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Cheap Book Store - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
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List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $39.95
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Texere
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 650
EAN: 9781587990663
ISBN: 1587990660
Label: Texere
Manufacturer: Texere
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2001-03-01
Publisher: Texere
Studio: Texere
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Editorial Reviews:
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(NOT FOR SALE IN US AND CANADA) The essential guide to marketing services, that has become a business classic. Many companies who claim to be selling products are really selling services. What used to be a product-driven economy is now replete with services. But unlike products, you can?t touch services, hear or see them. Services are mainly just promises that somebody will do something. They are invisible. So how do you sell, develop and make them grow? This international bestseller, now in paperback, answers that question with insights on how the markets for services work and how customers think and behave towards your offering. When it comes to marketing and selling, the difference between products and services can be enormous. A treasury of bite-sized, practical and intelligent strategies, based upon the author?s extensive experience, Selling the Invisible will open your eyes to new ideas that will enhance the value and profitability of any company in today?s service market. The book begins with the core problem of services marketing: service quality. It then suggests how to learn what you must improve, with examples of what works. It then moves on to services marketing fundamentals: defining what business you really are in and what people really are buying; positioning your service; understanding customers and buying behaviour; and communicating your service.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good stuff!
Comment: Like most Harry Beckwith books (there are four), this is a good read. Mostly, it's things you know...but, don't act on in the day-to-day course of doing business.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't be a commodity. Great information on how to differentiate your business and get the message out.
Comment: Over the past few decades there has been a relentless push to "commoditize" products and services, especially products. Those of us who run businesses and who are involved in sales and marketing are constantly battling to highlight our strengths compared to the competition. This book tells you how to do it.
Most of my sales over the years have involved products and, while this book has been on my reading list for years, I never felt it really applied to me. How wrong I was. At the most basic level all products become commodities in a relatively short time, squeezing profit margins. How do you stop this from happening and how can you keep your profit margins high? The only way is to bundle intangibles (services) and emphasize these things. How to do this is where this book excels.
The economy right now is tough and businesses are struggling to maintain their margins and win in an increasingly competitive environment. Now, more than ever, businesses, marketers and advertisers need to look at ways to make themselves the chosen vendor. This book is a great place to start.
- There is a very good discussion on price that I found enlightening and informative.
- Are you the brand? You know, 3M versus the unknown competitor? Are you the competing against a brand? He covers what to do in both cases.
If your looking for ways to deal with this tough economy, you would do well to add this to your reading list. Other books I found helpful were:
How To Sell When Nobody's Buying: (And How to Sell Even More When They Are)
The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business from Stagnation to Stunning Growth InTough Economic TimesGetting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition
Happy Selling
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely practical, brilliantly written
Comment: Almost 150 reviews at this point for this text, spanning consistently over a period of the 10 years it has been written. This reviewer recalls the recent "The Wall Street Journal" article which questioned whether such a high number of reviews for a single product is ever warranted. In the case at hand, this reviewer believes that so many reviews, with such positive feedback, is testament to the quality of the original content as well as to the ongoing (and arguably increasing) relevancy of the material. Services marketing is the subject of this masterwork, and while subtitles for other books can be misleading at times, "Selling the Invisible" is truly a field guide to modern marketing - in the words of Beckwith a "how-to-think-about book", not necessarily a "how-to" book, "because if you think like these new marketers - if you think more broadly and deeply about services and their prospects - you will figure out dozens of better ways to grow your business". The author explains that "this book is for all those service marketers: the 80 percent of us who do not manufacture products - and the other 20 percent who do", and that "the new marketing is more than a way of doing; it is a way of thinking. It begins with an understanding of the distinctive characteristics of services - their invisibility and intangibility - and of the unique nature of service prospects and users - their fear, their limited time, their sometimes illogical ways of making decisions, and their most important drives and needs." The format of this book greatly aids the content, as it is divided into chapters by subject matter and further broken down into discussions of 1 to 3 pages that are expected to be easily digestible by even the most book-weary readers. The core problem of service marketing, service quality, is first discussed, followed by a discussion on improving service quality, and later the fundamentals of service marketing: defining one's business and understanding what customers are really purchasing, positioning one's service, understanding prospects and buying behavior, and communicating to prospects. As a consultant, this reviewer was reminded of Gerald M. Weinberg's "The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully" (see my review) while reading this text, because, like Weinberg, Beckwith brilliantly leads the reader through his thoughts one step at a time through subject matter that is not always intuitive, and is so fluent in his subject material that he is also able to arrive at his own principles and rules to elegantly apply the lessons that he has learned throughout his career. While this book is a quick read, the content might take time to digest if the reader is not familiar with service marketing. One of the quotes on the back of the hardcover edition of this book especially rings true: "After just forty-eight pages I'd written ten pages of notes and had more ideas than I could implement in a year. Terrific." As a consultant, this reviewer highly recommends this book to everyone in business, especially the chapter that addresses what the author views as the 18 fallacies of planning.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very good from a communication standpoint
Comment: Very good book on communication and relationships. Well written and flows very well. Provides sound principles for marketing. Great insight on how to read customers and have a better understanding of what they are thinking. Great book for anybody in the service industry. I recommend.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Selling something
Comment: I used this book to share with people at work as we are just starting to move into internet selling. Very timely and good a read.
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