way, they will communicate with their friends about you while giving their friends something that is genuinely useful.
I once talked with a group of ten patients who had been among the first to get bifocal intraocular lenses implanted. We totaled up the estimated number of people that these folks had talked with. It was more than 4,000! How? Several of them spoke at various AARP meetings and other clubs and organizations. The particular surgeon whose patients they were did a number of interesting things. He had these patients literally hold the hands of other patients who were undergoing cataract surgery (people are fully conscious during such surgery). The patient assistant was trained to talk the person through what was going on, so that the surgeon could concentrate on his surgery. They also gave presurgery talks and seminars. You bet both the hand-holders and the hand-holdees talked to everyone they could.
Be Outrageous
Are there unconventional ways that you can involve your patients, clients, and customers in your work? Don’t be so quick to say no. Give it some creative thought.
Above all, do what’s constructively outrageous, unexpected, surprising—whatever will make a good story for people to tell. I’m not advocating coming to work as a clown, although come to think of it, it worked for Patch Adams. Most people live routine lives. Everyone wants a good story to tell. Give good stories to people, and they’ll tell them.
Instead of waiting three days to perform a five-minute task or follow-up, you can blow someone away by doing it now. Send someone whose business you value a crazy gift. Hold a party for your patients or clients. Give them a free seminar. I once distributed a list of my best competitors for the times when I was completely booked up. Funny thing. Almost everybody waited. Those who didn’t wait came back. Give business and know-how to your “competitors.” Not, of course, competitors whom you consider unethical or incompetent, but those who are better than you in some respects, so that everybody wins. It sends the message that you are not afraid for people to find out about your best competitors. Only the best could be that secure, which is exactly what a client said to me! They’ll be a source of word of mouth, referring people back to you. I get more business now, from people whom I considered competitors 20 years ago than from almost any other source.
My wife has a psychotherapy practice, with a concentration on couples therapy. She gives lectures and demonstrations, particularly to other therapists because her strength is in teaching informally and spontaneously through demonstration, thereby drawing principles and techniques from experience. This is a rare ability. Writing is more difficult for her, so she goes with what she is spectacular at in her own quiet, self-confident way. She is focused on expanding the skills of therapists in the couples’ area, not on getting patients. What happens? Therapists come to her for therapy themselves and for supervision. They send clients to her, particularly couples that they think they can’t handle. They even send their own patients as couples, when they feel they need someone else to work with them as a couple. Maybe someday she’ll do videos, or webclasses, or something else. The point here is that you have to put yourself out there, in your style, using your best strengths, but without hype.
Maybe you want to quietly fill a practice, without being obtrusive. Maybe you don’t want people to notice you. Maybe you don’t want to attract attention. Maybe you think I have some advice for you if you fit this profile. I don’t.
There are probably ten things that you can do regularly that suit your style and skills. Send me examples of the ones that worked best at [email protected] and you may see them on our website.
Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Specific, Special, or Narrower Circumstances
What follows is some very general, but important, advice that is particular to narrower circumstances. To avoid repetition, I’ve included only those not included elsewhere and those that I believe need special emphasis.
Word of Mouth for Large Companies
Take advantage of the opportunity to contradict the expectations that people have of large companies: large, slow moving, unresponsive to individuals, uncaring, only responsible for maximizing shareholder value, and so on.
If you contradict these real, but not necessarily true, expectations, people will talk. But it takes a genuine commitment from the top, and, sadly, there almost never is. You know the exceptions because everyone is talking about them.
Admit mistakes, and make things right. Show transparency, and don’t say it unless you not only mean it, but live it.
Give people way down in the organization the power to make it right. Don’t let the accountants calculate your costs of doing this unless they are astute enough to find a way to evaluate the word-of-mouth benefits. Study Nordstrom and FedEx. And, of course, Apple and Google. Don’t put buttons on your employees—as one large chain does—that says, “I’m empowered” while making them go to their supervisor to change a $50 bill.
Study BP’s 2010 Gulf oil disaster for how to do everything wrong. While you’re at it, study as negative examples: banks, rental car companies, mobile phone companies, and insurance companies (for starters). This will teach you how to lie by omission (i.e., learn by their negative example. Do the opposite). Study how Microsoft manages to be an extraordinarily open company, although it falls far short in other areas. Study Dell’s turn-around in this area. Study Procter & Gamble for how to do things right.
Another time large companies fall short dramatically is when they engage in communication that is almost gibberish to nonlarge-corporate types or to people who are not in the industry. I think this is a function of size, as it occurs in companies where people are several layers removed from real-world customers, the trials and tribulations of the decision process, and much of the rest of reality. Or, they are so compartmentalized that they don’t see the broad picture. This is easily remedied if given attention. Believe me: straight, informal, vernacular talk would be talked about. And I don’t mean leavin’ off the “g’s” in words endin’ in “ing.” Leave that to phony politicians.
The bottom line is that there is an opportunity to treat people so contrary to expectations, as a way of life, that you will set the tongues wagging.
Word of Mouth for Smaller Companies
The large, modern corporate enterprise is the most efficient organization in the history of the human race in marshaling huge amounts of resources and squeezing every last drop of efficiency out of them, but they are unresponsive, slow, and clumsy.
Smaller companies tend to be more agile, innovative, closer to the customer, self-correcting, experimental, and human than larger companies. Oh, and did I mention agile? That’s why most of the new smaller companies create jobs and innovative products. This means that you, as a marketer, particularly as a word-of-mouth marketer, can run circles agilely around your larger competitors.
I few years ago, I was using a marvelous program called Devon-Think (still do). I had a problem and when I accessed the help menu there was a button that said something such as, “Speak to a live person.” I clicked on the button and found myself speaking with “Eric,” who not only answered my questions, but also made a bunch of suggestions and then asked me some astute questions about my use of the product as a writer’s tool. It turned out that I was talking to Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann, the president of Devon Technologies, in Germany, via Skype! I had never heard of Skype, and it was my first Skype call.
He eventually had to take down the time-consuming voice link, but he maintained his customer service. He and the rest of his people remain just as responsive as they were years ago, when the company was much smaller. Almost everything that I suggested to Devon Technologies was quickly built into the program. I eventually became a beta tester. A software giant could never offer this level of service.
I’ve blogged about this software, and continue to be a raving fan. While it’s a great example of how to turn a casual inquirer into an active influencer, broadcasting word of mouth into blogs and books, my point is that you should use your advantages as a small company, one that’s close to the customer, to gain some amazing advantages.
But you have to stay in the game, participate with customers in forums, in a personal way.
What about turning around negative customers? They are potentially your biggest fans, because they care enough to criticize.
A CASE IN POINT
I wrote a lot of the first edition of this book in Dragon NaturallySpeaking, a voice dictation program. I then switched to a Mac. I tried MacSpeech iListen, which turned out to be terrible. After I posted a blistering series of comments about it on my blog, MacSpeech’s customer evangelist called me and spent a lot of time trying to get it to work. I gave up. A year or two later, I broke my arm skiing and, by sheer coincidence, MacSpeech’s evangelist sent me an email a couple of days later, saying, in effect, that he knew I was a major skeptic and he had a totally different program the company would like me to beta test. Instead of regarding me as an enemy—which I was for iListen at least—the company knew that if it could satisfy me, it could satisfy anyone. I was in too much excruciating pain to use a keyboard, so I agreed, and my exposure to MacSpeech Dictate began. It turned out to use Dragon’s speech engine, but, in my opinion worked better in a Mac environment. I became a raving fan and remain so to this day. Much of this book was written on it. I’ve blogged about it and will support its efforts any way I can. [Update: They have been bought by Nuance, Dragon’s owner.]
A large company could not have given me that degree of attention. I would have fallen through the cracks as a “hostile” in the quantitative research numbers game of a large company.
Don’t ever, ever, ever complain that you are too small to compete, in marketing at least, with the larger companies. Word of mouth, particularly through the use of the Internet, has not only leveled the playing field; it has tipped it in your favor.
With YouTube, blogs, podcasts, and other social media—and even good, “old-fashioned” email—you can more than compete with the “big boys.” That, together with your greater responsiveness, agility, motivation, entrepreneurial spirit, and creativity, gives you the advantage.
Yes, “David and Goliath” was an unfair fight, for Goliath! David had the advantage all along.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Small, Local Businesses
The same applies here as for companies in the previous section, they have the additional advantage of being local. Take advantage of it.
Word of Mouth in Business-to-Business Marketing
Think you’re different—from a word-of-mouth standpoint—than other companies? You’re not, except that you probably have a more defined and reachable potential client base. I just hate to call them “targets.” That’s no way to talk about friends. Find ways to partner with them. Enlist their help. Find ways to help them. They understand you. I’ve always gotten more business from my “competitors” than anywhere else.
The special secret to B2B marketing is to approach them as colleagues and partners, not customers, and ask them to do their colleagues and customers a favor by recommending you, then make it easy for them to do so with affiliate programs, special web pages and other modern aids.
High-Ticket Items
As I’ve mentioned, the markets for high-ticket items are not easily seeded, sampled, or demoed. You are at the mercy of word of mouth, so seize the day.
Remember to work with the experts and other influencers. Most will be thrilled to participate, and will use their platforms—and yours—to shout your uniqueness to the world.
To you, it’s a product. To them, it’s a tool, a unique set of capabilities that advances their beloved field. Why shouldn’t they shout it from the hilltops? Give them the opportunity.
Other Intangibles, Such as Ideas
A strong case could be made that Barack Obama was the first Internet president and could not have been elected without it. There isn’t room in this book for a detailed account of all of the dozens of things his team did. You might want to study the well-documented accounts of how his team members used the Internet to create involvement, participation, and a sense of belonging to a cause.
I’ll confine my comments to doing my job, which is to identify some of the secrets we can learn from his campaign, rather than chronicling the details.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”
SECRET
To sell an idea, you must find out what people want most, down deep, under the concrete. Then, show them how getting it is more important than clinging to and defending their cherished beliefs.
You can’t find out what people want it by asking them and accepting the first answers. You have to probe. As Henry Ford once said, “If I’d have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Yes, but it would have given him the opportunity to ask a “dumb question,” “Yes, but what would faster horses do for you?” You have to identify the actual desire.
That’s how Obama sold Hope and Change. Those people who were willing to take a chance on him did so because they so desperately wanted something different, almost anything different.
People are willing to change their beliefs when a basic need—here, financial security—is threatened. In this case, when presented with a clearly repeatable solution, they also received the social, that is, word-of-mouth support that would only have been possible in a country this large in the Internet Age.
So, for Obama, it was a central person who was unique and spectacularly articulate enough to spark a word-of-mouth firestorm over a couple of simple words that summed up their frustrations and aspirations.
Additional Tips, Techniques, and Suggestions
The following tips will aid you in coming up with even more new ideas. Each requires a special expertise and skill set. They are listed to give you a vision of what is possible.
Remember that word of mouth is like playing with fissionable materials. Although it is potentially the most powerful and effective thing that you can do, it can also be very dangerous. It is potentially poisonous, explosive, and corrosive. Be careful, or leave it to the professionals.
Referrals
A CASE IN POINT
Two days after President Richard M. Nixon announced his wage/price controls, I ran a teleconference with eight of the country’s leading economists to predict what would happen. Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, voiced skepticism about whether the conference would be productive, given the informal nature of it, the polarized points of view, and the fact that people would not be face to face. Nevertheless, he was willing to participate, which he did from his vacation home in Vermont. When I called him the next day, he said that it was the most productive roundtable discussion he had ever participated in—much more orderly and informative than if it had been conducted face to face. (Remember, this was in 1972, long before the conference call had been widely accepted.) I reminded him of his previous skepticism and asked if I could quote him as a service to other people who might also wonder if such a discussion could be orderly, open, and informative. He enthusiastically agreed, giving me a powerful tool to overcome skepticism about conference calls among potential participants and clients.
The secret is that simple: Ask for endorsements. But ask as a service to other people who may benefit from what you offer, not as a favor to yourself.
When you ask if you may quote them, send them three quotations from which to choose. One is an outrageous rave. One is an extremely positive one, and one is just positive. Obviously, make them relevant to the persuasion step that you are trying to accomplish. Make it clear that you are sending these options for their convenience and out of respect for their time. Obviously they should feel free to make any changes or to submit a complete rewrite. Make boxes so that they can check and initial the selection for which they are giving permission. Often, they will select the one in the middle, which is more than good enough since the top rave might lack credibility. [I’m indebted to Wendy Keller, my literary agent, for this suggestion and have been using it with great success.]
When using testimonials, make sure you have permission, of course. Use full names and company affiliations if people will permit it. If not, use full names and cities. Less effective is using initials, but if that’s all you can get, do it. If people won’t let you quote them by name, use their quote anyway, without attribution, which can still be extremely powerful.
Set Up a Referral Selling Program
Make sure all your people, particularly salespeople and service people, are trained and get practice in referral selling. Give them incentives for getting referrals, endorsements, and testimonials. Make sure they are tracked visibly. Make sure you have a mechanism for immediately following up on the referrals.
Referred customers are at least ten times more likely to buy from you than prospects who come from cold calls. A referred prospect who calls you as a result of being referred by a friend is about a hundred times more likely to do business with you. Treat them like old friends, and thank and/or reward the referrer.
How to Get Referrals
Basically, you have to ask your enthusiastic customers, “Whom should I be talking with about my services? Who would benefit most?” Again, present it as a service to the potential referee, not as a favor the referrer is doing for you. Ask people to pass along your literature. I know, it’s obvious, but people just don’t do it enough.
In addition, give people incentives for passing along names to you. Give them a free product or a free month of service. You get the idea.
Give people samples and literature to pass along to their friends.
Look at it as an entire “Referral Selling System.”
You should have a steady stream of prospects coming to you directly from your customers. Customers should also be sending you a steady stream of names of qualified prospects so that you can pursue them. Most companies don’t. But if they did, those companies could at least double their sales by building a customer referral system. Isn’t that worth some major resources? Isn’t that worth a few focus groups of people who referred several other people to find out what motivated them and what they said and did that was successful? Isn’t it worth a few focus groups to talk with people who were actually referred and who followed up and became customers? What motivated them? What triggered their initial interest? What barriers did they have to overcome? What clinched the sale?
Write materials specifically designed to stimulate customer referrals. These need to be carefully constructed according to the same rigorously applied persuasion principles as other materials: the right content, from the right people, in the right sequence.
Do you have materials designed to help friends refer friends? Different materials for advisors referring less sophisticated clients? Wives to sell husbands? Creative types to sell financial types? You get the idea.
Using the Traditional Media
With all the attention on the new media, we tend to forget that the traditional media can also be used to generate word of mouth.
Customer Service as a Word-of-Mouth Engine
Several books have been written about using customer service to generate word of mouth. FedEx was built on this idea. Once again, read Positively Outrageous Service by T. Scott Gross.
PR: Placements, Events, and Promotions
If you don’t have an aggressive PR program in place, put it in place. Remember that PR is not just about getting your name in publications. Hold word-of-mouth generating events and promotions.
Ads, Sales Brochures, and Direct Mail
Again, how many times have you seen people who are obviously actors playing the part of real customers, when real customers would be much better? Put your customers in your ads, brochures, and direct mail pieces. Have them tell their stories. A customer can almost always say it better and more credibly than the polished words of a salesperson or ad agency.
Salespeople
Word of mouth among your salespeople can make or break your product. Salesperson programs, sales stars, and peer training can all be used to help generate word of mouth. Our company does a lot of word-of-mouth research among salespeople, and there is no question that if the salespeople aren’t sold, your product doesn’t stand a chance. They have their own grapevine. You can get the best salespeople to teach the other salespeople how to sell your product better. Get the success stories of the salespeople and the customers transmitted to all the salespeople.