Sell Benefits Not Features

November 21, 2008 · Comments

Evolution Twitter isn’t amazing. The ability to connect to many voices in a collaborative way is amazing. Facebook isn’t the future. Having mutual social environments that permit deeper understanding of each other’s interest is the future. It’s important that we learn how to talk in terms of benefits and not the features.

This was an old sales lesson that I learned from Jason Chudnofsky, the CEO at Pulvermedia. He had a course that he’d been teaching for many years on that exact point. It’s not the various features that convince someone to buy. They might influence your purchase, but you buy benefits. With this car, you’ll save on gas. With this car, you’ll draw lots of attention. With this software, you’ll stay closer to the pulse of the larger community.

Do you see the difference?

Far too often, I hear social media enthusiasts talking about the software from the perspective of its features, but we’ve already proven that features don’t trump benefits. Twitter has fewer features than Pownce and Jaiku, and yet, we’re all on Twitter.

Blogging isn’t cool because you can tag, because you can use RSS, because there are all kinds of hot templates. Blogging improves a company’s organic SEO, gives their leadership a voice in the conversation, brings potential wide-funnel sales activity into a business.

Are you with me?

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  • Selling benefits vs. features ...

    I think the true challenge here is depth of knowledge and experience. When you are new to a tool (or anything else for that matter) it's common to see the features - the wow factor stuff. But as you begin to understand the tools better, gain some real experience using them as well as practical application ... you then begin to see the benefits more clearly. That takes time!

    Keep the excitement about the features, keep using, exploring, testing & messing up ... eventually you land on true benefit ... or you figure out there is none and move on :)

    --
    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • Chris, excellent post and a very important point regardless of what you're selling--whether it's software or soft drinks.
  • Chris,

    Couldn't agree more. Again, this is a strategy vs tactics comparison. If you can identify WHAT you want to do and WHY, you then get to the HOW.

    Especially when new ways of HOW are popping up every day, it's crucial to focus on the WHAT and WHY more.

    Cheers,
    Kate
  • well put chris, well put!
  • Yes, yes, yes. It applies to anything and everything one tries to sell especially in the B2B space. I as a prospect is not looking for features - I have painpoints that I am trying to solve - talk to me how you can solve these and how I can look good within my organization of having contributed to the bottom line.

    Telling me that others are doing it and hence I should do it as well holds good only if you can tell me what business benefits others gained - I need real proof from real buyers and not from analysts.
  • You're absolutely right! It's the value of services like twitter and other social media sites to the user. There's also such a concept as too much of a good thing. Sometimes I find other social media sites overwhelming because they offer too many options. Anyone else feel the same way?
  • Totally agree Chris. When the people who you are targeting are not specialist on the matter, they won't know what to do with the features presented by your business. Instead, if you tell them the benefits, they will be more interested and so then, after they buy the product, they will check the features to make possible that benefits...

    Great advice!
  • This is a great, very important point. It's the message, not necessarily the medium. It's not the tools, it's the content.

    Hit it right on the head Chris.
  • totally agree! been trained by the best companies on the importance of "value-based" or consultative selling. it does work. called the FAB statement: feature, then advantage, then benefits to the client...does work!
  • I am with you my man. This is great information that we all need to embrace.
    Thanks.
  • I'll add that the most compelling benefits solve a problem - a really painful one. Articlating the problems you can solve with the features you offer can be a great way to get to a compelling articluation of your benefits.

    Joel Roberts offers this great course called the Language of Impact - worth checking into if you struggle with articulating the benefits of anything you are offering.
  • This is so obvious and yet so often forgotten it makes me wonder if there is something biological going on. We should set up an automated way to re-post this message every so often to remind ourselves. Hmm, maybe there's a cool new feature or tool that can do that...Doh!
  • Great post Chris and so true. This is an insight I need to better incorporate in my business.
  • This is so true. My wife and my brother have their own business in which they sell "real estate online advertising" for the owners helping them to sell their properties.
    If she presents the benefits : you'll sell faster, your property will get the attention it deserves, the buyer will contact you directly then it's ok. And this method is much more successful then, for example, presenting the differences between our product and others.
  • I am constantly trying to explain this to people. When I tell people that I work with social media sometimes they think that facebook would be a "magic pill" if only they understood how to use it. Each medium is just another place to stick your message, and another place to form relationships.
  • Here is a related post "How to sell Social Media to your Boss?" .
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_ways_to_...
  • Nice and simple but well said. It's all about what someone can gain about it. Not a laundry list of terms and features that mean nothing to the average person. It's what can you do for them.

    Craig
    www.budgetpulse.com
  • Eric Morgenstern
    Focus on Excellence, Not Difference, and transcend the feature / benefit conversation. What matters most, from the recipient's point-of-view, is how your offering is "my best choice," instead of the traditional focus on differentiation. McDonalds (I'm loving it), UPS (What can Brown do for you?) and Allstate (You're in good hands with Allstate) are all positions of excellence, not difference. Read more about our point-of-view at:

    http://www.morningstarcomm.com/LuminaryBlog.asp...

    keep up the great work, Chris!
  • *jumping up and down and clapping*

    If we ever have a hope for transforming the way that businesses communicate with online tools, we have to start by skipping the specs and moving straight to the "what problem is this going to help me solve" issue. Lingo sucks.

    We keep begging for people to take all of this seriously, but we're not yet succeeding in putting it in terms that translate into meeting goals and objectives. Sometimes that means starting with the end in mind, and working backwards. What do we want to achieve? Then, what's going to help us do that? Then, and only then, are the implements fair game.
  • I don't know much about sales and marketing (that's why I often lurk here), but I couldn't help making a comment. You're absolutely right. I used to think that a camera phone was useless technology, I thought, "I want to talk, not take pictures!", but then I saw an ad for a camera phone where a traveling father was taking pictures of the places and things he was seeing and sending them to his daughters and I was hooked. I travel a lot too, giving speeches and workshops and a camera phone allows me to show my daughters and wife what and who I see. Anyway, the purpose behind this little anecdote was to let you know that you're absolutely right..lol... Sell benefits, not features.
  • Thanks for the valuable reminder, Chris. All too often, those of us responsible for building solutions, forget this very important lesson. The problem is that it is way too easy to fall down the features hole because it is so much simpler to talk about them then to create the perfect benefits pitch.

    With VendorCity, we are trying to work hard on the benefits side and not focus so much on individual features when describing our offering. Oh, and thanks again for mentioning us in the Deb Works interview (http://tinyurl.com/5t98uc).
  • It's not just true in the tech space. All too often (sales)people confuse features with benefits.

    FWIW, my take on the difference between Features and Benefits is illustrated by the "So What" Test.

    Take a given products feature or benefit and say it out loud. If you can say "So What?" to it and not sound like an idiot it is a benefit; otherwise it's a feature.

    Product X will save me £100,000 a year over my original supplier. So what? You're an idiot.
    It's a benefit

    Product X has blue blinken lights. So what? Well, they're prettier than red ones.
    It's a feature.

    See - try it yourself. You will be AMAZED how many "proper" companies confuse features with benefits...
  • Ed
    Hm? What's that?
    Sorry, I was busy hearing a lot of cool stuff from folks
    on Twitter and able to engage.
    What were saying? Something about benefits?
    I heard your voice coming from this blog.
    Now listening.
  • Couldn't have said it better myself... It's all about taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture, rather than focusing on "does this platform have this or that" and basing decisions on that alone. Features are great, especially if they make the consumer/company experience better, but emphasizing the features at the expense of the benefits is shortsighted.
  • Marketing 101 . Features are only there to provide benefits: Sell the sizzle not the steak. Many thanks to Professor Litvak at Ottawa U, and to Chris for reminding me.
  • "Sell Benefits Not Features" works both in Sales and Marketing. I have never known anyone losing sleep over a feature ...
    Thanks for spreading the word.
  • WIIFM (Whats In It For Me?)- that is what it comes down to - how can I make money? how can I save time? how can I save money?

    Thanks for the reminder, Chris. I have been evangelizing and I needed a boot to remember what hooked ME in the first place!
  • When I saw your question for this post on twitter, I knew you would write the answer benefits. I agree completely. If we were carving our messages in stone, the goal the same: delivery of what in this here head over to that there head.
  • I think one reason many people focus on the features is that maybe they don't fully understand how to sell the benefits, especially from an organizational perspective. Talking benefits one thing, but in a real world corporate situation when you are talking ROI, that level of conversation and knowledge can be daunting, to say the least.
  • Jeff Webster
    Great points, Chris. Whenever speaking to any client or co-worker about the topic of social media I try to stress this as the biggest takeaway. Understand what this technology is enabling and don't get caught up in the special features of any one tool because we're going to continue to see tools come and go for years.
  • I've actually recently had this discussion with several people in my office. I understand what I'm trying to sell my clients on so I see the features as benefits but many of the clients haven't taken that step yet. We need to focus on the benefits, the results. @John Jantsch and @reiko beach Interesting choice to stop using the b-word. I'll have to try that.
  • Not to mention the ability to have ongoing conversations with, well... everyone is certainly a Social Media benefit that makes it indispensable.
  • I have also stopped using the b- word (like John) when I tell them that they could have a place for putting presentation notes, bullitens, answer questions, get feedback, put up news themselves...they say yes.
  • Chris,

    This is a good reminder for those that have not gone through any form of sales training. I like to paint the picture for my clients, let them visualize what it looks like after making an important decision and enjoying the benefits that come from that decision . No Benefits typically equals No Value.
  • I absolutely agree... however it's difficult fighting a product / feature focused organization ;-)
  • Im totally with you Chris. I think too many of us get sucked into the amazing things products/services can do. However the best products/services benefit from letting the user kick ass more after using their product.

    Sometimes less features are also a benefit.

    Great post.
  • Hey Chris - I stopped using the B-word (blog) when pitching the idea to small business folks because the features (or at least what they thought of as the features) turned them off - it's only when I focused on getting site traffic and ultimately more leads, that they were willing to listen about a blog.
  • deb
    got it. clear. benefits will always trump features. duh!
  • Oh I'm with you.

    However - so many times we live in a bubble of tech savvy people. We get enthusiastic about tech features because we tend to talk to a lot of techies.

    And yes, we tend to forget that for the majority 'how' it works is not as important as 'what' it does... (damn, I feel a blog post coming on)
  • 100%. Selling the benefits is the only way that organizations are going to realise the value of social media.

    Social media is about adding a set of business tools to an organization rather than been seen in the latest fad.

    This also allows people to start seeing that social media tools are not a collection of pre-existing social networking sites, rather the right tools should be used according to an organizations structure, culture, objectives and in accordance with their entire organizational plan.

    Twitter's model is great, however large organizations should not only be talking about using twitter to connect and collaborate with customers. They should be thinking of using the same toolset to engage in organizational collaborative, searchable conversations.

    Approaching a social media strategy through looking at the benefits allows you to go beyond the tools and to look to ways of integrating your social media into the very fabric of your organization. Combining social media tools with your CMS. LMS, measurement, analytics etc provides purpose built powerful business tools.
  • Yes, I am!
    Thank you for reminding me that benefit is what the consumer really use instead of the feature. So many features but none of it bring any benefit to your customer will only cost you a lot instead of bringing more profit.
  • Summed up very well, though features and benefits seem to melt into each other and become difficult to seperate. A good lesson indeed. Thanks for the reminder. Also, I wonder if you break it down more...are men be more attracted to the feature aspect & women to the ultimate benefit?
  • couldn't agree more.

    Technology is irrelevant unless it makes our lives better.

    Keep things simple & appeal to peoples real needs & desires - that's what makes them tick.
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