Breaking with traditions and comfort is very hard. Brand X is divided up by many departments each with a budget and a good dose of “CYA.” As practicing WOMMers we have to do a better job of changing the metrics to show what is really going on here.

Every brand has it’s own fear set. Because of our flat world we do business in, we cannot ignore the voices, or the music that our customers are making. So why not listen, let them know your listening. And enjoy it for a while before we bring the china shop with the bull.

What you’re saying is that, just like active listening, we need to repeat those messages back to those doing the talking. Is that right?

Spend some time talking about what’s being said, before jumping right on to the solution? Heck, I can see where just listening might produce better solutions than a bunch of people sitting in a conference room!

Geno, you’re truly a master. And I mean that in the most humble sense. You’ve gone out there enough times and brought your humility with you, laid it out there, and shown us all that it *does* work.

What’s holding all of “us” back??

I’ve been getting that question alot lately. Dipping a toe in the water. That question is usually tied to cost and proving to someone usually up the chain that “see this WOM thing can work and not hurt.”

My first thought is that toe dipping is dangerous, but it needs a deeper response. So I’ll try to give a simple example.

Take brand X, we find with a little web research that they have 3000 plus photos tagged by contributors on flickr, their mentioned in 657 blog posts, and there’s blogging influencers in their category.

What can brand X learn from this? Especially by authentically asking for a conversation with some or all of these visual and verbal conversations contributors. My point is I think it is worthless to dip your toe by doing a WOM tactic here. Here we are listen to us could result in “toe stub.”

If your a WOM kindred spirit for brand X, you need to dip your toe to learn something from your customers. Listen and play it back.

Anyways, I’ll think more about this, great question.

How do we illustrate to hold-outs that, yes, we can trust the customer to choose us? Does it boil down to a corporate-self-esteem issue, if that’s all that’s holding a company back?

Why does it feel like such a big chasm to cross, giving up control?