Tom Peters, the author of The Pursuit of WOW and several other books on sales, including In Search of Excellence, is on record as saying that 75% of any business' marketing dollars and energy should be spent on establishing and maintaining a word-of-mouth network.

Yet many times we hear business people complain about the time it takes to go to just one networking meeting a week.

So take a second to think, how much time and energy are you spending on your WOM network.

Just how much time have you spent this last 30 days on your WOM network?

If you attended your BNI meeting 4 times, that accounts for about 10% of your working time and thus energy. If you had just one dance card each week, that would account for about 7%. So what else are you doing?

In this hi-tech age, when personal contact is even more important than ever, are you increasing the amount of WOM time you spend on your marketing - OR LESS.

Ivan Misner, in his book 7 Second Marketing, refers to research that shows face-to-face is still the best way to make a sale.

So perhaps it is time to re-think the amount of time you are spending on activities that generate new clients and cultivate existing ones.