Ivan Misner: Networking
Word-of-Mouth: The World's Best-Known Marketing Secret
Everyone knows about it, but hardly anyone does it well. It's time to change your approach to word-of-mouth marketing.
By Ivan Misner
| July 01, 2002
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By Ivan Misner
What if there were a way to build your business, year in and
year out, regardless of fluctuations in the economy or the
activities of your competition? Well, there is. It's called
word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth marketing truly is the world's
best-known marketing secret. You're probably wondering how
anything can be both the "best-known" and "a
secret" at the same time. Easy. Practically every
businessperson knows how important word-of-mouth marketing is. Yet
almost no one truly understands how to build their business through
word-of-mouth. Some people think that word-of-mouth is a little like the
weather: fairly important, but not much they can do about it. Many
others think that it's just about good customer service, but
it's not. Don't get me wrong-good customer service is
critical for the success of any business, but if you expect happy
customers to talk about you a lot, think again. For the past two decades, I've talked to tens of thousands
of business professionals about word-of-mouth marketing and
customer service. I've described how the "average unhappy
client" can talk to dozens of people about their bad
experience. I've then asked my audiences if their "average
happy client" truly talks to as many people as a potential
unhappy client. In two decades, no one has ever said yes to that
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Unfortunately, people are more likely to talk about your
business when they are unhappy than when they are happy or
satisfied. Therefore, good customer service generally reduces
"negative" word-of-mouth. However, the good news is,
there are many things entrepreneurs and business professionals can
do to positively impact their business through word-of-mouth. Below are the three most important things that a business
professional can do to start the process of increasing their
business through word-of-mouth. 1. Diversify your networks. I
believe that most business professionals are cave dwellers. They
get up each morning in a large cave with a big-screen TV called
their home. They go out to their garage and get into a little cave
with four wheels called their car. They go to another really big
cave with plenty of computers called their office. At the end of
the day, they get back into their little cave with four wheels and
drive back to the large cave with the big-screen TV, and they
can't figure out why no one is referring them. If you want to
build your business through word-of-mouth, you have to be visible
and active in the community by participating in various networking
groups and/or professional associations.
2. Develop your contact spheres. Contact Spheres are
businesses that are symbiotic and noncompetitive to you. For
example: a lawyer, an accountant, a financial planner and a banker.
All of them have clients with overlapping similar needs. They can
all work with and refer each other easily. Another good example is
what I call the wedding mafia: a florist, a photographer, a travel
agent and a jeweler. A referral for one of them becomes a referral
for all of them. You should immediately determine what professions
fit within your Contact Spheres and start developing relationships
with them. 3. Word-of-mouth is more about farming than it is about
hunting. Building your business through word-of-mouth is about
cultivating relationships with people who get to know you and trust
you. People do business with people they have confidence in. One of
the most important things I've learned in the past two decades
is this: It's not what you know, or who you know, it's how
well you know them that counts. If you go into this process
understanding this one key point, you will have a better
opportunity to build your business through word-of-mouth.
Ivan Misner is co-author of the New York Times
bestseller Masters of Networking. He is the founder and
CEO of BNI, the
world's largest referral organization with more than 2,400
chapters in 13 countries around the world. He also teaches business
courses at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and
resides in Southern California with his wife and three children.
Dr. Misner can be reached at misner@bni.com.
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