Invisible Touch - Softcover

Beckwith, Harry

3.91

177 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446699837 ISBN 13: 9780446699839

Publisher: Business Plus Imports, 2009

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Service businesses sell something that cannot be seen or heard. They offer an experience-and to make that experience truly exceptional they must first understand people and how to satisfy them. In this dispensable volume, Harry Beckwith provides a treasury of quick, practical, and entertaining strategies. Applying the study of human nature to the real world of business, The Invisible touch will open your eyes to this crucial branch of marketing with four key concepts; Price: Its seductive power-from Uma Thurman's Five Dollar Milk Shake to the Mansion at Turtle Creek. Brand: The triumph of Red Pepper, Opium, Yahoo!, and the inscrutable A-AI AC Delco Jani Express Cleaning Service 500. Packaging: Looking at the pretty mousetraps of Disneyland, the ugly Butterfly Effect, and a tale of oranges and heels. Relationships: A consideration of Jim Marinelli's magic one word, Laura Nyro's folly, the madness of Tom Peters, and further ripples of the Lake Wobegon Effect. Based on the author's extensive business experience, this book delivers its wisdom with unforgettable and often surprising example-from the regrowth of a bitten Apple to Camden Yars' grand-slame face-lift, to the three eternal lessons of a twenty-year-old coffee commercial. Thorough, informative, and easily implemented, The Invisible Touch shows you how to market a service and, most important, how to keep happy, loyal clients with you forever.

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Review:

The beauty of marketing is that it happens when we are looking but not noticing. Before you know it, we are using Yahoo! as a search engine, even though serious researchers will tell you that Alta Vista and Dogpile are better. We are buying products that cost more and perform worse, simply because the marketing and branding of those products tells us there is value there, even if objective analysis tells us otherwise. In The Invisible Touch, Harry Beckwith tells us the obvious--what was right in front of our faces. But because of the blinkers we wear, because of the way we have been educated, socialised or just plain bamboozled, we can't see it as clearly as he can. Thus, in each of his "four keys to modern marketing"--price, branding, packaging, relationships--he offers counterintuitive information that could make or break a business plan. For example, he explains in great detail why a higher price is better than a lower one; why every business, from Apple Computer to the US Army, is a brand-name to be cherished and nurtured; why the orangest orange sells better than the least orange orange, even if both pieces of fruit taste exactly the same; and why the best service providers always remember your name and what you like to drink. This is a business book, but one that everyone who works for a living should read. Pick any page, and you will find insights that could make you a better teacher, a better salesperson, a better employee in any trade. Beckwith drives home the idea that we are all in the business of marketing ourselves, and we are in that business every waking hour. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com

Review:

'Harry Beckwith makes the invisible engagingly accesible.' (The Motley Fool, Fool.com)

'Harry has nailed the art of making the intangible tangible and the invisible visible.' (Larry D. Stratton, vice president, health care sales, ServiceMaster)

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