Rating: 
Summary: A "renewing of vows" between you and your consumer.
Review: Harry Beckwith has boiled down the art of marketing into many small and easy to understand words of wisdom.If you are in business you have to read this book. Whether you are an owner, CEO or department head, Beckwith lays out the essential tools to market your company, and sites fresh examples to illustrate. He 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. "Selling The Invisible" serves as a "renewing of vows" for those well into their careers. It provides a way to go from a jaded attitude to a fresh perspective and look at your company from the outside. If you think you've heard it all before, you haven't heard it like this. A clear a concise "handbook" for modern business.
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Summary: Excellent Read if you are Marketing Professional Services
Review: In a crowded space of space of sales and marketing books lacking substantive data, Harry Beckwith's Selling the Invisible proves to be a valuable read. Basically, the text is a collection of tips and vignettes that are quite entertaining. As the name implies, the focus is on marketing professional services. It doesn't focus on one area, such as consulting or legal services. As someone who is in the business of providing consulting services, I found this quite relevant. The book is a comprised of a list of concepts such as positioning, pricing, and publicity, whereby it tells a short story with anecdotal evidence on a premise. Then it leaves the reader with a short statement at the end of each discussion such as "make your position clear". The book is a light read, which makes the reader think, "I should have already known this". It is also nice that the book is not as self-serving as most others, which pitch to readers, "with our strategy, customers have shown 75% increase in sales." For an independent who is selling services, I would suggest this a must read. For larger service providers with a brand name and an integrated marketing strategy, it may be slightly less valuable.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed Review: frequently just scratches the surface
Review: The ideas that the author brings up are good, but too often I felt like I wanted more. The second section was irritating. I got the feeling that the author has extensive experience in advising others, but little experience in personally carrying out - nice stories and good talk, but few real world details. On the other hand, I have been able to apply some of the ideas to my business. Stick it out past the second section and it gets a lot better. Bottom line: Not the only book you'll need to learn about marketing your service, but a worthwhile investment.
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Summary: Become Visibile with a not so Visible Service
Review: There are several hundred books available on the market about selling. Most of these books are based on tangible products, something the consumer can see, feel and recieve an almost immediate satisfaction after the purchase.
This books is one of the few available about selling services. When a consumer purchases a service from you or your company, they are paying for your promise to deliver someting in the future. This is especially true in the world of finance and insurance industry. A financial advisor sells a fund and the buyer expects to recieve x amount of interest on his in vestment at a later date. In the insurance industry, a client buys an automobile insurance policy but will probably never see the benefits of the sinsurance policy until he or she has an accident. How do you sell something that has no immediate benefit to the client? Read "Selling the Invisible".
There are twelve very easy to read chapters with many short examples (lacking a little bit on the proof side). I do believe it is an excellent book but it is too North American oriented to be carried over one to one for european, asian or middle-eastern markets. There will have to be a few cosmetic adjsutments made to be able to adapt to other makets but it is still a catalyst to start doing things differently.
The chapters and some of the main messages of those I recieved from the author Harry Beckwith: Planning - 1.) Accept the limititations of planning 2.) Don't value planning for its result;the plan 3.)Don't plan your future plan your people. 4.)Do it now. The business obituary pages are filled with planners who waited. 5.)Beware of focus groups; they focus on today and planning is about tomorrow. 6.)Don't let the perfect ruin good. 7.)Don't look to experts for all your answers. Ther are no answers, only informed opinions. How Prospects Think - 1.) Appeal only to a prospects reason, and you may have no appeal at all 2.) Familiarity breeds business; spread your word however you can. 3.)Take advantage of the recovery effect. Follow-up brilliantly. Pointing and Focus - 1.)Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competative edge. 2.)To broaden your appeal, narrow your position. 3.)No company can position itself as anything, your prospects and customers put you there. Positioning is something the market does to you. You can only try and influence your position. 4.) Your position is all in the peoples minds. Find out what that position is. 5.)Focus. In everything from campaign for peanuts to campaign for presidents, focus wins. Pricing - 1.)Don't assume that logical pricing is smart pricing. Maybe your price which makes you look like a good value, actually makes you look second rate. 2.)Setting your price is like setting a screw. A little resistance is a good sign. The reason 10% of the population are chronic complainers of price. 3.)Beware of the deadly middle in pricing. You communicate that as well... We are average. 4.)Beware of the rock bottom in pricing...you communicate we are substandard. 5.)Value is not a position. Naming and Branding - 1.)Give your service a name, not an abbreviation 2.)Generic names encourage generic business. 3.)In service marketing almost nothing beats a brand. 4.)Building a brand doesn't take millions. It takes imagination. Communicating and Selling - 1.)Make the service and the prospect feel compfortable 2.)Saying many things usually communicats nothing. 3.)Good basic communicating is good basic marketing. 4.)If you think your promotional idea might seem silly or unprofessional, it is. 5.)Prospects do not buy how good you are at what you do. They buy how good you are at who you are. 6.)Far better to say to little than too much. 7.)People hear what they see. Watch what you show. 8.)Give your marketing a human face. Nurturing and Keeping Clients - 1.) Watch your relationship balance sheet, assume it is worse than it appears and fix it. 2.)Don't raise expectations you cannot meet. 3.)To manage satisfaction, you manage your customers expectations. 4.)Out of sight is out of mind. If you are not meeting regularly, you are not in their mind. Overall an excellent book that contains a lot of reasons as to why service marketing is different and how to keep yourself visible amongst the competition.
Rating: 
Summary: Very insightful and truthful, but poorly structured IMO
Review: I really enjoy this book. It does a very good job communicating the ideas of establishing strong business relationships, brands, pricing strategies, strong first impressions and maintaining a strong visual presence (to help the invisible become visible). Many of the ideas relate extremely well to almost any service industry and for me, being in the high-technology industry, I was not disappointed. The only argument I would have is that it's basically tidbits of very insightful information, but I was sort of lost as to the organization of the book. Some of the different sections in the book didn't follow well to the next. Some chapters I felt had 2 or 3 completely different thoughts and those distinctions weren't visually or structurally apparent enough. In fact - it's kinda hard for me find out some of that insightful information that I read previously because of this lack of organization. For this reason, i gave it a 4 rather than a 5. Overall, it's a good book and you can read it on a train or on a weekend. It has made me rethink my marketing strategies and I'm sure you'll rethink yours too after reading this book.
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Summary: Short, Concise...Very Insightful
Review: Having spent much of my career in the I.T. services sector, I thoroughly enjoy researching other interests and broadening my understanding of topics that can enrich my life and career. In the area of marketing services, this publication provided ample, tangible information on modern marketing and exceeded my expectations in a number of ways. First, the covers of this book are not too far apart, which is a rare find these days. Often, writers try to impart an excessive amount of irrelevant information in their writings, as though their real ambition is to write the next, great American novel. This book is different. This publication is short, concise and filled with valuable information. If you are in the business of marketing, you need this book. For anyone in the service industry, consider giving yourself an edge over your competition by reading this insightful book, and putting into action the relevant suggestions of the author.
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Summary: Digestible Insights
Review: As others have written, this book is not about creating a complex marketing design or plan. What it does offer is quick, a page or so, USA today-like snippets of insightful observations about marketing in general, and service marketing in particular. As the title indicates, selling and/or marketing an intangible service is a different process than tangible product marketing. 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 (click on the table of contents link to get a feel for the topic areas). 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.
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Summary: Motivation to improve your service.
Review: I bought this book because it was recommended by Amazon.com, and because I was just starting my own part time service business. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I think that it is wonderful that an advertising and marketing guru can write a book that both inspires and motivates. THE GOOD: 1) I really liked the fact that this book is organized into 12 sections that contain short (one or two page) anecdotes about how other services have effectively marketed themselves. This type of organization makes it easy to read a few pages here and there and still get the gist of what is being conveyed. 2) The stories in the book are wonderful! They give real world concrete examples of how others succeeded in marketing something that wasn't a product. 3) I thought the best thing about this book was the way it motivated me. I would read a few stories and then think about how I could apply that to my business. This kept me going for weeks, and it was really what I wanted: a book that would push me to do better! THE BAD: The book doesn't go into tons of detail. Aside from showing you how others did it, the author rarely tells you how to specifically apply it to your situation. I thought that this was going to be a How-To book, and it definitely wasn't. OVERALL: I thought that it was an inspirational read. However, I am new to the whole marketing a service thing, so if you are more advanced in the business world you might not find this book very useful. It is great for motivational purposes however!
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Summary: Do you keep using people who don't do little things right?
Review: Selling the Invisible is must reading for anyone who wants to understand what it really means to run a service business. Your clients will know good service when they "see" it, but they most likely won't be able to tell you what it is. Beckwith can and does. Good service is all about doing the little things to help your customers "like" you. It's about creating relationships with new friends. Read this book, and you'll find out that it's not the most technically competent business that wins, it's the most likeable one that will. We're all very lucky because it's not really hard to do the little things that'll please our customers. Or is it?
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Summary: These Techniques Work
Review: Harry Beckwith's techniques in Selling the Invisible actually work. When you are dealing with service-related companies, it can be hard to understand what works and what does not. After all, services are not like products, Beckwith says, in that they are hard to define, often times you don't even think about the service unless you are confronted with the person providing the service (i.e., your dentist). Thus, you must make consistant reminders of who you are, and why your service is exceptional. Beckwith also writes in a way that is likely to allow you to remember what he says. He has his commentary in bold print, writes in very easy to read prose, and has a final line summarizing what he says in a few words. This is an excellent book and it should be on the book shelves of any would-be marketer or service-related business operator. It works in my business, and I work as a telephone psychic! -- Michael Gordon
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