Giving Benefits in Major Sales

Understanding Features, Advantages, and Benefits in Demonstrating Capability

Features and Their Impact

  • Definition: Features are factual statements about products or services.
  • Effectiveness: Features are neutral in persuasion; they neither significantly aid nor detract from the sales process. In larger sales, their influence is minimal and can be negative if used prematurely.
  • Research Findings:
    • In smaller sales, there is a slight positive correlation between the use of Features and sales success.
    • In larger sales, Features should be used with caution, particularly early in calls.

Advantages Versus Benefits

Advantages

  • Definition: Advantages describe how a product's features can be useful without tying directly to an explicit customer-stated need.
  • Effectiveness:
    • Moderately effective in earlier sales calls but lose impact as the customer relationship progresses.
    • Highly effective in the first meeting, particularly when the sales approach is product-centered.

Benefits

  • Definition: Benefits directly address an explicit need stated by the customer, showing how the product or service meets this need.
  • Importance of Explicit Needs: A benefit is powerful because it is linked to explicit needs acknowledged by the customer, which are typically fleshed out through strategic question techniques like Implication and Need-payoff Questions.
  • Impact on Sales:
    • Strongly correlated with sales success across all types of sales, especially in larger, complex deals.

Impact Difference Between Advantages and Benefits

  • Advantages are useful earlier in the sales process but become less effective as the relationship develops, partly because they might be forgotten after the call.
  • Benefits maintain a strong impact throughout the sales cycle due to their connection with explicit customer needs.

Selling New Products: The Pitfalls of Over-Emphasizing Features and Advantages

  • Common Mistake: During product launches, sales teams tend to focus too much on explaining product Features and Advantages, ignoring the customer's actual needs.
  • Suggested Approach:
    • Emphasize the problems the product solves and prepare questions that help uncover and develop these problems.
    • By focusing on customer needs rather than product features, sales effectiveness in new product introductions significantly increases.

In summary, while Features provide essential product information and Advantages show potential uses, the most powerful demonstrations of capability in sales, especially large sales, are Benefits which clearly and directly address explicit customer needs. Understanding the difference and application of each can greatly enhance the effectiveness of sales efforts.