The first step to improve your brand’s word-of-mouth?

That's it. That's where change starts.

Change what you think and say and feel about... your brand, corporate or personal.

Change that and you’ll change what others say about your brand.

At the risk of lecturing... word-of-mouth for your brand, corporate or personal, begins with you. That starts with your internal dialogue.

If you don’t like what people say about your brand, don’t get angry. Get internal. What are YOU saying about your brand. What is your team saying about your brand? What is your leadership saying about your brand?

What role are you playing in their dialogue. Is it as an enabler or as a disruptor? Are you an inspiration or an obstruction?

Are you excited about what you do to create that brand?

Do you forgive yourself for your failures, laugh about and celebrate them... one time, with others? And then do push on to the inevitable discovery, success, solution, victory.

How about between your team and other teams?

Do you inspire others? Do you uplift those on your team or another team. Do you celebrate their successes? Help them through their failures?

How about your interactions with your customers? Those on other teams are your internal customers. They’re as important as those external customers. They both buy your services. You both enable them to celebrate their successes and look good with their community of peers and mentors, bosses and customers (internal or not).

What if you’ve checked your own internal word-of-mouth marketing for your brand? Your own internal Net Promoter Score for your brand is 10. You rave about and refer your brand to everyone.

And still, you hear more customer vigilantes than customer evangelists.

Then you have to take the next step.

Ask others. Denial and delusion are wonderful defenses. But, like all fixed defenses, they get in the way. Peer out and ask someone. Use the Ultimate Question Survey to generate your own personal Net Promoter Score:

• Would they recommend you and what you do to a friend or colleague?
  
• On a scale of 0-10, with 10 "definitely would" and 0 "definitely would not," how likely would they be to recommend you?
  
• What do they say?

Let’s say you’re rated a 5 (or worse). Listen to their next answer. That’s what they tell others; that’s what you need to change. Now your journey begins to breech your own defenses and connect what you do with what matters to others.

Let’s say you’re rated a 10. By everyone.

You’re probably not the problem (or you’ve surrounded yourself with sycophants posing as friends). But you can be the solution. You may be an A-Player swimming in a pool of C-players.

Ask yourself:

• Are you allowed to be excited about what you do?
• Is anyone else excited about what you accomplish?
• Are you allowed to grow?
• Are you recognized for your accomplishments?
• Do you have the tools to grow?
• Are you inspired by the cooperation between yourself and the others on your team?

These are some of the questions put forth by Marcus Buckingham in his book: First Break All the Rules.

If your answers are ‘no’... it’s time for a change. Doing the same thing and expecting different results makes you insane. Accepting an environment where you answer no to these questions accepts an environment that denies your gifts and weakens you and your personal brand.

You have to change your environment to reach an audience who wants to testify on your behalf. Making that decision is tough. Make it and you become the solution. Don’t and you risk becoming part of the problem.

The first steps of changing word-of-mouth begins with ourselves and our internal dialogue about the brand we serve. Agencies and logos, community sites and give-away trinkets, are rarely needed. Make our own internal dialogue the word-of-mouth from a customer evangelist and we’ll soon hear that same dialogue in those we talk to every day.