Selling the Invisible

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 — few are more than a page long — 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 critical emotion that most influences your prospects — and how to deal with it.
• 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 Pikes Peak.
• 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 reviewers call it the best book on business ever written.

• Preface
• Introduction
• GETTING STARTED
  • The Greatest Misconception about Service Marketing
  • A World on Hold
  • The Lake Wobegon Effect: Overestimating Yourself
  • Those Cartoons Aren't Funny
  • Let Your Clients Set Your Standards
  • Bad News: You Are Competing with Walt Disney
  • The Butterfly Effect
  • A Butterfly Named Roger
  • To Err Is an Opportunity
  • The Ad-Wriiting Acid Test
  • The Crash of Delta Flight 1985-95
  • Getting Better vs. Getting Different
  • The First Rule of Marketing Planning
  • The Possible Service
• SURVEYING AND RESEARCH: EVEN YOUR BEST FRIENDS WON'T TELL YOU
  • Even Your Best Friends Won't Tell You
  • But They Will Talk behind Your Back
  • Why Survery?
  • The Letterman Principle
  • Frankly Speaking: Survey by Phone
  • The One Question You Should Never Ask
  • Focus Groups Don't
• MARKETING IS NOT A DEPARTMENT
  • Marketing Is Not a Department
  • Marketing Myopia
  • Tunnel Vision
  • Start with You and Your Employees
  • What Color Is Your Company's Parachute?
  • What Are Your Really Selling?
  • One Thing Most Experts Don't Know
  • Who Is Your Client?
  • With Whom Are You Really Competing?
  • Hit' Em Where They Ain't
  • The Adapter's Edge
  • Study Your Points of Contact
  • Life Is Like High School
  • Voted Best Personality
• PLANNING: THE EIGHTEEN FALLACIES
  • Fallacy: You Can Know What's Ahead
  • Fallacy: You Can Know What You Want
  • Fallacy: Strategy Is King
  • Fallacy: Build a Better Mousetrap
  • Fallacy: There'll Be a Perfect Time (The Bedrock Fallacy)
  • Fallacy: Patience Is a Virtue (The Shark Rule)
  • Fallacy: Think Smart (The Crab Concept)
  • The Fallacy of Science and Data
  • The Fallacy of Focus Groups
  • The Fallacy of Memory
  • The Fallacy of Experience
  • The Fallacy of Confidence
  • Fallacy: Perfection Is Perfection
  • Fallacy: Failure Is Failure
  • The Fallacy Of Expertise
  • The Fallacy of Authority
  • The Fallacy of Common Sense
  • The Fallacy of Fate
• ANCHORS, WARTS, AND AMERICAN EXPRESS: HOW PROSPECTS THINK
  • Yeah, but I Like It
  • How Prospects Decide: Choosing the Familiar
  • How Prospects decide: Using the Most Recent Data
  • How Prospects Decide: Choosing "Good Enough"
  • The Anchoring Principle
  • Last Impressions Last
  • Risky Business
  • You Have Nothing to Fear but Your Client's Fear Itself
  • Show Your Warts
  • Business Is in the Details
• THE MORE YOU SAY, THE LESS PEOPLE HEAR: POSITIONING AND FOCUS
  • Fanatical Focus
  • The Fear of Positioning
  • Lesser Logic
  • Halo Effects
  • No Two Services Are the Same
  • Position Is a Passive Noun, Not an Active Verb
  • Creating Your Positioning Statement
  • Creating Your Position Statement
  • How to Narrow the Gap Between Your Position and Your Positioning Statement
  • If That Isn't our Positioning Statement, What Is It?
  • Repositioning Your Competitors
  • Positioning a Small Service
  • Focus: What Sears May have Learned
  • Focus and the Clinton Campaign
  • When the Banker's Eyes Blurred: Citicorp's Slip
  • What Else Positions and Focus Can Do for You
• UGLY CATS, BOAT SHOES, AND OVERPRICED JEWELRY: PRICING
  • Ugly Cats, Boat Shoes, and Overpriced Jewelry: The Sheer Illogic of Pricing
  • Pricing: The Resistance Principle
  • Avoiding the Deadly Middle
  • The Low-Cost Trap
  • Pricing: A Lesson from Picasso
  • The Carpenter Corollary to the Picasso Principle
  • Value Is Not a Position
• MONOGRAM YOUR SHIRTS, NOT YOUR COMPANY: NAMING AND BRANDING
  • Monogram Your Shirts, Not Your Company
  • Don't Make Me Laugh
  • To Stand Out, Stand Out
  • Tell Me Something I Don't Know
  • Distinctive Position, Distinctive Name
  • What's in a Name?
  • Names: The Information-per-Inch Test
  • The Cleverness of Federal Express
  • The Brand Rush
  • Aren't Brands Dying?
  • The Warranty of a Brand
  • The Heart of a Brand
  • What Brands Do for Sales
  • Stand by Your Brand
  • The Four-Hundred-Grand Brand
  • Brands in a Microwave World
  • Brands and the Power of the Unusual
  • Brands and the Baby-sitter
• HOW TO SAVE $500,000: COMMUNICATING AND SELLING
  • Communicating: A Preface
  • Fran Lebowitz and Your Greatest Competitor
  • The Cocktail Party Phenomenon
  • The Grocery List Problem
  • Give Me One Good Reason
  • Your Favorite Songs
  • One Story Beats a Dozen Adjectives
  • Attack the Stereotype
  • Don't Say It, Prove It
  • Build Your Case
  • Tricks Are for Kids
  • The Joke's on You
  • Being Great vs. Being Good
  • Superiority
  • The Clout of Reverse Hype
  • The First Banks Lesson: People Hear What They See
  • Make the Invisible Visible
  • The Orange Test
  • Our Eyes Have It: The Lessons of Chicago's Restaurants
  • How to Save Half a Million
  • The Hearsay Rule
  • Metaphorically Speaking: The Black Hole Phenomenon
  • The Generative Power of Words: The Gettysburg Address
  • A Robe Is Not a Robe
  • Balderdash
  • Improve the Silence
  • What's Your Point?
  • The Vividness Effect
  • Vivid Words
  • The Value of Publicity
  • Advertising Is Publicity
  • Advertising Begets Publicity
  • The Essence of Publicity
  • Inspiration from William F. Buckley
  • Focus on Buying, Not Selling
  • The Most Compelling Selling Message
  • What Blank Eyes Mean
  • Presenting's First Rule: Imitate Dick
  • Mission Statements
  • What a Mission Statement Must Be — and Must Have
  • When to Can a Mission Statement
  • What Really Sells
• HOLDING ON TO WHAT YOU'VE GOT: NURTURING AND KEEPING CLIENTS
  • Relationship Accounting
  • The Day After — Why Getting the Business Can Be the First Step in Losing It
  • Expectations, Satisfaction, and the Perils of Hype
  • Your Patrons Are Saints
  • Thanks
  • Where Have You Gone, Emily Post?
  • Poised for a Fall
  • Satisfaction and Services
• QUICK FIXES
  • Manage the Tiny Things
  • One Ring
  • Speed
  • Say P.M., Deliver A.M.
  • Note to Myself
  • Shoot the Message, Not the Messenger: The Fastest Way to Improve Your Sales Force
  • Personal Investment
  • The Collision Principle
• SUMMING UP
  • Recommended Reading for Service Marketers

Brilliant. Read it, as it will teach you a lot about selling and marketing, as well as life in general!