Sales Skills

A feature describes a fact or characteristic of a product or service. It usually says what the product or service is.

A benefit is something your customer has said they want. It shows what the product or service will do for them.

An advantage is something we think might be a benefit to a customer.

The trouble is that most `salespeople` who don’t know the difference are much happier talking features at customers rather than finding out benefits from customers. There are several possible outcomes to this strategy:

• The customer falls asleep
• The customer, awake but bored, wonders why salespeople never listen
• The customer adds up the cost of all these features they don’t want, and concludes that whatever they’re being sold, it’s definitely going to be too expensive

The only way to avoid the Features Trap is to make sure you ask your customer enough questions to discover what it is they need from you, ie the benefits they are looking for. Then you can confidently link what the customer wants to the specific features (and only those features) of your offering which will match those benefits the customer wants.

If you do find yourself listing Features at a customer then at least make sure you give them some clues as to what they might get out of them. The way to do this is to use the linking phrase “which means that…”

So an example might be:

“We are a £60 million turnover company (feature) which means that we have the resources to help solve your problem”(advantage)

In a live customer encounter use this only as first aid to get you out of trouble, and always check whether it is a benefit or not by immediately using a follow-up question like “How does that sound?”, “What do you feel about that?”

Before a meeting, or to test your product/service offering, use the Features- Advantages – Benefits flow-chart using the phrase’ which means that’ to link one to the other.

Keep asking yourself “So what?” to any statement you’re about to make to a customer. If you can’t come up with a sensible reply, then you’re probably talking features.