How can we believe your claimed benefits when we don’t see how they tie to some feature of your product? Photo (CC) Becky McCray
“This product is great! It will save your marriage, improve your bank account and make you slimmer!” OK, enough with the benefits overload! I can’t believe your benefits claims because you didn’t show me why they’re believable.
Sales pages online are drowning in benefits, but without any hint that they connect to an actual feature of your product. Benefits without features are a waste of space.
Smart guy Jurek Leon explained why you have to talk about the product features in his terrific email newsletter:
Why bother to state the features if people buy on benefits, not features?
Because linking the features to their respective benefits gives the features believability. A list of benefits isn’t believable. They are empty promises. A well-linked feature gives the benefit substance.
Jurek has some specific tips to help you talk about benefits and features together:
When it comes to summarising the benefits that matter for your customer, preface them with one of the phrases listed in Selling the Benefits Part Two such as, “As you will realise this will give you the capability…”
One more important point: tailor this to your customers.
Just because it is a benefit don’t assume the customer will be impressed. In sales language, what we call a ‘benefit’ won’t necessarily be beneficial to every customer.
Different benefits appeal to different customer types.
For example, the feature “It is made locally” may appeal to one customer because of the benefit, “… which means that when you buy from us you help provide jobs for people in the local community.”
Another customer may be far more impressed with the benefit, “… which means if it ever breaks down we have experts close by who can fix any problems and have it working for you quickly with little downtime.”
That’s why it is important to ask questions to identify what matters to the customer. Then you can focus on the benefits that strike a chord with them.
So, work on identifying at least two benefits for each feature but only spell out the benefits that matter to your customer.
If you work an any rural hospitality or retail business, go sign up for Jurek’s Terrific Newsletter. Not only is it called “Terrific Tips”, that’s exactly what Jurek delivers each month.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
