Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

12

Transforming Mouths into Megaphones

The final part of this book focuses on the “so what?” or the “now what?” of flipping the funnel. We all understand deep down that we should treat our customers better. We all buy into the theory that more loyal customers will stick around longer and buy more in the process. And despite how hard we try to deny it, we all probably feel that we spend too much time and money courting imperfect strangers when we could be doing so much more (and for so much less) with our existing base.

So what’s new?

Well, on one level, nothing, and on another, everything.

It’s time to take the customer experience conversation to the streets—parlaying retention together with word of mouth to pave the way for retention to become the new acquisition.

Many people claim that word of mouth is nothing new. It’s been around since the days when primitive men used to scrawl drawings on cave walls to recommend a good hunting spot, or perhaps to warn that potential hunters needed to look elsewhere. While that may be so, what is entirely new is an unprecedented set of accelerants, magnifiers, and amplifiers. These have propelled the speed at which content is spread, the number of people who are connected or affected, and the distances covered in the process to unimaginable levels, heights, and echelons.

If the cat’s out of the bag in terms of recognizing that not only are our customers talking, but they’re doing it on a platform—the likes of which we never imagined ...