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Features, Advantages and Benefits
Hey there,
Why is it that most people in business think that they are going to sell what they have by delivering a list of features along with a few reasons why someone should buy their product?
The truth is that there is a much deeper psychological process behind making a decision to buy something than most business people realize.
When selling to Consumers, the pitch must appeal to a buyer’s emotions or the sale is simply not going to take place. When selling B2B, keep in mind that the buyer is still a human being with needs and a strong desire to succeed – a benefits oriented approach has been proven to be more successful than any other technique we tested during the past 20 years.
If you’re ready to sell something, we are ready to help you create a winning pitch.
The first step is a bit of homework so grab a pencil and some paper and get ready to answer a few questions:
- Write down a list of your competitors and their websites
- Write down what they’re doing, what they’re offering etc.
- List their product’s benefits
Ahh, now we come to the core purpose of this article…
Do you know the difference between features, advantages and benefits?
A feature is what a product has. In essence, the core components of your product or service; sometimes referred to as the bells and whistles or buttons, knobs, levers, switches, format, platform etc.
An advantage is what the product does or how it performs against a competitive product. A vacuum for example, is a product that might have the advantage that it doesn’t need bags. Another advantage would be that it can clean the floor in a room without you being present. In a services business one advantage would be the number of years of experience you bring to the table or your level of certification. Some common advantages include words like fast, easy, simple, cheap and good.
A benefit is what a given feature means to your prospect in terms of emotions and passion. A true benefit goes really deep and says something about how it makes you feel – a really great benefit gets a consumer excited because it means something special to the buyer.
Here’s a good example. One of my Clients sells a facial cream online and she called it something like, microderm abrasion emulsion – essentially it is a cream that helps reduce wrinkles.
On her website she listed several features such as ‘it reduces wrinkles’, ‘it comes in an easy to use home care kit’, ‘it is pH balanced’ etc etc etc.
When she came to me to help increase sales, conversions and traffic… I asked her to:
Take a piece of paper and create three columns.
List as many features as you can in the first column.
In the second column, list what you believe are the top benefits.
She wrote down ‘because it reduces wrinkles, it makes you look younger’ and ‘because it comes in a home care kit, it is easy to use at home’ and the third one was ‘because it is pH balanced, it’s gentle on your skin’.
As politely as possible I let her know that those are really advantages not benefits so we continued the exercise and I asked her to list in the third column what she felt the ultimate end result for her Customer was going to be – in other words, ‘the ultimate benefit’.
Here is what she wrote:
‘If it makes you look younger: then it means you’ll be more attractive, you’ll get that promotion at work, you’ll feel more confident, nobody will know your true age, you’ll fall in love all over again and you’ll be able to attract that person you’ve had your eye on.’
‘Since it’s easy to use at home: you won’t suffer embarrassment by going to a doctor’s office, you don’t have to waste time, it’s like a face lift in a jar in the comfort and privacy of your own home.’
‘Since it’s gentle on your skin: there are no risks, no pain, no healing periods like surgery or those harsh chemical peels people usually buy.’
We had arrived…
These were descriptions of how Customers would feel before, during and after they used the product.
In a very short time she was able to list several of the true benefits her product offers to her Customers. She took this piece of paper and changed her website to reflect the benefits. She also adapted every piece of marketing material including all advertising (online and offline), all landing pages, sales letters and Customer communications and within 2 months her sales doubled. One month later sales doubled again. Then she adapted the packaging to reflect the new text and sales doubled again. Sure we did some work on conversions and 6 months later, she was not able to buy as much traffic as she wanted – not even from Google ,Yahoo and MSN combined… Folks, this stuff really works! I’ll let you guess if I am referring to the creme or the marketing process here.
Remember, real benefits go deep. They live within the emotional and passionate sweet spot of the person wanting or using your product. In order to increase your sales you will need to tap into that sweet spot and then use the real benefits in everything you produce to help sell the product.