Marketing Your Services: For People Who Hate to Sell

By Rick Crandall

To many people, marketing means personal selling or advertising, imposing oneself on others, and trying to get people to buy something they may not want. Rick Crandall debunks these myths in Marketing Your Services, a grassroots guide to marketing and building relationships with customers to achieve success. Directed primarily to entrepreneurs, small business owners and solo service providers, the book offers more than 1000 practical tips that can help make a marketer out of anyone who wants to serve customers better. Crandall intentioned this book as a marketing crash course specifically for service providers - from lawyers to freelance writers, from carpenters to landscapers. All of the basics of marketing are explained in easy-to-understand terms. Helpful hints, tips and suggestions are illustrated through examples with which non-professional marketers can easily identify. The overall tone is conversational and reassuring.The expanded & updated edition reflects a thorough revisior including a change in organization, so the book begins with chapters on marketing basics -- like advertising, sales, and publicity -- then moves into more focused chapters addressing professional and relationship building methods. A new chapter on online marketing is included and examples of effective online marketing techniques and strategies are woven in throughout. Self-motivation is given more extensive coverage, international examples have been added as have more specific examples from service business start-ups. The lengthy appendices have been updated to include new templates and examples.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071398716
• ISBN13: 9780071398718
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.9" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

Relationship building & consultative marketing approach

I launched a successful graphic design business using dozens of the marketing approaches that fill Rick Crandall's book. Six years later I re-located, re-read the book, and started all over. Hundreds of tried and true strategies for getting your offering "out there" are well-organized in the various chapters of the book. There are lots of good real-life examples and something for everyone. Rick points out that when buying services, people don't reallly know what they're getting until the service has been provided. Potential customers must decide to hire you based on trust. Therefore, relationship building is critical to marketing intangible services, and the consultative marketing approach Rick advocates shows the customer you have their best interests at heart. I still refer to the book often and share relevant strategies with clients developing their own businesses.

GREAT book!

I was surprised by this one. I expected fluff but instead got practical ideas and tested methods and lots of colorful stories to bring it all to life. I highly reccomend this one....

Must-read for anyone trying to promote a service business!

I've just started a consulting business and I have no marketing experience. I've also realized this business is more than consulting, I need to learn how to sell myself! Most marketing books focus on "product" marketing - a lot of their methods do not apply to service marketing. This book is fun to read and applies marketing methods specifically to service businesses and provides real-world actions you can take today to promote your business with little or no money! I've already implemented some of the methods. I love this book!

A Marketplace Of Great Marketing Ideas!

     Do you desire to go online to sell your products and services? Every day people go online with the hope of successfully marketing the products and services they have to offer the world. How about you? Are you in need of a consultant to provide some winning solutions? Rick Crandall has written Marketing Your Services to offer some fresh ideas that will help you to effectively market yourself.     Crandall, who wrote 1001 Ways to Market Your Services, offers detailed coaching throughout this book to equip readers with the know-how they need to succeed. Readers are encouraged to take advantage of everyday opportunities such as current events, community affairs, and the media to gain an audience and prospective clients. Clever, thoughtful, and honest advice is a valued commodity these days. Humor is important too! Crandall offers it all here!     The book includes chapters dealing with a variety of marketing strategies, such as seeking free publicity, networking, referrals, public speaking, writing, publishing newsletters, and using telephones, fax machines, and the Internet. An appendix offers 105 great marketing ideas that will get anyone noticed quick! Although the book does not deal entirely with online marketing, every matter discussed in the book can in some way be directly applied to the online community.     Reading through this book will give readers plenty of great marketing ideas. The author's warm personal approach makes this book believable and very easy to read. Entrepreneurs offering any product or service, regardless of their levels of experience, can put this marketing book to effective use. Highly recommended!