Selling the Invisible
By Harry Beckwith
Warner Books, 1997 - 252 pages

As our economy evolves increasingly into more of a knowledge-based economy books on the marketing of services will become more important. As the title indicates, selling and/or marketing an intangible service is a different process than tangible product marketing. Mr. Beckworth says, "Marketing is not a department" and he's right--it is your front line (sales people) to your CEO and everyone in between. Everyone at your company is involved in marketing your company-and the author makes sure you get the message. Stop wasting time with ploys that don't work. COMMUNICATE with the consumer and you will see increased sales and market share.

This book is not about how to develop a complex marketing design or plan. What it does offer is quick, easy to read "business nuggets" that are a page or so in length. Each observation is a fairly insightful observation about marketing in general but focused towards the service industry. This book is written in a tone that is simple and down-to-earth rather scholarly or academic and was refreshing to read.

As the author writes, most people cannot evaluate the skills of an accountant, or lawyer, or any number of professional services. We often look for tangible proxies that indicate the professional's level of expertise and success (e.g., fancy offices, degrees on the wall, presentation, etc.).

If you read this book in its entirety in one session, you are bound to remember nothing in the sea of facts and tidbits. I've found the best way to read the book is to ponder on a few points every night and/or week, while attempting to apply them to a salient situation in your life. Overall, this book has some interesting and useful insights, and is a good read when you have a few minutes to spare. The best way to learn from this book is to APPLY it. Everything doesn't have to occur at once and frankly, I think that this book will be one that I look to in the future when I am looking for snippets of marketing wisdom.

Other useful books on marketing that I have read or been recommended include Seth Godin's Permission Marketing and Unleashing the Ideavirus (both great reads), The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Jack Trout and All Reis (excellent authors and a good read), Robert Cialdini's Influence and Ogilvy on Advertising or Wizard of Ads for help in sales copying.

About the Author: Harry Beckwith is the principal and strategic director of a premiere marketing agency, whose clients include 17 Fortune 500 companies, one of the world's premier venture capital firms, and several Silicon Valley start-ups Harry has appeared on CNN, given addresses to ABC, Microsoft and Northwest Corporation, and lectured at the Universities of St. Thomas and Minnesota. He is also the author of the New York Times and worldwide best-seller Selling the Invisible, which many have called "the best business book ever written." The book, which has been published in its 31st printing and is one of the top-selling book on sales and marketing. His forthcoming book Invisible Touch will be available March 10, 2000. As the director of a world-class marketing agency, Beckwith and his colleagues provide clients from Seattle to New York with marketing strategy and execution, with an emphasis on positioning, naming, branding, key message and evidence development, graphic identity, key marketing communications and facility design. The firm and its work have been featured in over twenty national and international publications, including Inc., Business Week, Advertising Age, AdWeek, American Demographics and American Management Review, and have won The American Marketing Association's prestigious Effie for marketing effectiveness. Mr. Beckwith graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 1972, won the Pi Delta Epsilon national award for journalism as a freshman, and in 1975 was named Editor-in-Chief of University of Oregon's law review, the law school's highest honor. He then served a legal clerkship to United States District Judge James Burns and to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals before becoming a medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in 1976 and Portland, Oregon's Assistant City Attorney from 1978 to 1982 . Hired in 1982 by the international award winning ad agency Carmichael-Lynch in Minneapolis, he earned front-page news in City Business in 1984 and the title creative supervisor in 1985 - the swiftest promotion in the history of the agency which Advertising Age twice has named America's premier creative advertising agency. Mr. Beckwith serves on the Board of Directors of the Snowmass Institute, a Colorado-based international organization devoted to helping business create extraordinary outcomes. Clients include: ADP, Arthur Andersen, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, General Motors, IBM, Marsh McLennan, Microsoft, Merck, Service Master, Target, 3M, and US Postal Service.