By S Mohan Ramkumar



Many businesses use the absolute dollar value of a deal to determine the worth of a customer. What they fail to see is the potential to add thousands of dollars to their bottom line by leveraging the same customer base by way of word of mouth marketing.

When a customer forks out his or her hard earned cash to pay for your offering, that’s a huge validation of your legitimacy. Now, how awesome would it be to convince the good folks who are happy doing business with you to bring more people like them onboard?

Using word of mouth to build mindshare and marketshare is not a new marketing tactic. It probably is one of the oldest techniques in the world, but, it’s the highly competitive marketplace equations that make this cost effective marketing tool the most powerful one to generate more revenue.

Did I mention that word of mouth marketing is very cost effective? I guess I did. But, what people forget is that it takes a lot of time to convince people to say good things about you, even when there are only nice things to say about you.

The fact that somebody is willing to pay for your offering isn’t an indicator that they are ready to sing your laurels day and night. When someone recommends you to their peers and you bungle up that transaction, the customer’s reputation is tarnished in the process as well.

So, what does it take to make someone a loyal customer who will risk his reputation to help you out? Let’s check it out!

Build Relationships

Building a warm relationship with a customer is an ongoing process. It needs a lot of hand holding even after the sales cycle is over. Having a listening ear helps.

Just like during the buying process, let the customer talk while you practice active listening. Hear their concerns out and address them at the earliest.

It’s the actions that follow your words matter the most in building relationships. You cannot promise the moon and deliver them something that resembles a burnt out candle. Trust forms the basis to build a strong relationship and that requires you being honest all through the sales process.

Sweet talking your way to close the deal and hiding all the bitter truth in fine print is not the right way of doing things. Accepting lapses and shortcomings candidly isn’t always a deal breaker. Everyone is reasonable and a sincere apology followed by a proper clean up will help build trust.

Exceed Expectations

There has never been a successful sales strategy than under promising and over delivering. Surprise your customers with a far better response than they expect. To do that, you’ll have to have a firm grasp over the value that customer is expecting from your product.

Let us assume that you are selling a software that boosts employee productivity by 40% and saves the firm 20% in expenses every year. Claiming that you have a product that delivers double of the real metrics would be a wrong approach.

Instead, pitch it as a solution that improves productivity in the range of 30 to 40% along with a minimum cost saving of 15% YoY is the way to go if you are planning to exceed expectations.

Remember, there is very good reason we always go back to the ecommerce store that promises to ship the product in 3 to 4 business days, but surprises us with a delivery the day after.



Beyond the promised value that your offering brings to the table, try including a number of value additions that you haven’t pitched as part of the package. These value additions will eventually make the customer warm up to your no nonsense attitude.

Nail Customer Service

Customer service is fast becoming another important marketing technique of choice. Happy customers are lucrative customers. So, it’s understandable that businesses are promoting good customer support as a USP.

To offer truly impressive customer support, making customers happy should be part of your organizational culture. Unless you build a customer centric business model, you won’t be able to keep your customers genuinely happy.

I don’t agree with parts of the Zappos business model, but, when it comes to paying undivided attention to their customers, there is no doubt they got it right. Any one can sell shirts and shoes online. In fact, dozens of businesses do.

By getting customer service right, Zappos built a multi billion dollar empire when the rest of the players still find it hard to raise money to keep the lights on.

It’s true that not every business can match the Zappos level of customer support, but the goal is to not look at the worst among the lot and claiming that you are atleast doing better than them!

Be Visible

Make it easy for people to reach you. Be it good or bad, you’ll have to open up channels for customers to talk to you. If you are already doing that, ensure that they are all streamlined and have a real human being at the other end of the line.

To make it easier for you to get in touch with you, you might have a few mail ids, a twitter handle, a facebook page, a customer support portal, a toll free number among other things. But, do you have an eye over them all?

It’s better to keep things simple when it comes to visibility. Stop using way too many duplicate channels in the first place. Stop using a webform and an email address in the same page for people to reach you. Should they use the mail id or fill the form? It’s just downright confusing.

When there is info@acme.com, contact@acme.com, reach@acme.com and care@acme.com, which one should your customers use to get your attention? Stick to one email address and publicize it widely.

The more easy it is for customers to find a way to talk to you, the chances of them taking up their complaints publicly online becomes far less. You’ll atleast be able to prevent negative word of mouth to a great extent!

Ask Nicely

Okay, so there are two ways to get positive word of mouth going for your brand. You can do everything right and wait for people to spread the word. That’s usually a long winded process and is not for the impatient ones.

Besides, in some business verticals it’s not easy to push positive chatter voluntarily. Got any good words about an industrial flooring vendor anyone? In those cases, instead of counting on the force of nature to move the customer, you might have to jump into action yourself.

Call them up and ask for feedback. Take the good stuff in stride and ask them if they would be happy to refer them to their friends. If you are doing a good job, you’ll get a list of referrals, else, it’s time to work overtime to keep this customer happy.

While at it, use surveys and questionnaire to build customer success stories. Pick the nicest quotes and use it as testimonials in your website and other marketing collateral. There are just so many ways to get the ball rolling yourself!

Build a Brand

I’m not going to get into the details of brand building. There are a ton of nice resources online and we have published a few too. The need of the hour is to think of unique and creative ways to build a brand.

Content marketing has a reach that even million dollar advertising budgets don’t have. Many businesses use social media to listen, help and engage prospects as well as customers. Going social is the quickest way to get everything amplified - that includes both positive and negative stuff.

Giving back to the community is another way to get people talking about your brand. Open source contributions, charity drives, pioneering a social cause - pick the one that’s right up your alley.

Reward People

When people are genuinely happy with your brand, they are bound to say good things for sure. You can be a bit more proactive and ensure that customers have a benefit in recommending your business to others.

By offering a small incentive to spread positive word of mouth, you’ll get the positive feedback way earlier than the customer might have actually intended. Coupon codes, discounts, prizes - try anything that will give a tangible benefit to the customer.

These incentives are a win-win for both the customers and your business. Both get something in return. The key here is to advertise the incentives and the incentive structure clearly. Make it prominently visible in your website and marketing collateral so that everyone is aware of it in the first place.

This also helps you maintain transparency throughout the whole process. Folks who take advantage of such offers often give a disclaimer to people they are recommending so that their recommendations don’t come across as selfish.

If you are in the software industry, freemium is an easy to get this done. Did you notice that our small business CRM software has a splendid free plan that allows you to track 100 leads for free? That’s been driving a positive buzz for sometime now!

Rewards give your customers an additional opportunity to start talking about your brand. There is a very good reason almost all computers in my friends and family circle are running Dropbox!