The service industry is growing compared to the product. Even if businesses are selling products they are focused on the service, and how they are offering this product to customers. MacDonald’s for example did not focus their business success on selling burgers, but instead on their service, a clean environment, excellent customer service, clean bathrooms, and speedy delivery of burgers and premium fries. If you are going to market for your service, you can’t use the same marketing approach that you would use if you are marketing for a product. You need a new one. Customers can’t evaluate services the same way as products, and many times you might not be able to easily get an honest answer from them if they liked it or not. Most businesses in the service industry also need to reevaluate their way, according to Selling the Invisible, because it no longer works.

             To start with, Selling the Invisible will want you to assume that your service is bad. It needs improving. However good you think you are you need to work on improving and making your service better. This is one of the fundamentals, of fixing your service. Another point is also to make sure that your focus is right, and that you are serving your customer, not your industry or your ego. Always look for what your customers might need and make sure your service attends to those needs. Don’t set your standards by comparing yourself to others in the industry, rather by making sure your service satisfies your customers and is a standard that leaves the customers happy with the experience you gave them. All employees in the company have to be involved in this part. They all have to involve themselves in the marketing department and try to understand what a customer wants.

             As your team markets for your business based on what they need you will be able to therefore improve your service accordingly. Surveying is one of the best ways of knowing how to improve your marketing plan. Surveying people and your customers will change the way you perceive your own business as it is hard to get an honest review of what people really thought of your service. Having a third party carry out this service will also help you get more honest reviews, as people will feel more comfortable when they deal with people who don’t directly work for the business they went to. You won’t need to jump to conclusions or go off in the wrong direction, you will know exactly what a customer felt and where you possibly went wrong. Surveying also gives a chance to keep the connection between you and your customers alive, and at the same time helps you make an offer and bring them back to your business.

Marketing is a Part of Everyone’s Job   

  In Japan, marketing is everyone’s department. Selling the Invisible makes it clear that it is important that everyone in the company is marketing the business in one way or another. There is always something to improve from the bottom to the very top. The inclusion of technology in your marketing strategy is also important as it helps in innovation and staying up to date. Your strategy or plan that you start with will probably always change. If a marketing campaign doesn’t work for a week, go back to zero. Change it and start again for another week until you are able to reach your customers and be able to offer them what they need. Human behavior is unpredictable, therefore you can’t rely on data and science to design your marketing plan. Planning is not definite and can at best rely on general observations. The competitive strategy works with the product industry more, when it comes to services, you need to keep your focus more on people who haven’t used your service yet. These potential customers might just be nervous about using your service and this gives you an opening to be able to go engage and communicate with them, building a relationship. This relationship is what will help you determine what your customers might want and help you adjust your business accordingly. 

Who you should work with according to selling the invisible

Selling the invisible also has another important point that involves the fact that you need to focus on your people. You can’t always make the right plan or strategy, but having the right people in your company who are outstanding, then they will help you make the right decisions. At the same time, you need to execute plans and ideas straight away, waiting for tomorrow to make sure it’s the right decision is a mistake. The book views organizations as sharks where that need to keep moving in order to be able to survive. If you don’t learn to keep on moving, then you will stay in place and fail.

By keeping in mind the fact that you need to always be acting on new ideas, it’s important to keep on building tactics as they are more important than strategies and planning. Tactics make you understand what really works and what doesn’t. You might think your service is better than what it actually is and by always trying things out in the field instead of planning it out you will be able to have a better idea of what people actually want by seeing what they are reacting to. Intelligent people usually ignore good ideas, because good ideas can sound stupid at first. It is wise therefore to use ideas even if they sound stupid because they can prove to be the best. 

Selling the Invisible Conclusion 

Another thing to keep in mind when planning is the fact that our memories usually tend to fail us. We might remember events and situations differently than what actually happened. What you might remember as a positive situation might actually have been bad, what you might think people liked might not really be what they liked and that is why you have to be careful because you won’t always remember things as they were. Past experiences can make you leave a strategy that is perfect for your campaign. That is why you should sometimes ignore what certain experiences might tell you when it comes to executing a new strategy, and when executing that strategy do it with passion for it will show. Always question yourself and beware of being overconfident. Allow yourself to see other people’s ideas clearly.