Page 133 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

percent more than last year’s captain. In return for those three evenings and her
own $30 contribution, she never hears from the charity again.

Three weeks later a professional association invites a man to keynote its one-
day seminar. He says he can make it only by cutting one day short a vacation to
visit his mother and sister. The association begs, and the speaker relents.

Returning from his West Coast vacation, the speaker gets stranded in Denver.
He arrives in Minneapolis just in time to fuzzbust his way to the conference. He
catches his breath and delivers his speech. The audience responds very
enthusiastically. The seminar hosts barely respond. They mail a four-sentence
form letter to all thirteen speakers.

Five weeks later a famous art institution asks a prominent professional to
donate an evening to consult the institute. She does, rushing from dinner to
arrive early. A week later she, like her three fellow contributors, receives a two-
paragraph form letter. With it is a certificate for 20 percent off any art shop
purchase exceeding $50. In short, the institute thanks the woman for her entire
evening away from her family and for $425 worth of professional advice by
agreeing to make a slightly smaller profit on her next significant purchase.

How would you feel about those services? Would you contribute to their
success? Would you promote and patronize them?

Would you recommend them?
And these experiences also make me wonder: Did these services know the
impression they were making and the harm they were causing?
Have we forgotten to say thank you? Have you forgotten?
Do you thank people enough? Are you sure?

Poised for a Fall

Brace yourself.
A typical service client cannot tell when the service is performed well. He

cannot tell if the motivational speaker really motivated his salespeople, if the
tailor made the perfect alterations to make the suit most flattering, or if the
lawyer won a motion that another lawyer would have lost.

But a typical client is very good at seeing that the speech fell flat, that the
pant legs are 1/4" too long, and that the court denied his attorney’s motion.

In short, few clients know how good they have it—but all of them know how
bad.

And so, the central fact of service marketing is this frustrating one: It is much