"We realize that the best advertising is word of mouth," the CEO announces at the annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida. "Our performance will drive our success -- so performance is where we will focus our marketing."
The following year, that company met in a hotel some called "Spartan" in a place that many attendees referred to as "Siberia."
The theory behind word of mouth makes sense: Perform brilliantly and everyone will tell everyone.
But largely because of changes in our culture, word-of-mouth advertising -- with notable exceptions, such as book publishing -- has become the world's most overrated form of marketing.
Just two generations ago most residents of every American city had lived there for years, often with parents and grandparents nearby. Generations of families knew generations of other families, creating the networks over which word-of-mouth messages raced.
Now look around. Our parents retire and move "someplace warm." The rest of us move to opportunities, one year in the Research Triangle, the next New York or Austin.
Our mobility propels us away from these old networks and into new cities where everyone seems to come from somewhere else.
The relative complexity of our lives reduces the role of word of mouth, too. Not long ago, when you needed a lawyer, for example, your friend would recommend an attorney in one of your city's two largest firms. Today, competition has forced lawyers, like other professionals, to specialize more -- which means that the "lawyer" who would've been appropriate thirty years ago is not the "labor law attorney specializing in Title 7" you need today.
What's more, the people who recommend those Title 7 specialists to others often are not relying on word of mouth at all; they read about the attorney in a local magazine or newspaper.
That is not word-of-mouth work; that's public relations -- and that is typical.
Jeanine asks Karen to recommend an architect, Karen realizes she hasn't heard about Venturi & Pei for months, which makes her wonder. Afraid to make a bad recommendation, she makes none, or -- eager to please and seem informed -- she suggests Meier & Gehry or Diller & Scofido. "I've heard great things about them."
Where did she hear about them? In a magazine article about Mr. Meier and Mr. Diller, generated by their public relations people.
Word of mouth assumes your clients will rave if you perform well. But today's clients race home after work, then rush for four more days. When they finally get time to reflect, they have forgotten their good experience with you. They're overloaded.
And who raves these days? Who raves at a party, "You should have seen our tax return -- it was brilliant!" Who stops a friend on the street and insists, "You must get your checkup at Methodist -- mine was wonderful!"
We rarely rave. We're too jaded and focused on other things. We don't engage in that 1950s leisurely over-the-back-fence chat with our neighbors; those chats disappeared with Ozzie and Harriet. If Ozzie were alive today, he'd rarely be home to chat -- and if he were home, his neighbor wouldn't be.
These were the networks over which word of mouth flowed -- and those lines have gone dead.
Progress killed them.
A decline of word of mouth is vivid in an industry once dominated by word of mouth: wealth management. For decades, members of the golf club, the symphony board, or the Junior League typically chose their advisers based on the recommendations from fellow members. Today, however, barely one in three wealth management clients first heard about their firm from a friend, colleague, or relative. Almost half heard about the firm from an advertisement.
Word of mouth has become endangered, and only companies willing to suffer that plight should rely on it or try to promote it -- which offends most customers and prospects, by the way.
Forget word of mouth, but do not forget advertising. With the demise of word of mouth, conventional advertising has become even more important.
The best advertising is advertising.
You are a woman, your phone rings. You answer to hear this remarkable request.
"Hi, you don't know me, but I'm David. Want to go out for lunch?"
Does that cold call work?
A service is a relationship between a provider and a recipient. Given that, what are you actually doing when you cold call to sell a service? You are inviting a stranger to have a relationship with you.
What are the odds this will work?
Cold calls cause
cold shoulders.
Keep Talking
Happy Talk
People shoot messengers.
Beware of saying anything that might be perceived as negative. You're selling a feeling. You've succeeded if your audience leaves feeling good.
Never threaten that spirit. Never criticize the room, the weather, last night's performance by the local team -- nothing. Negatives pollute the room's air and brand you as negative, too.
Shakespeare got it right more than four hundred years ago:
"It is never good to bring bad news."
Accentuate the positive,
avoid the negative.
-- All articles excerpted from What Clients Love
The Lighter Side
If in a book store you encountered books with the following two titles, which of the two would you be more likely to pick up?
"Me. A Field Guide to Selling Yourself"
"You. A Field Guide to Selling Yourself"
Please let Harry know, at invisble@bitstream.net
(that's the word invisible, but delete the last letter "i".) Feel free to explain your preferences. Results will appear in next month's newsletter.
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has |
|
made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. |
|
| ||||
| ||||
Research Sales Team Development Websites E-newsletters Multimedia