Episode #321: Understanding Features And Benefits In Sales

Most salespeople are very good on the detail of their solutions. The more technical the solution, in order to be able to explain it to the buyer, the more expert level of knowledge is needed. The only problem with this expertise concentration is that buyers don’t buy features. They have a problem which they need solved and the features are a necessary tool, but it is the outcome produced through the tool, which is what attracts the buyer’s attention. If we spend all of our time in the weeds of the features, we are missing the one thing which causes the buyer to purchase from us.

We don’t get unlimited time with the buyer and usually an hour is allocated to our meeting and we need to cover a lot of ground in that hour. In fact, the solution component of the sales call is often the second visit to the buyer. In the first visit, we did our best to understand what their issues were and to see if we have what they need to provide the necessary solution. During the second visit, we go into how what we have will fix their problem, how it works and we deal with any pushback and ask for the order. So the sales call is an exercise in two parts.

One of the problems may be that the buyer themselves don’t fully understand how this solution will impact their business. They are working in their own little section, but the solution may have ramifications across the whole business. We need to get other section representatives involved too, if possible, because otherwise they could become blockers behind the wall and we don’t even know what their issues are, let alone be in a position to help them too.

There may be a number of benefits which our solution delivers, but some will have more potency for the buyer than others and we need to zero in on these. Presumably we will have a reasonable idea which ones will resonate more strongly than others, if we did a good job in the questioning stage in the first meeting. There will be a Primary Interest on the buying side, the greatest thing of most urgency and our benefits need to strongly address that aspect.

While the benefit is important of course, what about how they can apply that benefit in their business. Many salespeople fail to talk about the benefits at all and get stuck in the features explanation part of the discussion and don’t move to the next stage. These are usually the people who fail to sell very much. Even if some salespeople do get to the benefits stage, they pull up there, expecting the buyer to do all the work and discover for themselves how to apply the benefit in their business. That is our job. We need to have some reasonable knowledge gained about how their company works and about their business, to know how to tell the story of where our solution will make the difference for the buyer.

For example, let’s take a simple case of the plastic bottle of coffee which you can buy at a convenience store. There are other varieties of course, including canned coffee with a ring pull access to the beverage. Usually the weight of the two varieties are not that different, so the transportation weight burden factor is similar, so there is no great differentiation there. To have the buyer choose our product, we need to know if they are likely to consume the coffee over a period of time and if they will be doing that in different locations, from where they made the purchase.

The ring pull coffee can once opened cannot be resealed and basically must be consumed shortly after purchase. The benefit of the plastic container is it has a screw cap arrangement, which means we can consume the coffee anywhere we like and can transport it with us, without the risk of spilling any of the contents. So the feature is the screw cap and the benefit is the time convenience of the access, anywhere, anytime to our beverage. The composition of the coffee is important because taste is a big factor preference, but that is not the only benefit we need to consider. It has to taste good and be portable if the latter point is important for the buyer.

The application part is where we suggest they can buy the product quickly and keep moving fast, as they carry the bottle with them as they move around town and have instant access to the coffee, whenever they want. We need to tell a story here to have them see the scene in their mind’s eye. For example, “After purchasing our coffee with the resealable screw cap function, you don’t have to stop what you are doing to consume it right there and then, instead you can immediately head off to your next meeting without delay. After the meeting finishes you have been working hard, so you may be feeling a bit thirsty, so again no time is lost, as you can simply reach into your bag and pull out the bottle and drink the coffee wherever and wherever you like”.

In the case of our own product or solution, at this point we should now move to the next stage of the sales process and tell the story of a similar company, in the same industry (if possible), who bought the solution and explain how they used it inside their company and the results they achieved as a result. In the next stage, we next ask our trial close of “how does that sound so far?” to try to flush out any objections, so that we can deal with those and close the deal.

Benefits are crucial to get the deal done, but they need to brought to life through how they will work inside their company and where they have worked inside other companies. If we can do this using effective storytelling, we can make is much easier for the buyer to see how the solution will work in reality and make it easier for them to say “yes’.