Increase Your Sales by Knowing the Answer to this Question

George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:30:46 +0000

You’re probably familiar with the old saying, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”

And a related one, “Features tell, benefits sell.”

Features, of course, are the characteristics of whatever it is you’re trying to sell. Benefits answer your customer’s biggest question, “What’s in it for me?”

If you want to make more money, it’s important to clearly understand the difference between features and benefits.

When you’re selling anything – your product or service, yourself for a job, a loan, or even to get a date this weekend – focus on emotions, not intellect.

Because people buy emotionally, and then justify rationally. People buy for two reasons – to stop the pain or to get the gain.

So paint a clear picture in your prospect’s mind of how wonderful things will be after they buy what you’re offering. To do that, you have to clearly understand the benefits of what you’re selling. And that’s not as easy as it sounds! We usually make two mistakes:

Mistake #1: Spending too much time on features and too little on benefits.
We know our product inside and out. The problem is we often don’t fully understand the difference between a feature and a benefit. We often think of features as benefits. But they’re not. We need to translate those features into benefits – how they help the customer.

Mistake #2 – Stopping before the real benefit.
Fortunately, there’s a simple question that helps you get to the real benefit of your offering. That question is …

“And that means?”
On the show, George and Mary-Lynn illustrated this by pretending to work for an insulation contractor. George played the part of the sales person and Mary-Lynn was his manager.

Isn’t that an exciting service to sell? See if you’re more excited after the discussion!

Mary-Lynn: Alright, let me hear your pitch.

George: Inadequate insulation is a leading cost of energy waste in many homes.