Your greatest competition is not your competition. It is indifference.

Want a good model for marketing your service in the nineties? Study the evolution of the automobile industry. The first car met only some minimum standards because that is what products and services do in stage one of any industry. In stage one, meeting acceptable minimum standards is the driving force: Get a basic, acceptably reliable product.

If you cannot write a reasonably good ad for your service—an ad that makes an attractive promise to your prospect—your service needs fixing. Write an ad for your service. If after a week your best ad is weak, stop working on the ad and start working on your service.

Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.

Surprising the customer is the driving force in stage three of an industry. Stage three, as a result, is imagination-driven, and a company in this stage offers the possible service.

Unfortunately, this focus on getting the word outside distracts companies from the inside, and from the first rule of service marketing: The core of service marketing is the service itself

Don’t assume that logical pricing is smart pricing. Maybe your price, which makes you look like a good value, actually makes you look second-rate.

products, communicating about services must make the service more tangible and real, and must soothe the worried prospect.

No one—not even the most innovative and remarkable company in its industry—can be many things to many people. No matter how skilled you are, you must focus your skills.