Harry Beckwith: Selling the Invisible

IS MARKETING DEAD?

Smart, funny, illustrative. . . Harry Beckwith is funny, he writes like Mark Twain who said, if you remember, "The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated." . . Which might or might not be the case for the older ways of marketing. .This is a humorous and enjoyable read. However Beckwith is very serious about what he is saying.  In reality this is a training manual for the professional Marketer in coming age of transparency. He says, "The brilliant marketer should question everything with open humbleness," . . . because "certainty is fatal" and "research does not expose the truth; it binds us to it" Seek understanding but beware of research.”So just understanding his first section, The Fallacies of Marketing, is worth the price of the book. No business can afford ordinariness. What needs to be done is to ignore standard “best practices,” and create new ones.Don’t copy.Your business in more complex than that.This book is primarily about how to set up a service business, but it’s a lot more than that. It moves along smoothly because of personal anecdotal and an Oregon countrified humor . . . but this is a serious look at marketing: what you’ve done wrong andWhat to do right.You job is not to deliver a service, it is to create satisfaction.Here are the keys:•        Price: Watch what your price says. The price of a service influences what the prospect expects and what the client perceives.•        Brand: Seize your brand, live your brand, Services are built on brand, and brand creates faith. Look for a name that makes your prospect not you feel important.•        Packaging: Look as great as you are. To make your service better, make it more beautiful. Create an environment that will create in your clients the crucial feelings that they are important.•        Relationships: Make your clients feel important. A service succeeds when it makes significant numbers of people feel their lives are somehow better than they would have been without the service.What’s the most important quality a person, a service business, . . . you can exhibit?It’s passion.Passion is worth billions. It attracts clients. Even more clearly, it helps keep those clients for life.My review seems kind of dry compared to the book which is very humorous and moves along smoothly. Beckwith draws on an enormous amount of experience as a marketer. This book opened my eyes to a new and different way of looking.It can open your mind, too. I belongs in front of you so your can digest the great writing.

  Buy it.