I recently read Guy Kawasaki’s article on Money as a Social Barrier. He refers to a study on how people react when they are pre-exposed to money then are asked to do a puzzle where they may ask others for help. The study concluded that those who have money on the mind are less likely to ask for help or help others. Guy goes on to compare this study with paying your customers a commission when they find you a new customer. He concludes that “If a company brings money into an evangelistic relationship with its customers, it could create barriers and instead of incentives.”

I couldn’t agree more with Guy on this one. And why would you pay your customers when they are perfectly willing and in fact may feel obligated to do it for free. Customers I have worked with seem to love the product I support for them and seem to always try to find us more customers and refer them to us. Sometimes before we can even ask them for anyone they might know who would be interested. I think this is a result (At least I hope!) of a good product doing its job for the customer. A lot of times when I speak with customers it seems like they feel they owe us (If any of our customers read this please let me know if I’m wrong). Maybe it’s cause we charge to little or maybe it’s the product changing their lives so much that they want to help change others’ or help us in return. Either way they are doing it for us for no monetary compensation and we greatly appreciate it.

I wrote this mostly to confirm what Guy is getting at but also to suggest to those paying their customers for spreading the word to think about using that money to help the product instead. This makes the money you spend potentially twice as effective. Your product is getting better and your customers will start to spread the word on their own.