Harry Beckwith is the author of Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch, both marketing classics. Now he applies his unparalleled clarity, insight, humor, and expertise to a new age of mass communication and mass confusion. What Clients Love will help you stand out from the crowd-and sell anything to anyone. From making a pitch to building a brand, from designing a logo to closing a sale, this is a field guide to take with you to the front lines of today’s business battles. Filled with real tales of success and failure, it shows you how to:

Fly a Jefferson Airplane. Everyone knows there’s a Jefferson Monument, but a Jefferson Airplane? A brilliant, attention-grabbing name often includes the unexpected and the absurd. Strike with a Velvet Sledgehammer. It’s not a hard sell. It’s not exactly soft. Selling well means finding the fine line between modesty and bragging, and driving the message home.

Speak to the Frenchman on the Street. A French mathematician believed that no theory was complete until you could explain it to the first person you meet on the street. Marketers, ecoutez!

Dress Julia Roberts. Why, one scene from Pretty Woman can enlighten you more than a full year of study at a top business school. What Clients Love will help you get focused, stay focused, and follow the essential rules to success-by doing the little things right and the big things even better.

This is a pleasant contemporary book on selling and branding in a marketplace where the average consumer is deluged with 3,200 advertising messages a day. In a format that makes for an excellent read while traveling, the book consists of short, colorful 300 to 1,000 word treatments of various topics, such as selling, branding and customer service. At times, author Harry Beckwith’s approach seems episodic. It’s not always clear what one section has to do with another. However, he nicely avoids business-speak jargon, and spatters the book with accessible pop culture examples, including motion pictures, clever ads and other common points of reference. The book’s shortcoming resides more in the area of substance and depth of thinking. Each brief essay ends with a catchy one-sentence aphorism such as: “Comfort clients and you will keep them” or “Edit your message until everyone understands it.” The author has invested a great deal of time devising colorful ways to tell you things that, upon further reflection, you probably already know. If you’re too busy to keep up on the latest trends in marketing and sales, reading this is an excellent way to make sure you’re current.

• To design a better business, ask questions like: “What would people really love?”
• Don’t bother asking consumers what they really want. They rarely know.
• Seek the “White Hot Center” where popular culture meets mass demand.
• Forget trying to predict the future – even the experts can’t do it effectively.
• Eschew perfection. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
• If you can’t describe your product’s distinctiveness in 25 words, redefine your business.
• In a world of information overload, use simple messages and try to find spaces where your competition isn’t already shouting from the rooftops.
• Branding is critical. It’s worth the investment of time and money to discover a unique brand that communicates your product’s value proposition to your customers.
• Today’s clients expect more. Comfort them by giving them a sense of importance stemming from the way you cater to their needs.
• In life and business, optimism is your greatest asset. Think positively.

“Drawing Your Blueprints”

Author Henry Beckwith was giving a speech to a business group and it just wasn’t going well. He was talking, but nobody seemed to be listening. A number of folks in the audience checked their watches as he spoke. He didn’t feel connected to his listeners and he stumbled through his presentation until finally his speaking time expired. Later his host explained where he went wrong: “You mispronounced our president’s name,” he said. “Three times. That threw everyone off.” This inadvertent offense turned Beckwith’s audience against him, and he learned a lesson: technical competence alone is no longer enough. Being able to do the job may earn you a seat at the table in today’s “evolved economy,” but once you’re seated, what really matters is maintaining strong relationships.

“Belief steels us with the courage to take the risks that the faithless avoid, and to reap the rewards that follow – to realize that our lives grow in proportion to our courage.”

Designing a better business begins with asking questions. Don’t bother interrogating clients or conducting surveys – consumers rarely know what they want until they already have it. What customer ever asked for ATMs, heated car seats or Cirque du Soleil – until some innovative individual or team brought them to market? People forget that for years, nobody – other than a few thousand nerds in labs – had the least interest in having a home computer. Now, many consumers feel they couldn’t live without their personal computers.

“Triumph, then, belongs to those who believe.”

So what questions do you ask and which expert do you interrogate to gather the information to design and redesign a better business? The answer is: start with yourself. Begin drawing your blueprints by asking yourself questions such as: “What would people love?” “How would I beat us?” “If I were starting the business again from scratch, what would we do differently?” These questions will help you draw new blueprints for your business and find the “White Hot Center,” that place in society where popular culture meets mass demand for a product. For example, think of the poster showing Farrah Fawcett on a skateboard wearing red and white Nike Cortez shoes. That set off a fad that helped Nike go mainstream. Later, Nike made a transition to using athletes, such as basketball star Michael Jordan, to present its product.

“The company that waits for guarantees is doomed. Nothing in business is guaranteed.”

Restaurateur Wolfgang Puck found the same marketing moment. When he opened Spago in Hollywood in 1982, he had his hostesses study Variety so they could recognize the town’s movers and shakers. His staff memorized stars’ and moguls’ food preferences, and his restaurant soon attracted a powerful crowd that helped spread his notoriety around the nation and the world. Puck successfully found the white hot center. Of course, such success doesn’t happen by accident. You need to master the 14 principles of planning. They work like this:

1. “Forget the future” – You can’t see the future clearly no matter how hard you stare at it. Better to move forward based on certainties rather than conjecture. The one certainty you can be sure of is: People will pay dearly for what they love.
2. “Stop listening” – Everyone will tell you to listen to your customers, but don’t. When companies make changes based on what customers say they want, customers either ignore them or don’t like the changes 85% of the time. It’s better to watch than to listen. Observe the trends and changes you see around you.
3. “Celebrate foolishness” – Don’t dismiss a new product that is amusing but apparently trivial. “Think dumb.”
4. “Resist authority” – Most ideas come from groups; most groups are run by Alpha personalities. Therefore, most ideas aren’t very good. Alphas are great at seizing power, but not very good at coming up with useful, original ideas.
5. “View experts skeptically” – Experts are often proven wrong.
6. “Mistrust experience” – Never listen to those who say something didn’t work when they tried it before. Memory is very fallible.
7. “Mistrust confidence” – Even when you’re wrong, you’re likely to think you’re right. This fact provides a solid reason to question all apparent facts.
8. “Avoid perfection” – Trying to “be the best” is often self-defeating. Even champion golfer Tiger Woods says he seeks “professional excellence” rather than perfection.
9. “Beware of common sense” – Physicist Albert Einstein once called common sense “the collection of prejudices we acquire by age 18.”
10. “Beware of ’science’” – Look out for the phrase: “…the research shows.” Research rarely shows you what customers would really love.
11. “Embrace impatience” – Shake things up in your organization. Companies, like people, need to move around and get exercise.
12. “Find the water” – Send out small search parties to find promising new business opportunities, but eschew centralized planning.
13. “A warning” – The phrase “let’s wait until we’re sure” has been the death knell of many businesses. There are no guarantees, except that waiting for one will cost you.
14. “Search for 100-X” – Look for a business that will return your investment 100 times. Spend your time looking for big answers rather than small ones.

“Four Building Blocks”

Information overload has increased exponentially, along with the pace of life. On an average day, you will be exposed to 3,200 commercial messages. Everyone is trying to communicate with your prospects at the same time, and customers can’t hear above the din. The messages that do leak through tend to be simple, striking and unique.

“Everything is shorter quicker faster – to the point where a separate book could demonstrate that human beings may be in the early stages of developing a new, abbreviated form of communicating – because people want it short quick fast.”

People crawl along as life races past. No one can absorb all of the information that is available, so consumers no longer focus on understanding services or products. Instead, they focus on choosing which individual or group they will believe. The way you behave and the way you look become more important than mere words, which fall in a continual torrent that compromises their value. To communicate better, write more often. Writing helps you clarify your ideas, and writing for publication will help you get recognized as an expert. The “four rules for getting yourself ink” are:

1. Study the publication you hope will publish your writing.
2. Only pitch your very best ideas to the editors.
3. Realize you aren’t selling words; you’re selling satisfied readers who identify with your story and the publication that printed it.
4. Thank editors for their assistance following publication (but don’t grovel).

“The next time two paths appear before you, avoid the one of least resistance; a path with no obstacles rarely leads anywhere.”

In addition, use these four building blocks to communicate amid information overload:

1. Don’t compete with the noise – Speak only where others tend to be silent. Advertise or seek publication where your competition isn’t already crowing loudly.
2. A little says more than a lot – Find a key message and a unique way to communicate.
3. Use pictures rather than words whenever possible – Images leave a lasting impression and people notice them more quickly.
4. Waste no words – Any word that doesn’t have to be present is simply “noise” that interferes with your message. “Shorter sells.” If you can’t find 25 words that perfectly describe your product’s uniqueness, rethink what your company is doing.

“The Velvet Sledgehammer: A Compelling Message”

In today’s environment, “unselling” sells better than selling. Great sales techniques include:

• “Admit a weakness” – This disarms prospects and makes them trust you.
• “Sell yourself first” – People buy you and your product. Sell based on relationships.
• “Sell soft” and “Sell slow” – Always explain your position, but respect clients’ boundaries and show humility. Remember, “hard sales lose business.”
• “Stop and clarify” – People tend to nod when they really don’t comprehend something you say, but don’t want to appear dumb. The nod is a signal to stop.
• “Tell me a story” – Storytelling can help clients understand your ideas and products.
• “Use visual aids sparingly” – Don’t let your props distract your prospect.

“Blue Martinis and Omaha Surfing”

Branding is the only thing that carries the day in a hyper-competitive marketplace. Consider the great brand name Blue Martini. This sales-software company leveraged its evocative name to rocket out of its IPO five years ago with a valuation of $12 per share. “Loudcloud” and “Yahoo” are also great brand names. To find words that you can put together in unique combinations to create a remarkable, distinctive, engaging brand, consult with your network of friends or free associate. Choosing your brand could be your most crucial business decision.

“Americans the Beautiful and Pretty Woman: Caring Service”

Buying a product and buying a service are very different. When you buy a product, you focus on the product, its qualities and its presumed benefits. When you prepare to buy a service, you consider who the supplier is almost immediately. The human element, which matters in any sales transaction, becomes that much more crucial.

“If you want loyal customers, address them – personally – and serve the best ones passionately.”

Today we live in a Pretty Woman world, as in the movie where Richard Gere, playing a very wealthy man, takes Julia Roberts into a chic Beverly Hills boutique. He points to Roberts, playing a streetwalker he plans to escort into fancy society, and tells the salesclerk: “We’re going to need some major sucking up here.” Clients today expect more. They expect better treatment tomorrow than they got today. Continually strive to improve your service. Make every client feel important by the way you listen and cater to his or her individual needs.

“The Traits Clients Love”

You can do a few things that will endear you to your valued clients over time:

• “Reveal yourself” – Be open and let your customers see your human side.
• “Integrity matters” – “If you want people to believe in you, you’ll have to earn it.” Or, as Mark Twain once wrote, “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
• “Never praise yourself” – And, never “criticize a competitor.”
• “Comfort clients and you will keep them” – This may be the best advice of all, because so often what clients really seek is comfort. That may mean physical comfort, or it may be the sense of emotional security that comes from dealing with an excellent, responsive company that stands behind its product and service.

“But impersonal communications that violate people’s boundaries – letters, calls, or e-mails to their home, their most sacred boundary – do not merely fail to generate adequate business. They can reduce it.”

Today’s clients crave comfort. Elements that make customers comfortable include:

• Expertise – People feel better taking advice from those with demonstrable expertise.
• Clarification – People are more comfortable when they understand what’s going on.
• Character and honesty – Ultimately, this is all you can rely upon in business.
• Enthusiasm – People enjoy and respect your sense of passion.

“Your Greatest Asset”

Historian David Landes once searched the business landscape, like Diogenes with his lamp of truth, asking one question: What quality is most important to your success? The answer was surprisingly simple: optimism. Those with a positive outlook did better than those who shied away from the misfortune that they perceived dogged them constantly. Why is an optimistic outlook so important? Optimists believe they can conquer, and so they do. Often in life, the path of most adversity promises the biggest benefit, if only you can navigate it successfully. Only those who believe they can ford the river of resistance successfully even dare to try. And they are the ones emerge victorious.

Harry Beckwith is the head of Beckwith Partners. His marketing and advertising clients include major multinational corporations. He is a speaker and consultant, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford.