This ebook offers a summary of the book “DON’T JUST RELATE – ADVOCATE: A Blueprint For Profit in the Era of Customer Power by Glen Urban”.

The best way to grow your business today is not to become better at marketing. Instead, learn how to become an advocate for your customers. If you can earn and then retain your customers’ trust, they will do more business with you in the future and will feel comfortable about encouraging their friends and associates to do likewise.

To genuinely act as an advocate, don’t just try and sell customers your own products and services. Instead, find out their actual needs and then sell them whatever is most appropriate, even if that means they end up buying the products or services offered by one of your direct competitors. The fact that you may not be able to sell them anything this time around will be more than offset by the amount of trust generated by acting in your customer’s best interests. That trust will then translate into increased amounts of business in the future, as well as sales to related parties.

Customer power is growing exponentially – thanks to the unprecedented rise of the Internet – and you have to decide what to do about it. As customers get more data with which to make informed decisions, you can either build trust by embracing advocacy strategies or you can follow other firms who do this. If you don’t take the plunge and use advocacy advantageously, you will end up being an imitator as more and more markets become dominated by customer advocacy.

Acting as your customer’s advocate is the new imperative of the business world.