Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing

Harry Beckwith

Retail Price: $22.95 LS Price: $15.61 You Save: $7.34 (32%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Format: Hardcover, 272pp. ISBN: 9780446520942 Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated Pub. Date: March 1997 Average Customer Review:

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You can't touch, hear, or see your company's most important products. . . . So how do you sell, develop, make them grow? That's the problem with services.

This "phenomenal" book, as one reviewer called it, answers that question with insights on how markets work and how prospects think. A treasury of hundreds of quick, practical, and easy-to-read strategies, Selling the Invisible will open your eyes to new ideas in this crucial branch of marketing, including:

• Why focus groups, value-price positioning, discount pricing, and being the best usually fail
• The vital role of vividness, focus, "anchors," and stereotypes
• The importance of Halo, Cocktail Party, and Lake Wobegon effects
• Marketing lessons from black holes, grocery lists, the Hearsay Rule, and the fame of the Matterhorn
• Dozens of proven yet consistently overlooked ideas for research, presentations, publicity, advertising, and client retention . . . and much more.

Based on the author's twenty-five years of experience with thousands of business professionals, this book delivers its wisdom with unforgettable and often surprising examples--from Federal Express, Citicorp, and a growing Greek travel agency to an ingenious baby-sitter, Fran Lebowitz, and the colors of oranges and lemons.

The first guide of its kind and a book already causing a sensation in the business community, Selling the Invisible will help anyone marketing a service, a product, or a career. Read it, and you almost certainly will understand why two advance readers call it the best book on business ever written.


Reviews

Advertising professional Beckwith startles and disarms all potential doubting Thomases with one fact--that by the year 2005, 8 out of 10 Americans will be working in a service business. Chapters here are remarkably short; they are intended to convey one point (summarized in one sentence in boldface italics) and are blessedly free of jargon. Hints and tips cover the conventional four Ps of marketing--product, promotion, place, and price--in an irreverent and iconoclastic manner; nothing is sacrosanct. Stories from every corner of life illustrate and drive home messages. In a quandary about pricing? Read the Picasso story to remember, "Don't charge by the hour; charge by the years." About the value of research? Forget questionnaires and focus groups; instead, ask individuals what improvements are needed--not the dreaded "What don't you like?" A very human, much-needed book to savor and be refreshed by.

— Booklist, Barbara Jacobs

Harry Beckwith is a frequent guest lecturer for many national corporations, including ABC, Inc., BellSouth Corporation, Norwest Corporation, and Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., among others. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

	Introduction
	Getting Started	1
	Surveying and Research: Even Your Best Friends Won't Tell You	21
	Marketing Is Not a Department	33
	Planning: The Eighteen Fallacies	55
	Anchors, Warts, and American Express: How Prospects Think	85
	The More You Say, the Less People Hear: Positioning and Focus	101
	Ugly Cats, Boat Shoes, and Overpriced Jewelry: Pricing	129
	Monogram Your Shirts, Not Your Company: Naming and Branding	141
	How to Save $500,000: Communicating and Selling	167
	Holding On to What You've Got: Nurturing and Keeping Clients	215
	Quick Fixes	231
	Summing Up	241
	Acknowledgments	251

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