The overarching point is, he didn’t really make much of a point at all — thus my article.

I regularly engage with about 20-30% of my client base, with the rest contacting me as and when they need stuff from me throughout the year.

1% of clients as word-of-mouth marketeers is a really bad figure, since it’s probably not a figure that most people could accurately measured anyway. But it’s likely to be much lower than the real figure.

As a recipient of word-of-mouth marketing, I can measure those numbers once a prospect contacts me directly.

What of all those clients that are actively talking me up, but the prospect (for one reason or another) doesn’t follow the conversation up?

And I know that happens a lot, because my clients tell me about these conversations. So for me, rather than 1%, I’m more in the 5-8% bracket.

So far from being silent, some of my clients are actively selling me and my services!

And I’m not an isolated case, either.

As for the rest of our client base staying silent, it’s probably for a great many reasons, most of which having little to do with the quality of the service businesses offer them.

You can’t turn a client into a word-of-mouth marketeer. That’s something they have to want to do, so it’s not as if it’s a channel a business can pump money into and develop.

Thanks again for your comment, Michael. Always appreciated…

The far majority of your customers are not engaging in word of mouth. Those that do are effective, but you’re only looking at the 1% that engage in word of mouth – ignoring the fact that 99% of your customers are silent.

Figure out why the 99% are staying silent – that’s Seth’s point.

You say 75% of your new work comes from word of mouth – how many clients, past and present, are actively engaged in talking about you? If 1% of your clients are getting you 75% of new work, imagine what 10% of your client talking about you could do.

I addressed this post in a podcast this week, and I actually agreed w/ Godin.

Here’s why: People don’t talk when they think there’s a chance they’ll be wrong or made to look foolish. That matches his example of the primaries. People make recommendations when there is a combination of enthusiasm (as you point out) and safety.

In your example, safety’s not really in play, and that’s why people in that situation are prone to talk. There’s a lot of upside and virtually no downside.

That’s not necessarily the case when recommending ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ to a group of Southern Baptists. As great as the documentary is, you’re gonna get push-back if you recommend it to people who have a bias against it from the start.

I totally agree with you that word of mouth is powerful (and downright easy) with enthusiastic clients. I would add, though, that even enthusiastic people tend to keep their mouths closed if they perceive that making a recommendation will also make waves.