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What Clients Love

A Field Guide to Growing Your Business

Harry Beckwith

Warner Books, 2003

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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. Yet, getAbstract finds that the short-bite, snappy presentation makes the book interesting. 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.

Summary

"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.

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...

About the Author

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.

What Clients Love

A Field Guide to Growing Your Business

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"Drawing Your Blueprints"

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