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Regardless of a company's size or industry, thought leadership always starts at the top. Thought leadership is most effective when led by a company's top management, who develop and express new ideas that keep a company at the forefront of change.

Nothing overcomes consumer skepticism more effectively than a good report from someone who's dealt with you before. When people get a recommendation about you from a friend, they approach you with positive expectations. In essence, they have an insurance policy that reduces the risk of doing business with you. If, on top of hearing about you from someone they know, they also see your name in print, the effect grows synergistically. Marketing guru Marcia Yudkin expresses this idea in an algebraic formula:

Visibility + Credibility + Word-of-Mouth = REPUTATION

Brand recognition and reputation matter when it comes to generating sales leads. In How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Sales from the Client Perspective, the online publication RainToday.com asked 200 buyers of profesional services how they find and learn more about potential service providers. After referals, "I already knew about the service provider" (in other words, reputation or brand reach) was the top source.

"One argument seems to never go away," says Mike Schultz, publisher of Rain Today. "On the one side you have people who say, 'We need to increase our brand recognition in order to truly succeed with marketing.' The other side typically maintains, 'Just get out there and sell. Name recognition doesn't matter.' Yet, our research shows that when you are well known in your field, whatever lead generation tactics you employ are likely to work better." None of this is possible, of course, if you don't provide customer satisfaction. There are a number of good books on the subject of customer service,

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