These are excerpts from a book summary I did a few years ago on Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith. I stumbled on the summary recently, and it again convinced me that this may be the best book of all time for how to market a service business. It’s not so much a how-to book, but rather a how-to-think-about book. Beckwith begins with the core problem of service marketing: service quality. He then suggests how to learn what to improve and moves to some service marketing fundamentals: defining what business you’re really in and what people are really buying, positioning your service, understanding buying behavior, and effectively communicating your marketing message.
Selling the Invisible is chock-full of simple yet powerful “bite sized” nuggets of marketing wisdom. Here's a few of my favorites:
The Ad-Writing Test: If you’re having trouble writing copy for your own advertising, your product or service may be what’s flawed. Write an ad for your service. If after a week your best ad is weak, stop working on the ad and start working on your service.
Getting Better vs. Getting Different: Beware of a total focus on merely “total quality”. America’s great service successes are not the companies that did what others did but a little better. Rather they are the companies that decided to do things a whole lot differently. Beware starting a planning session with “let’s look at what we did last year, and do at least 15% better”. Fifteen percent better works fine for a time. Until another company comes along and does business 100 percent differently. Don’t just think better. Think different.
Life is Like High School: College and grad school teach us that technical competence is all. Knowing your stuff is what counts. However, this lesson of college conflicts with the lesson we learned immediately before it, in high school. Children and teenagers learn to value well-roundedness and traits that are likeable. Life is like high school. Those things that made you popular start mattering again. Be competent, be likeable, and you’ll win more business than the brilliant but socially deficient expert. In large part, service marketing is a popularity contest.
People Hear What They See: People cannot see your service. So they judge your service by what they can see. Look at your business card, your lobby, your proposal, your shoes. What do your visibles say about the invisible thing you are trying to sell? Watch what you show.
Give Me One Good Reason: Your prospects want to know: what makes you so different that I should do business with you? It’s a simple request that begs for a simple response. Don’t give a complex answer. Your prospect doesn’t want more to think about; your prospect wants less. Meet your market’s very first need: give it one good reason.
Get your very own copy of Selling the Invisible (I’m certainly not going to loan you mine – it’s way too valuable). May it inspire you to new service marketing heights!
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