Are you selling features or benefits?
What is the benefit that someone is buying when they buy a wristwatch? The first thing that came to mind was something like “the ability to tell what time it is”? If so, you’ve fallen into the Feature/Benefit trap that we often fall into when developing our promotional materials and sales presentations.
A feature is an attribute or characteristic of your product or service. And a benefit is the value of the feature or attribute to your prospect. So, in the example above, a feature is “keeps accurate time” and a benefit could be “keeps you from being late for important meetings or events.” Too often we promote features when our customers are buying benefits.
Benefits appeal to the desires and values of our prospects, and at the highest level, benefits generally fall into three categories:
1. Money: The product or service helps the buyer earn or save money.
2. Time: The product or service helps the buyer save time or free up time to do other things.
3. Ego: The product or service somehow makes the buyer feel good.
Ultimately, your product or service must appeal to your buyer in one of these three areas. In addition, when developing benefits you should keep the following five considerations in mind:
1. The importance of benefits differs depending on the target audience you want to communicate with. Often, there are a variety of influencers and decision makers involved in a purchase decision. You need to tailor your promotional materials and presentation to each.
2. It is important to consider the needs and wants of your target audience when selecting benefits to promote. The needs and desires of a Timex buyer are very different from those of a Rolex buyer. Therefore, the features and benefits emphasized in promotional materials are going to be different.
3. Choose benefits that differentiate your product or service from the competition, or at least those that your target market perceives as differentiating.
4. Benefits must be backed by features. Promoting benefits without features leads to a lack of credibility. A benefit statement such as “Our IT system will improve productivity by up to 45%, saving you $75K a year and paying for itself in just eight months” should be accompanied by the features that drive those benefits or your target market. you will not believe the benefit, you will not have credibility.
5. While your benefits message should appeal to the higher-level values of money, time, and ego, it should also communicate those benefits in between that lead to higher income, time savings, and “feel good.” If you’ve ever attended a networking event, I’m sure you’ve had the experience of hearing five people say, “We help businesses improve their revenue.” And the people who claim to provide this benefit can be as diverse as a CPA and an advertising account executive. Without some information about the intermediate benefits they provide, such as “improved communication with your target market”, the higher-level benefit of “enhanced profits” is worthless.
Sometimes it’s hard to sort out features and benefits in your mind as you develop your promotional materials or sales presentations. One way to ensure that you are promoting benefits and not functions is to indicate a function followed by “what does it mean” and/or “what for”. For example, “All of our CPAs take 40 hours a year of continuing education on tax law changes. This means we can make sure you take all the deductions you’re entitled to so you save money on your tax bill.” at the end of the year”. year.”
One of the difficulties in crafting our own feature and benefit statements is that the benefits of a particular feature are so clear to us that we assume they are clear to our target market as well. And that is a dangerous assumption. You can use the “So what?” test to make sure you are communicating the benefits to your target market.
Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects and read the benefit statement. If you, as a potential customer, can answer “So what? So what does this mean for me?” so you are still communicating functions. Once you’ve communicated a benefit, your prospect can no longer respond with “So what?”
Here’s a five-step process you can implement to develop features and benefits for your product or service and ensure you’re communicating the benefits that are important to your target market.
Step 1: Describe your product or service in 25 words or less.
Step 2 – Specifically identify a customer group you want to target with your message.
Step 3: List the problems that your product or service solves for the above customer group and/or the needs and wants that the product or service satisfies for the group.
Step 4: With the information above in mind, list three to five features of your product or service that solve the problems or meet the needs described in Step 3. Remember to use “what it means” and “what for” to move between features to benefits and from intermediate level values to higher values.
Step 5: Test each feature and benefit statement using the “So what?” Test.
Taking the time and energy to clearly communicate the benefits to your target market will lead to a message that resonates with your prospects, leading to increased sales of your product or service.
