1. Provide good customer service.
   There is no secret to this one! Work continuously at maintaining a good relationship with your clients. Make your customers feel like the well-being of their business is important to you. Provide them with the utmost respect and courtesy that you would want to experience in their position. These pointers are not tricky, but can make a huge difference in the positive word of mouth you receive whether you run a retail store, a manufacturing company, or a website.
2. Make it easy for your customers to contact you
   Not only will customers feel frustrated when dealing with businesses with poor communication, but this frustration will travel from business to business warning companies of the poor treatment they are receiving, and poor publicity will result. Make sure that your answering machine is set up and that your website is fully updated with proper contact information. Get all of the necessary phone services installed and have someone by the phone making sure that each call is being answered and directed appropriately.
3. Maintain a positive image
   For small businesses specifically, remembering that your actions will most likely always have some kind of effect on the company you work for. It is important to treat everyone who you encounter on a daily basis with the respect they deserve, not just clients. If you have a big logo on your car with your company’s website, and you’re driving like a maniac and cutting people off, chances are that this will not reinforce good publicity for your company. People love sharing stories about the jerks they came across that day, and bad publicity is definitely something you want to avoid!
4. Make sure that the areas where people visit are clean and tidy
   Appearance is the first thing people see when visiting your store or office. If your shelves are messy and unorganized and there is garbage everywhere, potential customers will not be eager to work with you, nor will they say anything nice about your business. Although this is true, positive word of mouth also occurs in this circumstance. People will talk about how neat your shelves are, how clean your bathrooms are and how pleasant your waiting area is. Your customers must have a positive experience in your facility to ensure that the positive word of mouth continues to grow. Another way to spread positive word of mouth is on the web. Make sure your website is clear and concise and make it easy for people to find information about purchases, shipping and returns.
5. Ask for testimonials
   Testimonials are short written statements praising your service, products, or both. Testimonials from satisfied customers are powerful endorsements that can really trigger positive word of mouth. Post these testimonials with the company name that wrote it on your website or Facebook page to ensure that people are viewing them. Wherever these testimonials are advertised, the growth of positive word of mouth for your business will progress.
6. Give lessons or seminars
   Although time and money will have to be dedicated to achieving these seminars, it can really make a difference in how your customers feel they are being treated and in turn what they tell other people about their experience with your company. Make sure that your presentation fits in the time slot provided to ensure that potential customers don’t leave annoyed because the presentation went too long, or did not provide enough information. This approach can work towards growing positive word of mouth and increasing good publicity.
7. Engage clients within social media (twitter, facebook)
   Word of mouth is all about people saying good things about you and your business. Social media is one area where people communicate a lot more these days. Set up a twitter page or a business account on Facebook. This will get your name out there and make it easy for other businesses to learn about you. Develop a social media strategy that will let you engage customers and entice them into saying good things about your small business.
8. Monitor your online reputation
   Many conversations about your businesses service and product are occurring all over the internet within Twitter, Facebook, and blogging, and it is vital for your company to know what is being said. Independent online reputation monitoring tools such as Social Mention, lets you receive free daily email alerts about your small business.
9. Get positive publicity for your business
   Whether a picture of you is taken handing over a check to a local charity, or your name is listed as a sponsor for the Brain Tumor foundation, when people see this they will be more likely to think of your company when deciding where to take their car for their next oil change. They will also most likely suggest your company when their neighbor is also looking to get work done on their car.
10. Visibly contribute to your community
    Community building and social responsibility and involvement in your community can be a good tactic to promote positive word of mouth. Sponsoring community or charitable events is one way of doing it. Another is to take an active role in community organizations, such as sitting on hospital, school or other boards. Be a person who’s willing to work to get things done and support community organizations and others will take notice.

Word of mouth will happen whether you pay attention to it or not. It is however, an extremely helpful marketing tool and would be silly for any business to ignore it. You’ll gain more clientele and achieve more success in all areas of your business.

1. Focus on what you like about your job. By reminding yourself about why exactly you like your job, you will feel more excited to get back to it.
2. Plan something to do in your free time or on your next holiday. Having something fun to look forward to can often help us get through the unexciting parts of our day-to-day lives.
3. Make a list of what needs to get done. Knowing what it is that you need to do to get caught up will help – and the feeling accomplishment when you can cross something off your list will motivate you to work on more items.
4. Set some (realistic) goals. 30 day, 60 day and 90 days goals will give you something to work towards when you first get back to work.
5. Take a couple of breaks. Don’t forget to get up from your desk a couple of times a day, whether it’s to make coffee, or to stop by and say “hello” to a coworker.
6. Eat lunch away from your desk. Eat with your coworkers – in a lunchroom or at a restaurant. You need to take a break from work for a period of time in order get back more energetically than you left it.
7. Delegate. The first few days back at work after holidays can sometimes result in being overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done – delegate to other people on your team if you can’t handle it all on your own.
8. Take one day at a time. Thinking too far in advance can get overwhelming when you’re first getting back into the swing of things. Work on focusing only on what you have to do today – tomorrow, focus only on what you need to get done tomorrow, and so on.
9. Revisit business plans. Taking some time off has distanced you from the day-to-day happenings of your business. Now is a great time to take an objective look at any sales plans, marketing plants, etc. to see whether they are still in line with where you want your business to go.
10. Spend the first day back doing the small tasks, and tackle the larger ones once you’ve adjusted to being back at work. Organize your email box. Spend time tackling that pile of papers on your desk. Doing the little items first will help prepare you for the next few days when you start to work on the larger items.

So how can you get that important feedback from your customers?

1. Build a relationship with those who sell your products. Whether your company sells directly to the customer, or whether you sell to a middle-man who is then in contact with your customers, these are the people who are first in line to hear what your customers have to say about your products. Take the time to speak with these people – they’ll be more than happy to tell you what the customers have been telling them.
2. Build a relationship with your customers. More and more companies are turning to social media to help with their marketing efforts – and for good reason. Social media is to be used as a dialogue between two parties, to create conversation – and through this conversation, you’ll be able to get feedback on your products.
3. Give products to your customers. Try giving one of your products to a customer (existing or potential) for free. Ask them to try it out and give you honest feedback of what they think about the product.
4. Create a focus group.
5. Create a survey with an incentive to filling it out. There are some people who will automatically fill out a survey when given one. Most people, however, won’t. To help increase the number of people filling out surveys, try offering them a discount on your products next time they purchase something from you.
6. Get testimonials from customers. Not only can this be used as a marketing tool, getting testimonials from customers can be beneficial when you want to know what it is that people like about your products.
7. Provide your phone number and email address. A lot of times, if there is something that isn’t quite right with a product, your customer will want to speak with you about it. What better way to learn about how you can improve your products? But if you don’t provide a way for your customers to contact you, then you will be missing out on this important information.
8. Work with an outside customer feedback professional. There are outside contractors who specialize in gathering customer feedback – working with one of these professionals will mean that you will hear what the results are without having to do the legwork to get those results.
9. Keep track of what customers are already telling you. A lot of times, we hear from customers, but don’t have a way to track what they are telling us. If you have more than one person answering phone calls or emails, you may be missing out on a pattern of what your customers are saying – by keeping track of what these calls and emails are about, you can easily go back at a convenient time for you to see what items people keep commenting about.
10. Create a Google alert. Consumers are often talking online about products they purchased – whether through reviews on store websites (such as Amazon) or on blogs or discussion boards. These reviews can give you a huge insight as to what customers are happy or unhappy about regarding your product. Setting up a Google alert allows you to be notified whenever Google finds something new posted about your product, allowing you to read what others have posted about your products.