Marketing and business development insights Word of Mouth in construction Ignore it at your peril By Ian Denny Special to the Canadian Design and Construction Report That may seem like a dramatic introduction, intended to urge you into some sort of action. And quite frankly it is, because most of us are guilty of ignoring word of mouth. You see I did too. I had always known word of mouth was important to my business. In fact, one day I went through a year’s invoicing, casually noting the origin of each piece of work. It surprised me how much had come from word of mouth. But like you probably do, at the time I shrugged my shoulders and simply wished for more of it, not believing you could do anything about it. 6 – July-August 2015 — The Canadian Design and Construction Report After all, word of mouth just happens. Or not. Surely you can do nothing about it anyway? Then one day, I owed a friend a favour. Her company had done a great job for me, and as she was also a friend, I thought I should tell my clients and recommend her serv- ices. So I wrote an email outlining exactly what she did and how it had really impressed me. I casually mentioned that I was meeting her for a coffee in a few days, and if they’d like to meet her to discuss, I could pass on their number and ask her to call. I sent that to 65 clients. I thought maybe one or two would respond. But 28 responded asking me to pass on her number. Interestingly, she fed back that she had tried to meet