(A reprint from last May, but it's one of my favorites...)

Once upon a time, the marketing department was a match. It was responsible for lighting a spark and the sales team would fan it to make it grow.

Some sparks would go out, but if you lit enough, some turned into bonfires.

10 years ago, that was the name of the game. Now, it's only 10% of it (and that part needs to be much smarter as I wrote here and here.)

The other 90%?

Well, that's as Seth Godin would say is a matter of "flipping the funnel."

Instead of lighting a match, the marketer's job is to go out, find a flame, and pour a boatload of gasoline on it to blow it up (in a good sense) and turn it into a raging inferno.

It's giving your customers the opportunity to do the marketing for you. And not getting in the way when they WANT to sell for you.

Read this story about a frustrated blogger who WANTS to recommend a great service, but can't figure out how to do it easily.

Fred Wilson calls this "Superdistribution," the process of making every customer a distributor and I think about my relationship with Amazon as a blogger.

I buy a book on Amazon. I like it.

I review it (Book Review: Moneyball, Book Review: Small Is the New Big, Book Review: Made to Stick) on the blog and insert an affiliate link to Amazon.

I sell some books for them and make a small (really small) profit in return.

It's still a few steps and doesn't work for non-publishers, of course, but that's the idea.

So, here's the question...

what are you doing to ignite, encourage, and incentivize your customers to go out and find more customers for you?

You don't need me to tell you how powerful word of mouth is, so instead of investing money in a traditional marketing campaign...and one you wouldn't necessarily respond to yourself, why not go out, find your passionate users and turn them into your free (or low-cost) salespeople?