Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

Who Is Your Client?
Karl often feels overlooked and insecure.
Sharon has seven cats named after the Seven Dwarfs.
Karl loves Stanford football and his eight-month-old son.
Sharon wishes she had more time.
Karl wishes business could be better.
Sharon wishes she laughed as often as she did when she was twelve.
Karl wishes he felt more connected, to people and to life.
Sharon wishes she knew more about you, and knew she could trust you.
Karl craves one thing above all, as William James once observed. He craves
appreciation.
Before you try to satisfy “the client,” understand and satisfy the person.
With Whom Are You Really Competing?
Every great business school teaches competitive strategy. Professor Michael
Porter became famous by writing good books on the subject, and every good
marketing plan includes a section on competition.
It appears that you should study your competitors. But once again, this
product-marketing model fails you. Service marketers must look at competition
through a wider lens—as The Case of the Consultants Without Competitors
suggests.
Asked to help position a corporate consulting firm, I ask: “Who are your
competitors? How are they perceived? How should you adapt, change, and
attempt to position your company, given your competitors’ positions?”
Our discussion of competitors seems odd. Few names come up, and few
competitors are well known—and most are regarded like lint.
But if your competitors are so few, so obscure, and so badly regarded, why
don’t you dominate the market?

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Their answer is the one you get in many service markets: My client’s market,
despite the models in marketing planning books, is not a true competitive
market. With a few exceptions, companies are not battling to share that market.
They are battling to create it: to get prospects to want and use their service—
instead of doing nothing or performing the service themselves.
One of a million similar examples: A large food manufacturer is considering
using industrial psychologists to help in hiring. The manufacturer’s V.P. of
personnel is not simply trying to decide whether to use Firm A, B, or C. The
prospect is trying to decide whether to use any service at all!
In many cases and in many markets—among real estate consultants, extended
warranty providers, public relations firms, telemarketers, collection agencies,
interior decorators, fast-food restaurants, income tax services, motivational
speakers, and millions more— your prospect faces three options: using your
service, doing it themselves, or not doing it at all.
In many cases, then, your biggest competitors are not your competitors. They
are your prospects.
This means that your strategy—never mind all the textbooks—cannot be
competitive. If you compete aggressively, and implicitly criticize your
competitors, you aggravate your worst problem: the prospect’s doubt that
anyone in your industry can provide the service and value that the prospect
needs.
If you expressly or implicitly question the prospect’s option of doing it
herself, you criticize the prospect and her judgment. That may be an accurate
analysis, but it is bullet-through-your-own-foot sales and marketing.