Getting started -- The greatest misconception about service marketing -- A world on hold -- The Lake Wobegon effect: overestimating yourself -- Those cartoons aren't funny -- Let your clients set your standards -- Bad news: you are competing with Walt Disney -- The butterfly effect -- A butterfly named Roger -- To err is an opportunity -- The ad-writing acid test -- The crash of Delta flight 1985-95 -- Getting better vs. getting different -- The first rule of marketing planning -- The possible service -- Surveying and research: Even your best friends won't tell you -- But they will talk behind your back -- Why survey? -- The letterman principle -- Frankly speaking: Survey by phone -- The one question you should never ask -- Focus groups don't -- Marketing is not a department -- Marketing myopia -- Tunnel vision -- Start with you and your employees -- What color is your company's parachute? -- What are you really selling? -- One thing most experts don't know -- Who is your client? -- With whom are you really competing? -- Hit 'em where they ain't -- The adapter's edge -- Study your points of contact -- Life is like high school -- Voted best personality -- Planning: The eighteen fallacies -- You can know what's ahead -- You can know what you want -- Strategy is king -- Build a better mousetrap -- There's be a perfect time (The Bedrock Fallacy) -- Patience is a virtue (The shark rule) -- Think smart (The crab concept) -- The fallacy of science and data -- The fallacy of focus groups -- The fallacy of memory -- The fallacy of experience -- The fallacy of confidence -- Perfection is perfection -- Failure is failure -- The fallacy of expertise -- The fallacy of authority -- The fallacy of common sense -- The fallacy of fate -- Anchors, Warts, and American express -- How prospects think -- Yeah, but I like it -- How prospects decide: choosing the familiar -- How prospects decide: using the most recent data -- How prospects decide: choosing "good enough" -- The anchoring principle -- Last impressions last -- Risky business -- You have nothing to fear but your client's fear itself -- Show your warts -- Business is in the details -- The more you say, the less people hear: positioning and focus -- Fanatical focus -- The fear of positioning -- Lesser logic -- Halo effects -- No two services are the same -- Position is a passive noun, not an active verb -- Creating your positioning statement -- How to narrow the gap between your position and your positioning statement -- What is it? -- Repositioning your competitors -- Postitioning a small service -- Focus: What Sears may have learned -- Focus and the Clinton campaign -- When the banker's eyes blurred: Citicorp's slip -- What else postitions and focus can do for you -- Ugly cats, boats shoes, and overpriced jewelry: Pricing -- Ugly cats, boat shoes, and overpriced jewelry: the sheer illogic of pricing -- Pricing: the resistance principle -- Avoiding the deadly middle -- The low-cost trap -- Pricing: a lesson from Picasso -- The carpenter corollary to the Picasso principle -- Value is not a position -- Monogram your shirts, not your company: naming and branding -- Monogram your shirts, not your company -- Don't make me laugh -- To stand out, stand out -- Tell me something I don't know -- Distinctive position, distinctive name -- What's in a name? -- Names: the information-per-inch test -- The cleverness of Federal Express -- The brand rush -- Aren't brands dying? -- The warranty of a brand -- The heart of a brand -- What brands do for sales -- Stand by your brand -- The four-hundred-grand brand -- Brands in a microwave world -- Brands and the power of the unusual -- Brands and the baby-sitter -- How to save $500,000: Communicating and selling -- Communicating: a preface -- Fran Lebowitz and your greatest competitor -- The cocktail party phenomenon -- The grocery list problem -- Give me one good reason -- Your favorite songs -- One story beats a dozen adjectives -- Attack the stereotype -- D.