No one sells you to new clients better than existing ones. When you generate a culture of strong relationships you lay the groundwork for a word-of-mouth army.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, this year in marketing is looking to be about trust. But once you’ve built that trust it’s time to spread the word. Make it a point this year to focus not only on your website, blog and LinkedIn… but also on word-of-mouth. How? I came across a great post from a blog called Cool Marketing Stuff (stay with me…) that outlined 32 great quotes from a book called “Word of Mouth Marketing”. Here are a few of my personal favorites:

• Be interesting, or be invisible—Lawyers are often afraid to be interesting. Don’t be.
• When people are talking about you, answer them—If a client sends you a referral, call them up and thank them.
• Marketing is what you do, not what you say—Lawyers love to talk. Stop. Listening and acting brings you business.
• Finding a way to make unhappy people happy is worth 10 times more free word of mouth marketing than making them happy in the first place—Think of every challenge as a chance to create a fan.
• Word of mouth marketing is about being good to people—It may sound simple, but there’s a lot to be said for good manners.

Black Pearl: For the rest of the 32 quotes head over here. While you’re there, look around… there are some great posts you may find inspiring.