Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing

There are several hundred books available on the market about selling. Most of these books are based on tangible products, something the consumer can see, feel and recieve an almost immediate satisfaction after the purchase.
This books is one of the few available about selling services. When a consumer purchases a service from you or your company, they are paying for your promise to deliver someting in the future. This is especially true in the world of finance and insurance industry. A financial advisor sells a fund and the buyer expects to recieve x amount of interest on his in vestment at a later date. In the insurance industry, a client buys an automobile insurance policy but will probably never see the benefits of the sinsurance policy until he or she has an accident. How do you sell something that has no immediate benefit to the client? Read "Selling the Invisible".
There are twelve very easy to read chapters with many short examples (lacking a little bit on the proof side). I do believe it is an excellent book but it is too North American oriented to be carried over one to one for european, asian or middle-eastern markets. There will have to be a few cosmetic adjsutments made to be able to adapt to other makets but it is still a catalyst to start doing things differently.
The chapters and some of the main messages of those I recieved from the author Harry Beckwith:

Planning - 1.) Accept the limititations of planning 2.) Don't value planning for its result;the plan 3.)Don't plan your future plan your people. 4.)Do it now. The business obituary pages are filled with planners who waited. 5.)Beware of focus groups; they focus on today and planning is about tomorrow. 6.)Don't let the perfect ruin good. 7.)Don't look to experts for all your answers. Ther are no answers, only informed opinions.

How Prospects Think - 1.) Appeal only to a prospects reason, and you may have no appeal at all 2.) Familiarity breeds business; spread your word however you can. 3.)Take advantage of the recovery effect. Follow-up brilliantly.

Pointing and Focus - 1.)Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competative edge. 2.)To broaden your appeal, narrow your position. 3.)No company can position itself as anything, your prospects and customers put you there. Positioning is something the market does to you. You can only try and influence your position. 4.) Your position is all in the peoples minds. Find out what that position is. 5.)Focus. In everything from campaign for peanuts to campaign for presidents, focus wins.

Pricing - 1.)Don't assume that logical pricing is smart pricing. Maybe your price which makes you look like a good value, actually makes you look second rate. 2.)Setting your price is like setting a screw. A little resistance is a good sign. The reason 10% of the population are chronic complainers of price. 3.)Beware of the deadly middle in pricing. You communicate that as well... We are average. 4.)Beware of the rock bottom in pricing...you communicate we are substandard. 5.)Value is not a position.

Naming and Branding - 1.)Give your service a name, not an abbreviation 2.)Generic names encourage generic business. 3.)In service marketing almost nothing beats a brand. 4.)Building a brand doesn't take millions. It takes imagination.

Communicating and Selling - 1.)Make the service and the prospect feel compfortable 2.)Saying many things usually communicats nothing. 3.)Good basic communicating is good basic marketing. 4.)If you think your promotional idea might seem silly or unprofessional, it is. 5.)Prospects do not buy how good you are at what you do. They buy how good you are at who you are. 6.)Far better to say to little than too much. 7.)People hear what they see. Watch what you show. 8.)Give your marketing a human face.

Nurturing and Keeping Clients - 1.) Watch your relationship balance sheet, assume it is worse than it appears and fix it. 2.)Don't raise expectations you cannot meet. 3.)To manage satisfaction, you manage your customers expectations. 4.)Out of sight is out of mind. If you are not meeting regularly, you are not in their mind.

Overall an excellent book that contains a lot of reasons as to why service marketing is different and how to keep yourself visible amongst the competition.

Harry Beckwith has boiled down the art of marketing into many small and easy to understand words of wisdom.

If you are in business you have to read this book. Whether you are an owner, CEO or department head, Beckwith lays out the essential tools to market your company, and sites fresh examples to illustrate. He says "Marketing is not a department" and he's right--it is your front line (sales people) to your CEO and everyone in between. Everyone at your company is involved in marketing your company-and the author makes sure you get the message. Stop wasting time with ploys that don't work. COMMUNICATE with the consumer and you will see increased sales and market share.

"Selling The Invisible" serves as a "renewing of vows" for those well into their careers. It provides a way to go from a jaded attitude to a fresh perspective and look at your company from the outside. If you think you've heard it all before, you haven't heard it like this. A clear a concise "handbook" for modern business.

Actually, this book is less about "selling" than it is about establishing and then nourishing relationships, not only with clients and prospective clients but also with almost everyone else within a given marketplace. For example, vendors, service providers, and strategic allies. Moreover, it is one of the few books I have read which focuses almost entirely on the marketing and sales of services which are, paradoxically, both "invisible" and experiential. (Schmitt has much of great value to say about this in Experiential Marketing as do Pine and Gilmore in The Experience Economy and Wolf in The Entertainment Economy.) Beckwick shares an abundance of information and advice, duly acknowledging various sources from which he has obtained some of the material. I do not damn him with faint praise. His own contributions are first-rate. In "Summing Up", he provides a brief but precise discussion of various sources which he commends to his reader. This has much greater value than does the standard bibliography. And there is a value-added benefit, his sense of humor, which is indicated by some of the section titles such as "Anchors, Warts, and American Express", "Ugly Cats, Boat Shoes, and Overpriced Jewelry: Pricing", and "Monogram Your Shirts, Not Your Company." Throughout the book, he includes more than 100 of what I characterize as "business nuggets" which are directly relevant (indeed illuminating) within the context in which he inserts them.

For whom will this book be of greatest interest and value? Obviously, those now involved in marketing, sales, and other areas in which there is direct and frequent contact with customers. Beckwick reveals himself to be an astute observer of human nature. What he suggests can be of substantial value to any organization in which business relationships, including those which are internal, are less than desirable. Everything he suggests combines common sense with a sensitivity to others' needs and interests. Indeed, almost everyone in almost any organization (regardless of size or nature) must constantly be "selling" various services to others within and beyond that organization. First, they must establish credibility, then trust, and finally obtain agreement to cooperate, if not collaborate. Almost all relationships succeed or fail because of intangibles. Beckwick examines them within a business context but, in process, suggests wide and deep implications relevant to all other areas of human experience. This is an immensely practical as well as thoughtful book.

As others have written, this book is not about creating a complex marketing design or plan. What it does offer is quick, a page or so, USA today-like snippets of insightful observations about marketing in general, and service marketing in particular.

As the title indicates, selling and/or marketing an intangible service is a different process than tangible product marketing. As the author writes, most people cannot evaluate the skills of an accountant, or lawyer, or any number of professional services. We often look for tangible proxies that indicate the professional's level of expertise and success (e.g., fancy offices, degrees on the wall, presentation, etc.).

If you read this book in its entirety in one session, you are bound to remember nothing in the sea of facts and tidbits (click on the table of contents link to get a feel for the topic areas). I've found the best way to read the book is to ponder on a few points every night and/or week, while attempting to apply them to a salient situation in your life. Overall, this book has some interesting and useful insights, and is a good read when you have a few minutes to spare.

I bought this book because I thought it might be relevant to "gold collar workers", those who manufacture and sell knowledge that is quite "invisible" or intangible. What a great book this is! Every person that relys on their brain for a living, whether as an employee or consultant or teacher, can double their *perceived* value by reading and applying the lessons of this book.

A few of the author's well-discussed and well-illustrated ideas are offered here to complement the many other favorable reviews:

1) Simplify access to your work! [Learn how to create executive summaries, tables of contents, hyper-links, etc.--don't assume that everyone knows your value and is willing to spend time digging into your work.]

2) Quality, speed, and price are *not* in competition, they must be offered simulaneously and at full value.

3) What is your promise or value proposition? Are you just showing up, or does every day offer a chance for you to show your value in a specific way?

4) Don't just be the best in your given vocation, *change it* for the better and redefine what "best" means!

5) Sell your relationship (and your understanding of the other person's needs), not just your expertise in isolation. Your boss or client has three choices and you are the last: to do nothing, to do it themselves, or to use you. Focus on being the first choice every time.

6) Execute with passion--and if you are a super-geek or nerd that does not have a high social IQ, form a partnership with a super-popular person and put them in front.

There are many other useful thoughts in this book. If you want to know how to sell the invisible, the intagible, the value propositions that revolve around knowledge and insight instead of bending metal and assembling things, this is absolutely the best book one could ask for. Really nicely presented.