Product Description
The Invisible Touch is Harry Beckwiths concise sequel to his wildly popular Selling the Invisible, a field guide to how markets work and how prospective clients think. Now, moving beyond those basic principles, he delivers essential business wisdom aimed at keeping clients by utilizing the four keys to modern marketing: Price, Brand, Packaging, and Relationships. These major keys, coupled with Beckwiths surprising insights and unforgettable examples, should help readers enhance their profits by marketing their services in a more humanistic way. Selling the Invisible, the authors first marketing book, has been to press 20 times. It spent one month on the New York Times business book bestseller list, six weeks on the BusinessWeek bestseller list, and was an Alternate Selection of Book-of-the-Month Club.
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Amazon.com Review
The beauty of marketing is that it happens when we're looking but not noticing. Before you know it, we're using Yahoo! as a search engine, even though serious researchers will tell you that Alta Vista and Dogpile are better. We're buying products that cost more and perform worse, simply because the marketing and branding of those products tells us there's a 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 blinders we wear, because of the way we've been educated, socialized, 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 U.S. 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'll 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're all in the business of marketing ourselves, and we're in that business every waking hour. --Lou Schuler
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 Brand Advice in a Highly Readable, Practical Package! ( geezerjock )
As with all his books, Harry Beckwith's works offer ready assets. Beckwith is practical and hands on. He is no theoretician. His chapters are short and sweet. In five minutes, you could knock off three chapters. This is not a criticism.
"The Invisible Touch" gives good advice on building your brand and achieving customer satisfaction. Regardless of what type of business you are in, I would recommend "The Invisible Touch." At times it is repetitive and regurgitates a few themes and stories from his other books.
Overall, though, this book is a worthwhile investment of time for those seeking to build their personal and professional brands.
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 The Invisible Touch "Can't Touch This" Selling The Invisible ( abrahamseed )
It's going to take a lot of SELLING to cause The Invisible Touch to touch Selling The Invisible. It appears that Harry Beckwith follow-up book is good but not as GREAT as Selling The Invisible. Perception Is Reality and I do believe there are some very interesting concepts to salvage from this book. It still has the down to earth approach where he offers putting listening over researching. This book just seems so fundamental in the basics and therefore would be a great book for someone who needs a beginners approach. But if you're looking for new insight study The Wizard of Marketing or go back to Selling The Invisible.
Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE
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 First, see what may have been "invisible" previously.... ( mach1936 )
Having read this book when it was first published several years ago (2000), I recently re-read it, this time finding it even more thought-provoking than before. Harry Beckwith is an exceptionally clear, innovative business thinker. He fully understands the nature and extent of what is widely referred to as "the invisibility of the obvious." His thoughts about four "key" marketing concepts (i.e. price, brand, packaging, and relationships) are not head-snapping revelations. Rather, they are valuable reminders of what many readers already know but tend to forget or ignore.
According to Beckwith, research does not expose the truth; it blinds us to it. Research supports mediocre ideas and kills great ones. Therefore, "ignore hard evidence. Soft evidence is much more valuable." Here are some other ideas which put some white caps on my gray matter:
On best practices: Ignore others'; create your own.
On leadership: People don't lead. Purposes do.
On mediocrity: There are no ordinary jobs. There are only people who insist on performing them in ordinary ways.
On pricing: The more a product or service costs, the better it seems. Push prices higher. Higher prices don't just talk; they tempt. If people come for your price, they will leave for someone else's.
On branding: Your business is your brand. Look for a brand that people can see, smell, taste, touch, feel, or hear -- or better yet, experience all five. Look for a name that makes the prospect, not you, sound important. Brands trump quality.
On packaging: Look as great as you are. ("Where do service businesses err? They spend timid -- and end up looking timid.") Create the environment that will create in your clients the crucial feeling: their feeling of importance. Your package is your service.
On building relationships: Inorder to make and keep a sale, make and keep a powerful connection. Create an "oasis" for your customers. Refuse bad business -- and get rid of it fast. Choose the clients who are most like you. Avoid "blind dates." To gain loyal clients, find loyal people. Seek clients you would want as friends. Go slowly. Relationships take time. To build trust, build consistency -- in everything you do. Sacrifice is the cement of human relationships. Nothing bonds someone to you more.
Granted, as suggested earlier, these are not head-snapping revelations but they do challenge a reader to re-evaluate her or his own core concepts and basic assumptions about marketing. Years ago, Peter Drucker asserted that "The purpose of every business is to create and then keep customers." In this volume, Beckwith shares his own ideas about HOW to accomplish those two objectives. I agree with him that "We cannot wait for the Absolute Truths, of which there are so few. We must settle for some Apparently Useful Premises: assumptions that usually produce good results."
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out all of Beckwith's other books as well as Theodore Levitt's The Marketing Imagination, Jason Jennings Think Big, Act Small, Gary Harpst's Six Disciplines for Excellence, and Seth Godin's All Marketers Are Liars.
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Focus on Customer Satisification and not Price Discounting ( goldenlionkempo )
Market Research has limits. The end result of any market research project can be engineered to give a predictable outcome. For example, in a sampling of 18 people - questions were ask about a specific product likes and dislikes and a conclusion drawn about the product. Next, the pool size was increased to 500 people with the similar characteristics found in the first 18 person sample and surprising the same marketing research results were achieved. So, marketing decisions driven by market research can be hazardous, if absolute faith in the conclusions of the Research are followed. Also, too further break down reliance on market research, Beckwith states that people exhibit the Heisenburg principle meaning people change their behavior when they are being studied. Beckwith concludes, soft research is better than hard research and the bottom line is to listen to the customer.
The Marketing has fallacies. Best practices make an invitation to ordinariness. Instead of following Best practices, innovate and create best practices.
Focus on satisification and equate quality too price believing that customer who have perspection of receiving quality will pay a higher price. Price discounting works in special cases. Price discounting is designed too acquire new customers and destroy competitor profit margins causing them to collaspe. For most companies discounting only attracts the wrong type of customer.
Focus on achieving customer satisification rather than cutting price. Customers, who are bargin hunters will flee to businesses that offer lower price. These type of customers are always looking for cheaper product and customer loyalty is a function of price. For every one large discount store, it destorys 100 smaller businesses while attract high volume of customers at low prices and profit margins. These companies expect people to buy more product because of the lower price and profit off the higher volume of sales. So, the lower profit margin per product is offset by higher volume of products sold. The only way to combat the discount business model is to offer better service, more specialized products, and a stronger focus on meeting customer expectations. Rather than seeking larger numbers of people, emphasis a business model with a selective group of customers with more disposable money, and selective tastes for products and services; stay on the upper pyramid of product and service differentiation. For example, Boston Market thought, if they offer discount coupons, they would increase foot traffic into their stores and the clientele would love their food. So they offer coupons and increased traffic, slowed down service time per customer, fustrated the clientele that should have become their loyal customers and attracted the wrong type of customer. Boston Market stock valued at $41 share price plummetted to 33 cents, as the company cut its coupons and the clientele seeking discount priced food fled. The prime customer was also fed up with delayed service and the company entered Chapter 11.
Build Brand as a mental expection that the customer believes he will get. Branding has become the most effective when customers nolonger are willing to do comparative pricing and analysis and instead select a product because of its brand. Brand is the symbol that people associate with a specific expectation which is often better than reality. Brand can create an expectation so strong that the customer ignores diminished quality and value in the product or service. Brand represents the symbol companies seeks to position in the minds of the customer.
Packaging adds beauty to the product and reinforces the brand.
Focus on the customer relationship. Seek customers like yourself. This does two things: 1) Increases understanding of the customer and predictablity of his responses 2) Reduces complaints and nonsolvable conflicts with unsatisified customers.
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Common Sense and Great Examples: Overall, a Great Book! ( michaelgordon1 )
As a small business owner, one of the most important factor in receiving (and keeping) business is marketing. Beckwith provides a lot of common-sense tools (that are frequently ignored by Fortune 500) companies that can be enormously benefectial--such as refering to a person's first name, and showing passion for one's work, true passion. Yet many of us forget how important common sense is when we are involved in our business. Beckwith's main advice is to remember the human touch--that you are dealing with humans. That means a certain style, a welcoming style, has to be imbedded in all that you do in your business. A very good book!Michael
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