From Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
by Harry Beckwith (252 pp)
We all know maintaining a competitive edge is critical in business. How it’s done is the challenge. While achieving leadership in business is viewed as a 24/7 commitment, it’s how one delivers on the commitment that defines the winner. I focus on one component of that commitment below: planning.
In my role as a Global Services Marketing Manager at Spirent Communications, Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing was a helpful reference, and one which I continue to use through the years, to refresh my perspectives. With more than seventy percent of the workforce in the United States involved in service companies, new marketers in the services space need to understand the value of building and strengthening the relationships with their customers. The focus of the book deals with real-world examples communicating the seemingly intangible values of a service, and it provides insights into understanding the productive ways of framing the story with customers. This also includes methods of building customer trust and improving the relationship to strengthen the customer bond into future.
The book is not written in chapters, per se, but in sections with subsections. It has numerous informative topics including ones on how to qualify prospects, critical assumptions to avoid in the service industry, guidelines for service names and branding as well as, insights into extending the marketing responsibilities throughout the company – not just in the marketing department itself. I found one section helpful that can be useful as a takeaway in this short read. It provides planning guidelines for important initiatives. Beckwith makes the important point (in the section entitled Planning: The Eighteen Fallacies) that sometimes the process of planning can be even more critical than the results of the plan itself. I’ve chosen six of the planning tips:
by Harry Beckwith (252 pp)
We all know maintaining a competitive edge is critical in business. How it’s done is the challenge. While achieving leadership in business is viewed as a 24/7 commitment, it’s how one delivers on the commitment that defines the winner. I focus on one component of that commitment below: planning.
In my role as a Global Services Marketing Manager at Spirent Communications, Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing was a helpful reference, and one which I continue to use through the years, to refresh my perspectives. With more than seventy percent of the workforce in the United States involved in service companies, new marketers in the services space need to understand the value of building and strengthening the relationships with their customers. The focus of the book deals with real-world examples communicating the seemingly intangible values of a service, and it provides insights into understanding the productive ways of framing the story with customers. This also includes methods of building customer trust and improving the relationship to strengthen the customer bond into future.
The book is not written in chapters, per se, but in sections with subsections. It has numerous informative topics including ones on how to qualify prospects, critical assumptions to avoid in the service industry, guidelines for service names and branding as well as, insights into extending the marketing responsibilities throughout the company – not just in the marketing department itself. I found one section helpful that can be useful as a takeaway in this short read. It provides planning guidelines for important initiatives. Beckwith makes the important point (in the section entitled Planning: The Eighteen Fallacies) that sometimes the process of planning can be even more critical than the results of the plan itself. I’ve chosen six of the planning tips:
- Tactics – These actions are often more important than the strategy itself because their application in the field provides opportunities to adjust the strategy by virtue of real-world impact of the tactics in relation to the goals and objectives of the original strategy.
- Ideas – Recognize the ones that make you and the team passionate, and support their development. Sometimes it starts with a small idea. Run with it and build other larger components to the plan going forward, custom fit to the initiative.
- Timing – Don’t overthink an initiative or sideline an idea because conditions aren’t considered right yet. Sometimes it’s better to start something immediately, to gain momentum on the action, and to learn and make adjustments as the action goes forward.
- Experience – Recognize your own or your team’s current limitations in experience and reach beyond them. Stretch the limits of your capabilities, and in doing so, discover new opportunities.
- Inspiration – Common sense has its place in logistical delivery of any initiative, yet out of the box thinking and inspiration can deliver a productive quantum leap in an organization’s direction and place in the market. Embrace innovated inspirations.
- Power – Recognize the role of power in the organization, and whether it supports good thinking or suppresses it. If you’re in a leadership position, do you recognize when to listen and step aside? If you’re lower in the hierarchy are you questioning those in power with the right productive focus?
“You can’t learn from your strategy.
It’s just sitting there pretending
it knows what it’s talking about,
while your tactics are out there
getting battle tested by the market.”
It’s just sitting there pretending
it knows what it’s talking about,
while your tactics are out there
getting battle tested by the market.”