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Features VS. Benefits-the Key to Jolting Your Sales NOW

Written by: Stefan Doering

Article Overview: Focusing on the benefits of your product and/or service is key to successful marketing. Learn how to increase your sales with these simple marketing strategy adjustments.

Features VS. Benefits-the Key to Jolting Your Sales NOW

Earlier this week I was teaching marketing to about 20 entrepreneurs here in NYC. After the class several came up to say they got some super-cool tips on how to immediately impact their sales with little or no cost. Just rewriting and designing their marketing strategies based on what they just learned.

And here is what they learned: the difference between selling the features and benefits of your product or service.

Features—a physical or tangible component of your product / service. Using a product example, a bicycle: weighs only 23 pounds, has 21 gears, Shimano brakes, 110PSI high-pressure tires, and is designed light and built for speed.

And for service-based businesses, an example would be a chiropractor’s office: we offer a 10 minute evaluation and assessment of your pain (or situation), then do a series of 3 to 5 treatments over the course of two weeks, followed be an additional assessment, and so on.

Benefits—the non-physical, emotional and intangible reactions to your product / service. In our product example: this super-light, super-fast bicycle with 21 gears will make sure you can get up that insane mountain you have been training for all these months. When you get to the top, you’ll look behind you and know you just conquered that amazing ride you’ve been dreaming about….

In our service example: your initial evaluation with our top chiropractor will immediately ensure you are getting the exact treatment you need for your situation, and as quickly as possible. With this you can relax and let our expert chiropractor do his (her) magic on your body. Watch how quickly your body will respond to his (her) touch and adjustments.

Question: Do you think people buy from features or benefits?

In our class this week this became a debate. Some said features, some said benefits and some said both.

We all agreed that people buy onbenefits. BENEFITS!

Why?

Because people want to know how they will benefit from using your product or service. Yeah, sure it is helpful knowing how many gears the bike has, but really getting them to feel the accomplishment of getting to the top of the amazing mountain is what is going to override the features.

If theyfeelthe possibility of owning your product (or hiring you for your service), you will make the sale so much easier to accomplish.

People buy on emotions!

Still not convinced? Look at Apple’s iPhones. For many, many people, if it ain’t an iPhone (or other Apple product) they arenotinterested. It is NOT because of the features (although this certainly helps) it is because they have positioned themselves quite successfully as a hip, cool, state-of-the-art company. And people want a piece of THAT in their lives.

STILL not convinced? Park your rear-end in front of the TV for 30 minutes. Watch two cable stations: Home Shopping Network and QVC. Just watch what these masters of selling do: they can take the ugliest piece of (you know what) and sell millions of them. How they do it is mention (briefly) a feature and then spend 10 minutes talking about all the benefits of it.

Benefits, benefits,benefits!

So if it is in fact benefits that sell your product or service, where are you putting your marketing resources: features or benefits?

If the former, I highly, (I meanhighly)recommend you immediately shift your energy into the latter.

And if you do not immediately see results, please e-mail me. I’m not kidding!

Action Steps for the Week

Take a look at your product or service. Make a list of the top 5 features of it.

Next, write as many benefits as you can think of for each of those features. Go nuts with this and then pick the top 10-15 of them (depending on how you will use this information.)

HERE’S THE CATCH: Do this from yourcustomers’perspective, not yours!

If you are not sure their perspective, find out. There are many ways to get this feedback from them: surveys, calling them, standing on the street corner and asking them, you name it.

Once you are clear on what the benefits are, you are now ready to put your promotional materials together. Briefly mention the feature and then all its benefits. Do this for the top features.

NOTE: avoid grandiose claims like, “The world’s best…” or “You’ll love the taste of…” That stuff does not work. Instead, back it up with statistics, data, survey results, scientific discoveries, etc. Third party endorsements are golden.

Lastly, use testimonials that add credibility to what you promote.

Do these to your marketing and you will most likely be amazed at the quick results you will see

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Article Tags: benefits, features, marketing, results, sales, strategy



Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: A litte help!! - triple34, Here is some feedback: 1. Font too small. i had to strain to read it. I'm on a WinXP PC running resolution 1024x768. 2. Background is distracting - mainly causes the text to be more unreadable. 3. From a Sales point of view: -- Should offer education - possibly something to download. You need a hook to capture prospects so that you can followup with them. I'm not sure what that hook will be but I would ask firefighters and chiefs or more importantly the decision makers that would buy your software. -- Demo Video's are good but it should prep the listener prior to it starting as what will be covered -- I would break down the video's into smaller chunks to demonstrate different aspects of it's capability. This serves to do two things - 1. highlights Features and gives you the opportunity to state benefits. 2. makes it more manageable for the listener to watch a particular part that is most interesting to themselves.
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Searchable famous entrepreneurs - Hi Evan, I definitely like the new sort able "Famous Entrepreneurs" features, but you should also consider including a Famous Entrepreneur search feature. For instance, you could have a blank field so that people can simply type in the name of the entrepreneur they're looking for and then call up all the related articles/profiles on that person. I'm just not a huge fan of going to the "Features" page and pressing "Ctrl/F".
Categorizing the Famous Entrepreneur Profiles? - By the way Evan, what do you think about my idea to categorize your list of Famous Entrepreneur Profiles by industry rather than by alphabetical order? For instance, if I was a small business owner looking to enter the food industry, I might want to look for inspiration from famous entrepreneurs in a related field (like profiles on Dave Thomas, Harland Sanders, Debbi Fields, etc...). It just seems a bit time consuming having to run down the long list of names you have on the "Features" page. Thanks


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