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Features and Benefits

Written by: Nikki Owen

Article Overview: "Because nobody who bought a drill ever really wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. Therefore, if you want to sell drills, you should deliver information about making holes, not about drills!" Perry Marshall

Features and Benefits

If you’ve been in sales for a while then you’ll be completely aware of the importance of highlighting benefits when demonstrating how your products/services can fulfil each of the customer’s requirements.
Fundamentally a benefit is only a benefit once it matches the customer’s requirements. Think about it for a moment. Let’s suppose you wanted to buy a house and had a good amount of money to spend. Your absolute passion was to live in the countryside with acres of land so that you could wake up each morning to the birds singing their dawn chorus. You wouldn’t be remotely interested in a flash city apartment that was a real bargain, even if this apartment boasted of spectacular views over the city, the latest hi tech heating and sound system and 24 hour security. No matter how appealing the Real Estate Agent tried to make this apartment, it’s benefits would fall on deaf ears because they aren’t in alignment with your own specific requirements.

What’s the difference between a feature and a benefit?

● Feature = a characteristic of your products/services
● Benefit = the advantage that it brings to the customer

For example, one feature of a car might be the inclusion of airbags, the benefit of this feature being, the enhancement of passenger safety. If passenger safety is important to a particular customer then this will be a great benefit to highlight. Alternatively, if the customer is looking for an exciting ride and engine power, passenger safety is probably not going to be a hugely appealing benefit. Customers aren’t simply buying a product/service, they’re buying the benefits offered by that product/service that are aligned to their own needs and desires. When you emphasise benefits aligned to their requirements, you appeal directly to the customer’s personal and business motives. So, if you want to gain real competitive advantage, master the skill of presenting your products/services in a way that highlights how they match each customer’s specific requirements. Here’s how:

1 re-cap and summarise the customer’s requirements
Example: “You mentioned that you were looking for safety,
reliability, fuel economy and value for money.”

2 take each requirement and link to a relevant feature of your
products/services
Example: “Taking your requirement for safety, a major feature of
this car is the inclusion of a complete airbag system.”

3 then highlight the benefits gained from each feature
Example: “This enhances safety for every passenger and the driver.”

To help sales people learn this particular technique so they can use it with minimal preparation, it’s vitally important that they are fully aware of the potential benefits that every feature of their product or service can deliver. This expands their flexibility so that they become better equipped to ‘pick and mix’ what features and benefits will have greater leverage with each of their customers.

Related Articles
  Create a Powerful Marketing Story in Three Steps
  How to Turn Your No-Sales into Cash by Turning Your "Features" into "Benefits."
  Selling Benefits
  Selling The Sizzle Not The Steak
  So What

Article Tags: absolute passion, alignment, amount of money, bargain, benefit customers, birds, city apartment, competitive advantage, countryside, dawn chorus, deaf ears, desires, enhancement, hour security, inclusion, motives, passenger safety, real estate agent, spectacular views



Related Forum Posts
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
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.
How To Add A Paypal Button To Blogger - Hi Brendan, The blog is looking good. If possible, try to post something on it every day. You can vary the length of the posts, just something short when time is tight. There are two parts to getting the Paypal code on your site. First is getting the Paypal code! Second is getting it on your site! HOW TO GET YOUR PAYPAL CODE 1. Log in to Paypal 2. Click Merchant Services 3. Find the Key Features box on the right and click Donations. 4. Donations Page 1: Fill in the fields with your Donation name and a ref no. (the latter is not necessary). Choose a "Donate" button - I suggest the one with the pic of the credit cards beneath. It is up to you whether you "encrypt" or not. As you do not have a website there is no need to go to "Donations Page 2" for "more options", so you can just click "Create Button Now". 5. On the new page, click "Select All" for the "HTML Code for Websites" box and copy and paste the code to your blog. HOW TO GET YOUR PAYPAL DONATION BUTTON ON BLOGGER 1. Go to your Blogger.com dashboard. 2. Click the "Layout" tab. 3. Click "Add A Gadget" 4. Scroll down to HTML/JavaScript and click the + sign. 5. A small screen will pop up and you can PASTE your Paypal Donation Button code there and add a title if you wish. 6. Click SAVE on the small screen. 7. Now, back on the main screen you can preview and then SAVE. If all has gone well, you should now have a Paypal Donation button on your blog. === Best wishes, David H


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