Many small-business marketers assume that prospects willunderstand why they should buy their product or service justbecause they’ve been told about it. Thus, business owners onlycommunicate the features of their product or service to prospectivecustomers and neglect to mention the benefits.
Take a look at the list of features below, taken directly fromcurrent advertising and marketing materials:
- Self-setting clock on a DVD player
- 50-number speed dial
- Open 24 hours
Each is a feature–a factual statement about the product orservice being promoted. But features aren’t what entice customersto buy. That’s where benefits come in. A benefit answers thequestion “What’s in it for me?” meaning the feature provides thecustomer with something of value to them. So–and this is wheremost businesses go wrong–that must mean:
- The benefit of a self-setting clock isconvenience.
- The benefit of 50-number speed dial is fewerkeystrokes.
- The benefit of a store open 24 hours is you canshop there whenever you want.
While these may seem like true benefits, they’re really justelaborations on the features. So what is truly a benefit?
The best way to understand the true benefit of your product orservice–or to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question–is tofocus instead on results. A customer’s perception of each feature’sresults is what attracts him or her to a particular product orservice. When someone chooses a VCR with a self-setting clock, theassumption is that the benefit is convenience, but the actualresults are that they don’t have to read the instructions, watch ablinking 12:00, and, most important, feel stupid. Those results arethe true benefits.
When you try to sell the features of your product or service,you’re making the customer do all the work to figure out why theywant the feature. It’s in a seller’s best interest to draw theconnection for them. But to do that, you have to know the resultsyourself. Let’s take another look at that features list to see thepossible benefits from the customer’s point of view:
- Self-setting clock: I won’t feel dumb!
- 50-number speed dial: I can keep in touch with my bestcustomers without effort, and I won’t get frustratedmisdialing.
- Open 24 hours: When my pregnant wife craves pickles and icecream at 4 a.m., I won’t have to disappoint her.
By this time, you should be mentally going over every salespitch or marketing message you’ve been using with great trepidationand rightly so. If you look carefully and honestly, you’ll mostlikely find that your benefits are really just more features.
