What if the secret to selling isn’t closing the deal, but creating a customer who buys, returns and tells others?
In Episode 11 of Train.Brain.Daily the hosts discuss 'Word of Mouth: Buy and Tell', and Morry Morgan and Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson (Hewi) take a deeper dive into WOMBAT Selling, a relationship-based approach that challenges traditional sales thinking. Instead of asking, “Did you get the sale?”, WOMBAT Selling asks whether you created trust, delivered value, earned repeat business and inspired a referral.
Michael explains why the buying decision happens in the customer’s brain, not the salesperson’s, and introduces the idea of budgeting ten “check moves” or meaningful customer contacts before expecting a result. Each interaction is an opportunity to understand the customer, solve a problem and create genuine value. The customer alone controls “checkmate” by choosing to say yes.
Morry shares a real example from Hard Knock Knocks Comedy School, where an alumnus attended a free monthly event, decided to repeat the course and revealed that he regularly recommends the school to friends. It is a perfect illustration of a customer becoming a Wombat: someone who buys and tells.
The conversation explores two useful equations: needs plus features equals benefit, and goodwill plus reputation equals trust. Morry and Michael discuss how relationships influence business across cultures, drawing on experiences from China, Japan, Australia and the United States. They also explain why introductions from trusted third parties are often more powerful than self-promotion, particularly when securing important meetings.
You’ll also hear memorable stories involving a hidden Mercedes convertible, palm reading in New York bars, Morry’s book Selling Big to China, and creative professional Felix Toohey’s enormous Canva resume. Each example shows how originality, generosity and “pass-on value” give people something worth talking about.
Finally, Michael maps the full WOMBAT Selling journey: move from being unknown to making contact, create value over multiple interactions, earn the first purchase, continue supporting the relationship, generate repeat sales and eventually inspire referrals. Over time, those referrals can form a genealogy of customers that reveals how a business really grows.
It’s a practical framework for entrepreneurs and anyone responsible for building lasting customer relationships.
LINKS
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