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

Make technology a key part of every marketing plan.
Study Your Points of Contact
To get started, study every point at which your company makes contact with a
prospect.
Usually, you find only a few contact points. Your receptionist. Your business
card. Your building/store/office. Your brochure. Your public appearances. A
sales call or presentation. Just a few points of contact—the moments that decide
whether or not you get the business.
Then, ask: What are we doing to make a phenomenal impression at every
point?
Don’t squander one point of contact. It may be your only one.
The points of contact continue once the person becomes a client. But again,
the moments are surprisingly few. A call here and there. A meeting now and
then. A few points of contact.
Did you get everything possible from those points of contact? Did the client
feel respected, amazed, impressed, delighted?
Study each point of contact. Then improve each one—significantly.
Life Is Like High School

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Why do so many people in services, particularly professionals, believe that sheer
technical competence ensures success? Odds are, they learned that in college.
College and graduate school teach us that technical competence is all.
Whether it is Phi Beta Kappa, Baker Scholars, or Marshall Scholarships, the
spoils go to the technically proficient: those who know their subject.
None of these institutions reward the human qualities that tests cannot
measure—and this is not to suggest they should. But college graduates learn
something: Knowing your stuff is what counts.
This lesson of college conflicts with the lesson we learned immediately
before it. Children and teenagers learn to value well-roundedness and traits that
are likable. A high school student in the 1960s and 1970s could learn that it was
an honor to “make” National Honor Society, but an even greater one to get into
Key Club, which stressed citizenship, integrity, and other issues of character.
College, then, seduces us with the notion that real life will be an oasis where
sheer talent is what counts. This misleading notion is what actress Meryl Streep
was reflecting on when a lucky interviewer got a moment with her.
“I really did think that life would be like college,” Streep told the interviewer,
“but it isn’t. Life is like high school.”
Life is like high school. Those things that made you popular start mattering
again. Hate it, fight it, march in the streets against it, but it is true. The
competent and likable solo consultant will attract far more business than the
brilliant but socially deficient expert.