How do we decide who people really are -- and whether we should retain their services?
We look for clues. When a writer profiles a celebrity, for example, and wants to tell us who this celebrity really is, he observes and reports details. What shoes is she wearing? Is she wearing eye makeup? Does she serve water in simple Crate and Barrel glasses, or in Waterford crystal?
What's on her mantel: her Oscar, or pictures of her teenage children?
Does she bite her fingernails?
We try to hide ourselves behind large and obvious things: our house, cars and other outward gestures. Knowing this, when we want to discover the real person behind the veil we look for the tiny details.
Consider, as one vivid example, the heel.
What could be more obscure than a heel? The cartoon character Linus once hinted at the heel's obscurity -- and his own attempts at cultivating his image -- when Lucy one day asked him why he shined only the front of his shoes.
"I care what people think of me when I enter a room," Linus answered. "Who cares what they think when I leave?" Linus was wrong. People noticed the back of Linus's shoes well before he left. In fact, for decades it was precisely to a man's heels that people looked to determine his station in life. People knew that a man might continue to wear an expensive gold pocket watch and rich-looking silk tie for years, but that he would skimp on replacing the heels of his shoes when cash was short, thinking no one would notice.
But people did more than notice. People learned to look for that very detail. Thus entered into English the expressions "well-heeled" and "down at the heel." People looked at people's heels -- a tiny detail -- to tell who they were.
The next time you visit a Nordstrom store, sit in one of the chairs and ask, What's different about this chair? The company ordered it custom-built, at great expense, with a firm seat slightly lower to the ground than a standard chair's. Nordstrom designed these chairs after noticing how much effort it took customers to lift themselves out of heavily stuffed chairs.
Why did Nordstrom spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to custom-make its chairs? Because they understand that tiny details attract and keep customers.
"God is in the details," Mies van der Rohe is famous for saying.
Business is, too.
Copy your prospects: Watch your visible details.
Excerpts from Harry and Christine Clifford Beckwith's new book, You: A Field Guide to Selling Yourself (Warner Books September 2006).
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In A Name?
Les Miz.
FedEx.
AmEx.
Phantom.
Deloitte.
Do you see the pattern?
These are the de facto names of services who full names had more than eleven letters or more than four syllables, or both.
What happened? The human mind abhors longer names -- and refuses to use them.
This is why Federated Investors in 1999 changed its name to Federated, Federal Express surrendered and shortened its official name to what everyone called it anyway, and why companies ranging from Personal Defensive Measures in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Applied Medical resources in Laguna Hills, California, are changing their names. The names do not work.
One of the few known marketing jokes is on the subject of brands that are too long.
Two leather-skinned Texans find themselves side by side in a Houston bar. They begin to talk and learn they both own cattle ranches.
"So, what's the name of your ranch?" the first rancher asks.
"The Circle K," the second says. "What about yours?"
"Mine's the Lazy L Bar T Circle Q Sleepy C Triangle D."
"Jeez, you must have a ton of cattle!" the second says. "About how many head do you have?"
The first winced. "To tell you the truth, not that many. Most of 'em don't survive the branding."
To become a brand, keep your brand name short.
Welcome to our newest clients: Novartis (Basel, Switzerland); Intelligenxia (Tysons Corner, Virginia); Quick Sort (San Ramon, California); Merrill Lynch, Pershing, Popular Securities (Puerto Rico); Beers & Cutler (Vienna, Virginia); and The Wharton School (Pennsylvania). Perhaps we can add Stanford University, pending Harry's final vote next week to the Athletic Board of that University.
United 93. See it.
The Atlantic, now arguably having seized the title of America's best magazine away from The New Yorker, recently caught our eyes again. The hook was an article that repeated Harry's insistence in What Clients Love that the best management books can be found in the literature and philosophy sections, with history a strong third. The Atlantic writer, who once headed a successful management consulting firm, stresses what we've all experienced: everything you need to know about a particular job you learn on that job, not in a classroom. Being marketers more than educators these days, more colleges now are yielding to the informed demands of recent high school seniors by offering undergraduate business majors. (Next step: having students vote on what books they want to read for literature classes. Best bets: Harry Potter, some chick lit, the first page of Lolita, and nothing over 225 pages.) A college student can prepare better for real life by watching The Survivor or, for that matter, its previews, than by spending one dollar or one minute in an undergraduate business class. End of graduation speech.
New book You, Inc: The Art of Selling Yourself is now exactly nine months from the bookstores. Gold foil-stamped cover especially nice touch (hats off again to designer Bernadette Evangeliste). Editor and publisher Rick Wolff seems unusually enthusiastic about this one. Speaking of which, total U.S. sales to date: Selling the Invisble, 444,000; The Invisible Touch, 63,000; What Clients Love, 89,000. Total translations: 44.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has |
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made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. |
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E-mail questions and comments for Harry Beckwith to invisble@bitstream.net.