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.
Features and Benefits - To learn more about this author, visit Nikki Owen's Website.
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Nikki Owen
(Visit Nikki's Website)
Nikki Owen has dedicated the last 16 years
to the development of sales professionals
and sales leaders for many large
international organizations. She has
coached and mentored over 6,000 sales
people and their leaders.
In 2004 Nikki conducted the largest sales
research projects ever undertaken,
involving 2663 organizations to identify
the 5 biggest barriers to sales success.
This extensive report has been referred to
in global publications as the ultimate
solution to creating high-performing sales
teams.
Nikki is the creator of The Sales
Activator® an award winning sales toolkit.
As a certified Master Practitioner and
Trainer of NLP, Nikki is an expert with
applying seeming complex techniques within
a corporate sales infrastructure. Nikki
lectures on sales leadership using her own
case studies from her client portfolio
including Shell, Barclays Bank and Zurich
Life. In 2007 she became an accredited
firewalking instructor with the
Firewalking Institute of Research and
Education and studies Quantum Physics.
Nikki is the author of 'A Second Chance to
Live' that was first published in 1991 by
Transworld and was translated and sold in
16 different countries. She has been
interviewed on numerous television and
radio shows and is finalising her next
book titled – An Audience with Charisma
based on her cutting-edge seminars that
she hosts at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre,
London.
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