If you work with advertising clients everyday like I do you may get frustrated with the phrase “word of mouth”.  As in, “the best advertising you can get is word of mouth”.  Or “nothing works as well as word of mouth advertising”.  The problem is that word of mouth advertising is not something that most of us can control.  We have to wait until someone says something nice about us – and sometimes we can lose our businesses waiting for that to happen.

When a client or a prospect tells me that “word of mouth” is the best form of advertising I ask them to tell me about their formal referral system.  “We both agree that word of mouth advertising works better than any other concept,” I say to them. “So tell me, how you use it.  Describe your word of mouth business building system in detail.”

That question usually leads to the confession that they don’t really have a word of mouth business building system in place.  And that usually leads to my offering to build one for them.

What about you?  Do you just give lip service to word of mouth advertising?  Or do you actually have a formal referral system in place?

While you’re thinking about your answer, consider this statistic.  When I cold call a new prospect I have about a 1 in 12 chance of getting an appointment.  Yikes!  But, when I call a prospect that has been referred to me by an existing client, I cut those odds to 1 in 2.  One more interesting statistic – about 85% of my current clients came as a result of referrals.