Free Article for Your E-Zine

Transform Your Sales by Selling Benefits! I have spent many hours in meetings with some of the most experienced salespeople in the country - and even more hours looking at web sites that aim to "sell" me something. Yet I'm continually amazed that they have not grasped one of the most fundamental concepts of selling. Have YOU? Let me ask the question: what do you sell? 99 times in 100 the answer that comes back is something physical - "traction widgets", or an aspect of a service - "office cleaning". BUT - those are FEATURES. ... and here's the scoop: Customers don't buy features - they buy BENEFITS. What's the difference? A FEATURE is something the product *is* or a function it performs - something you can see, write into a service agreement, touch. A BENEFIT is what it does for the customer. Customers buy BENEFITS - and we have to SELL them, because it's BENEFITS that justify expenditure (of time, money, effort). Examples: :) "Double sealed, self cleaning ring sprockets" is a FEATURE. The BENEFIT they deliver might be "higher productivity". The engineering manager isn't going to visualize an easy ride from the accountant if he tries to justify all that money on fancy sprockets, but increased productivity - that's the kind of stuff promotions are made of. :) The handle on that mug on your desk is a FEATURE. The BENEFIT is the ability to enjoy a hot beverage without burning your hand. Try to picture the scene a few thousand years ago when one of our ancestors hit on the idea of sticking an extra loop of clay on the side of his drinking pots. He didn't get very far when he was marketing them as pots with extra sticky-out bits, but they flew of the shelf once he started demonstrating how they didn't burn your sensitive stone-age hands. (Yes - I know my historical perspectives are a bit mixed up here, but it's an evocative picture don't you think?) For some of us who don't lead very full lives, this can become an amusing game - taking any household object and trying to find a benefit in every feature. If you'd like to see this game in action, try to watch a little of any shopping channel on cable TV. Those guys work like Trojans to find every last feature and benefit in each item - because they never know which benefit is the one that will sway the viewer at home. When selling face to face, we have the luxury of engaging our customers in a dialogue that can lead us to the bullseye benefits for them as individuals. ...but when we're selling on the web, we have to cover all the bases. Whether you do this with multiple doorways and gateways tailored to different customers, or surveys and FAQs designed to drill down to their needs, if you do nothing else in promoting your products and services: Sell BENEFITS, not FEATURES. --INFO-BOX---------------------------------------------------- Stewart Hutton has been selling in the "real" world for 20 years, and on the internet since 1994. His internet business "Practical Selling" is designed to help every business sell more - on and off line. The main site is at: http://www.PracticalSelling.com/ Resources specific to this article are at: http://www.PracticalSelling.com/go/to.cgi?smlbezin0002 mailto:stewart@practicalselling.com