Features and Benefits: Why They Matter - Ch 7 of How You Make the Sale at Catch a Gideon

February 6th, 2007 by digerati

This is Chapter 7 of the How You Make a Sale series at Catch a Gideon. This chapter discusses the difference between a feature and a benefit, and how to bridge from a list of features to making the sale with benefits.

A feature is an attribute of a product, program, or service.

A benefit is a reason for the customer to care (and to buy).

Salespeople are tempted to talk about features. You’ve noticed this if you’ve ever been to a Best Buy to look for a TV. The salesperson will talk about 1080i and p and resolutions etc. Those are features. You care about the benefit: the best possible picture. If you’ve done your research you can make the bridge yourselr. But the job of a good salesman is making that bridge for you. When you speak of benefits, you place yourself in the shoes of the buyer.

If you can’t make a feature relevent to the customer, don’t discuss it. If it doesn’t matter to the customer, it doesn’t matter. Period.

There are a number of “universal benefits” that apply to a wide variety of products. A benefit like “best picture” applies to a narrow range of products (namely TVs). Universal benefits are like the following:
Make more money
Lower my costs
Provide entertainment
Save time
etc.

Many more are covered in the book. It is important to learn to bridge between features and benefits. If you listen, often the customer will tell you how to sell them. They will tell you what they are looking for, and what benefits they hope to get. They may even tell you features. Customers will often miss important benefits that they care about. A good salesman will be able to suggest these other benefits to make the sale.

Bridging
You make the bridge by taking the customer from the feature to the benefit. It has three steps:
Name the feature
Support the feature with relevent facts and data
Bridge to the universal benefit (or specific benefit if applicable)

An example… This television has 1080i resolution, the highest currently available. What this means to you is that you will get the best possible picture from your high definition cable signal.

If possible, bring the customer’s own words in before the first step to bridge further. Yout might begin by saying “You had mentioned that you want a sharp picture.” Then you should backup what you’ve said. If selling TVs you can show an example of a 1080i signal next to a lower resolution screen to demonstrate the difference.

If there is no problem there is no sale; and if there is no solution there is also no sale.

The book gives numerous examples of exactly how you can phrase these interactions to maximize their effectiveness.

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How You Make the Sale is an excellent book demonstrating how the sales process works and how to maximize your sales.