Features and Benefits (Part 1)

 

Customers don't buy features - they buy BENEFITS.

A FEATURE is something the product has, or a function it performs. A BENEFIT is what it does for the customer.   Customers buy BENEFITS - so try to to SELL them, because it's BENEFITS that justify expenditure (of time, money, and effort).    For example: The handle on that mug on your desk is a FEATURE. The BENEFIT is the ability to enjoy hot coffee without burning your hand. Sometimes thought to be old fashioned, A&P believe that features and benefits analysis still forms the basis of a sales proposition When asked, how many salespeople can define the real benefit that a certain feature or property of their product provides?   The phrase we use to turn a feature into a benefit is 'Which means' It works like this: The coffee mug has a handle on the side Which means You don't burn your fingers when picking up the hot coffee mug   However quite often, when using this simple analysis tool of 'which means', the feature of the product is only turned into another feature: An example:

 

The computer has 20 megabytes of storage on its hard disk
Which means
You can store many large files on the computer
This on the face of it might seem to be a benefit, but this benefit statement assumes that the prospective customer knows about the problems of file storage on computers.
What is needed here is the salesperson to go to the next stage and maybe beyond to describe the real benefit to the prospect.
Maybe something like this:
The computer has 80 megabytes of storage on its hard disk
Which means
You can store many large files on the computer
Which means
You don't have keep downloading files to other storage devices for archiving
Which means
You don't have to spend time on the archiving process
Which means
Less time wasted on computer housekeeping
Which means
More time available for profit making business activities.
The final benefit statement, actually produces a money element into the process, and this could be regarded the only final benefit for business users.
Finally, look at the feature again, and see if there are any other benefits from the feature
A benefit might be obtained by thinking about the number of storage disks saved, the cost of buying a new PC or hard disk if the alternative is a PC with a small disk.

 

This gives a clue to finding the real benefit of a feature. If you take that feature away from the product, what problems are have you now got? You will then need to add that feature back to solve the problem!