“Guy Kawasaki’s blog today”:1 features an interesting interview with Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, authors of a new book called “_Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message_”:2. Although predominantly geared toward consumer-focused businesses, the notion of customers as marketers has been critical in the OnForce community. Because what we are doing is so dramatically different from the status quo of delivering services (and, for providers, of identifying opportunities for work), our customers are often our best marketing agents. Particularly on the provider side. Our providers create content on the “forums”:3, share their product ideas and suggestions (which drives much of our product development effort), and leverage their knowledge to constantly provide new services to buyers.

One of the things that continues to amaze me is that we have _never_ advertised to recruit service providers (the individuals and companies going on site to deliver service to customers). We have over 10,000 active providers (and another several thousand that have been active at one point or another over the past couple of years) who are engaged in the OnForce Marketplace on a regular basis. Providers have been so excited about the opportunity to perform service work on their own terms that they tell their friends and associates about OnForce–and here we are with 10,000 fantastic, high-quality providers ready to deliver superior service to buyers and their customers.

Thank you to our providers–for being the exceptional group that you are, individually and in aggregate. And a special thanks to “Carlos M”:4. and “Richard H”:5, who came in to speak with our sales and management teams today. They took time out of their busy schedules to come share the provider perspective with the team that is selling to buyers, creating the product, and marketing OnForce out to the world. This is just another example of how members of the OnForce community continue to amaze us with their commitment. Thanks, gentlemen.

[1]http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/12/ten_questions_w.html
[2]http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Marketers-When-People-Message/dp/1419596063/sr=8-1/qid=1165523062/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0651762-2360803?ie=UTF8&s=books
[3]http://forums.onforce.com
[4]http://www.onforce.com/provider_view/RGRFTkJnPT0%3D/10018
[5]http://www.onforce.com/provider_view/S1BJZkRSND0%3D/10018

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