My latest marketing lesson that I learned is just how important it is to sell benefits, not features. Being a programmer, I’m used to dealing with features. What does it do? is it cool? How fast is it? etc… but after listening to the lesson, I learned that even I need to know the benefits. Just because your new widget can do something, until I know why I NEED it to do that, I’m not going to buy. The latest lesson had us focus on converting a feature into a benefit, simply by going down the ladder of why does my customer care? For example, you have a feature that provides the fastest dry cleaning in the county. Ok, great… but why do I care?
Fastest Dry cleaning in the county:
It gets me my clothes faster than anyone else
why do I care? I have a big meeting tomorrow, and I need to look my best.
why do I need to look my best? I need to give a great presentation
why do I care? I need to be my most confident self.
why do I care? it makes me feel good about myself.
I apologize if I butchered that, but the short story is that everyone needs to feel good about themselves, so for every feature, you need to walk up the ladder until you can get that response. IN this case, having my clothes ready tomorrow for the big meeting will give me the confidence to feel good about myself, so I can make a great presentation. I just did this exercise with my Broadsword 1 page sales document. It actually made a big difference. No, I didn’t make a sale yet, but this gets me 1 step closer and increases my chances of feeling better about myself because my 1 page document are more likely to hook a prospective customer 🙂
Anyway, that’s all for now.
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike