Thanks to the four of you who submitted their answers for the Features to Benefits quiz. To avoid any controversy, all four of you (RockyShark, CanSnowboard, Seratonin, and even the skeptical Octal) can have a free copy of my book, a $195 value. Just send me information about where I can email this to you, and a way to authenticate that it is you.
Really any answer is correct so long as you describe benefits that matter to your prospect. There are two types of benefits:
- Business. These are what we usually think about when we sell to businesspeople: Save money, save time, get new customers, reduce employee turnover, be more productive, etc.
- Emotional. These benefits are more complex, and ultimately the reason people buy: Feel better about what you do, be more secure, look good, get credit, be safe, enjoy peace of mind, savor the thrill of winning, etc.
If you tend to forget to talk about benefits and focus too much on features, try to add “That way…” after a feature. For instance, “We provide web hosting. That way, you can feel safe that your web presence will have 99.9% uptime and state of the art backups.”
Finally, the best Web developers/designers go beyond benefits and include unique advantages. They constantly fill in the following sentence for each feature/benefit they provide: “Unlike other Web Developers, we….”
This is basic stuff, and I hope worth a refresher/tune up for many of you.
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Thanks Andrew – it doesn’t matter how often you hear this stuff – refreshers and reminders are always useful!
June 10th, 2004 at 2:54 am
Thanks Andrew. I especially like the way you break all of this down into pieces like a puzzle (something I hadn’t considered until your last reply to me). Starting a business is incredibly daunting at times, your blog is certainly helping me overcome a number of hurdles
June 10th, 2004 at 8:39 am