Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
© 1997 by Harry Beckwith
If you sell software, you know that your core product is the software, but that the critical part of your product is all the augmentations: the documentation, toll-free services, publications, upgrades, support, and other services. Your users are buying a service.
Nothing works more powerfully than simplicity.
The core of service marketing is service itself. Get better reality.
Too often, service sucks.
First, before you write an ad, rent a list, dash off a press release - fix your service.
Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt and it will force you to improve.
Everyone’s focus for marketing this year is “How do we sell this?” They should ask, “Is this viable anymore? Is this what the world wants?” Always start at zero.
Create the possible service; don’t just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love.
Conduct oral phone surveys, not written and not in-person.
Never ask, “What don’t you like?”
Every act is a marketing act. Make every person a marketing person.
Go where others aren’t.
Study each point of contact. Then improve each one - significantly.
Execute passionately. Marginal tactics executed passionately almost always will outperform brilliant tactics executed marginally.
The world champion in baseball has to win only 57 percent of its championship games.
3M went almost 2 years without a sale. Then in 1904 it tried sandpaper. William McKnight became the assistant bookkeeper in 1907, settled for stock instead of cash and retired with $500 million in 1978.
Prospects rely on familiarity. So whenever they are in doubt, prospects choose the familiar. People choose what seems most familiar.
Familiarity breeds business. Spread your word however you can.
Use the recency effect, be the last company to present. Always follow-up with something that is as well conceived and powerful as anything in your presentation. Take advantage of the recency effect - follow-up brilliantly.
People do not simply form impressions. They get anchored to them. People with little time are more apt to make first impressions as snap judgments, and then base all their later decisions on them. Identify and polish your anchors.
It is less risky for Peggy to do NOTHING. Do not put more sale in, take some of the fear out. Free trials, money-back guarantees, ask for a project, and offer to do something. Peggy is afraid. The best thing you can do for a prospect is eliminate her fear. Offer a trial period or a test project.
The more alike two services are the more important each difference becomes.
Accentuate the trivial.
Your position should be singular, one simple message.
You must sacrifice.
You cannot be all things to all people, you must focus on one thing.
You must have a fanatical focus on doing one thing well.
Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.
The Fear of Positioning
Why all the fear? Because standing for one thing means you cannot expressly stand for other things. You must sacrifice. “No! We cannot give up that business! We have to say we are this and this and this! We’re sacrificing opportunity.”
Forget it!
Rather than sacrificing opportunities, a narrow focus often creates opportunities.
To broaden your appeal, narrow your position.
What special skill could your business develop and communicate that would, by lesser logic, position you strongly in other areas? What is the big skill you could develop and market that clearly implies other valuable skills? In your service, what’s the hardest task? Position yourself as the expert at this task, and you’ll have lesser logic in your corner.
“What makes your service different?” Every service is different and creating and communicating differences is central to effective marketing. History shows that everything can be made different.
Don’t start by positioning your service. Instead, leverage the position you have.
Craft bold dreams and realistic positioning statements.
Choose a position that will reposition your competitors; then move a step back toward middle to cinch the sale.
In positioning, don’t try to hide your small size. Make it work by stressing its advantages, such as responsiveness and individual attention.
How much price resistance is just right – about 15-20 percent. 10 percent will complain about any price. Some want a deal. The other 10 percent are the resistance which is normal.
Make selling easier, faster, and cheaper. Build a brand.
Brands with unusual names are strong brands. Virtually no one or nothing else carries any of these names.
Your first competitor is indifference. If you deliver two messages, most people will process just one of them. Say one thing. Saying many things usually communicates nothing.
Your prospects have one basic question:
What makes you so different that I should do business with you? Give me one good reason WHY? It’s a simple request that begs for a simple response. After you say one thing, repeat it again and again.
Don’t use adjectives, use stories. Attack your first weakness, the stereotype the prospect has about you. Create the evidence of your service quality. Then communicate it.
If you think your promotional idea might seem silly or unprofessional, it is.
Give your marketing a human face. If you are selling something complex, simplify it with a metaphor. The power of words is not only to describe reality, but to create it.
Tell people, in a single compelling sentence, why they should buy from you instead of someone else.
There are six peaks in Europe higher than the Matterhorn. Name one. Get ink.
If you want more publicity, do more advertising.
Make your service easy to buy.
What sells? I understand what you need.
We want to smile more. Read through everything you send to clients and prospects. How does it FEEL? Does it sell happiness or the hope of it? Above all, sell hope.
A hotel wraps the toilet and wraps the glass. It is not just the hotel’s service quality that wins us; it is the hotel’s merchandising of its quality.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446520942
© 1997 by Harry Beckwith
If you sell software, you know that your core product is the software, but that the critical part of your product is all the augmentations: the documentation, toll-free services, publications, upgrades, support, and other services. Your users are buying a service.
Nothing works more powerfully than simplicity.
The core of service marketing is service itself. Get better reality.
Too often, service sucks.
First, before you write an ad, rent a list, dash off a press release - fix your service.
Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt and it will force you to improve.
Everyone’s focus for marketing this year is “How do we sell this?” They should ask, “Is this viable anymore? Is this what the world wants?” Always start at zero.
Create the possible service; don’t just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love.
Conduct oral phone surveys, not written and not in-person.
Never ask, “What don’t you like?”
Every act is a marketing act. Make every person a marketing person.
Go where others aren’t.
Study each point of contact. Then improve each one - significantly.
Execute passionately. Marginal tactics executed passionately almost always will outperform brilliant tactics executed marginally.
The world champion in baseball has to win only 57 percent of its championship games.
3M went almost 2 years without a sale. Then in 1904 it tried sandpaper. William McKnight became the assistant bookkeeper in 1907, settled for stock instead of cash and retired with $500 million in 1978.
Prospects rely on familiarity. So whenever they are in doubt, prospects choose the familiar. People choose what seems most familiar.
Familiarity breeds business. Spread your word however you can.
Use the recency effect, be the last company to present. Always follow-up with something that is as well conceived and powerful as anything in your presentation. Take advantage of the recency effect - follow-up brilliantly.
People do not simply form impressions. They get anchored to them. People with little time are more apt to make first impressions as snap judgments, and then base all their later decisions on them. Identify and polish your anchors.
It is less risky for Peggy to do NOTHING. Do not put more sale in, take some of the fear out. Free trials, money-back guarantees, ask for a project, and offer to do something. Peggy is afraid. The best thing you can do for a prospect is eliminate her fear. Offer a trial period or a test project.
The more alike two services are the more important each difference becomes.
Accentuate the trivial.
Your position should be singular, one simple message.
You must sacrifice.
You cannot be all things to all people, you must focus on one thing.
You must have a fanatical focus on doing one thing well.
Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.
The Fear of Positioning
Why all the fear? Because standing for one thing means you cannot expressly stand for other things. You must sacrifice. “No! We cannot give up that business! We have to say we are this and this and this! We’re sacrificing opportunity.”
Forget it!
Rather than sacrificing opportunities, a narrow focus often creates opportunities.
To broaden your appeal, narrow your position.
What special skill could your business develop and communicate that would, by lesser logic, position you strongly in other areas? What is the big skill you could develop and market that clearly implies other valuable skills? In your service, what’s the hardest task? Position yourself as the expert at this task, and you’ll have lesser logic in your corner.
“What makes your service different?” Every service is different and creating and communicating differences is central to effective marketing. History shows that everything can be made different.
Don’t start by positioning your service. Instead, leverage the position you have.
Craft bold dreams and realistic positioning statements.
Choose a position that will reposition your competitors; then move a step back toward middle to cinch the sale.
In positioning, don’t try to hide your small size. Make it work by stressing its advantages, such as responsiveness and individual attention.
How much price resistance is just right – about 15-20 percent. 10 percent will complain about any price. Some want a deal. The other 10 percent are the resistance which is normal.
Make selling easier, faster, and cheaper. Build a brand.
Brands with unusual names are strong brands. Virtually no one or nothing else carries any of these names.
Your first competitor is indifference. If you deliver two messages, most people will process just one of them. Say one thing. Saying many things usually communicates nothing.
Your prospects have one basic question:
What makes you so different that I should do business with you? Give me one good reason WHY? It’s a simple request that begs for a simple response. After you say one thing, repeat it again and again.
Don’t use adjectives, use stories. Attack your first weakness, the stereotype the prospect has about you. Create the evidence of your service quality. Then communicate it.
If you think your promotional idea might seem silly or unprofessional, it is.
Give your marketing a human face. If you are selling something complex, simplify it with a metaphor. The power of words is not only to describe reality, but to create it.
Tell people, in a single compelling sentence, why they should buy from you instead of someone else.
There are six peaks in Europe higher than the Matterhorn. Name one. Get ink.
If you want more publicity, do more advertising.
Make your service easy to buy.
What sells? I understand what you need.
We want to smile more. Read through everything you send to clients and prospects. How does it FEEL? Does it sell happiness or the hope of it? Above all, sell hope.
A hotel wraps the toilet and wraps the glass. It is not just the hotel’s service quality that wins us; it is the hotel’s merchandising of its quality.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446520942
