Examples of Features, Advantages, and Benefits:
- Example Feature - HubSpot's Meetings tool provides an interface that is synced to your Google or Office 365 calendar.
- Example Advantage - Prospects select the meeting time that works for them without back and forth email communication.
- Example Benefit - You'll be able to reach more leads, book more meetings, and close more deals with less admin work.
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➤ Salespeople are often told to sell benefits, not just features. But the distinction can sometimes feel blurry. Is the product’s ability to scale with a prospect’s growth a feature or a benefit? What about its best-in-class quality? Or its ease of use?
➤ Understanding the difference between features, advantages, and benefits is crucial to a rep’s success. A truly holistic approach to selling means conveying all three of these elements to prove the business's value to prospects.
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Feature-Benefit Selling Examples:
Here are two few feature-benefit examples that appeals to customers with different needs.
Feature: “Our platform automatically records your meetings. The editing tools make it easy to remove background noise, clip unnecessary sections, and flag key sections of the recording. Once you’ve finished editing, you can send the file to all the meeting attendees with one click.”
Benefit for Buyer #1: “Since your company values transparency, I’d like to show you our recording feature. Every meeting is automatically recorded. At the end of your day, it’ll take two seconds to send the audio files to each group of attendees and upload them to your company server. Everyone on your team will have full clarity into your meetings.”
Benefit for Buyer #2: “You’ve mentioned how much time you spend after every meeting writing a summary for your stakeholders. With our platform, you can get almost all that time back. Every meeting is recorded. You can send the audio file as is, or easily clean it up, cut it down, or call out important sections, with our editing tools. The entire process will take 5 minutes rather than half an hour.
How to Sell Benefits Rather Than Features:
- Reps cannot properly explain their product’s benefits without knowing their buyer’s goals, challenges, and desires. As the above example shows, what appeals to one prospect might not resonate with another.
When explaining benefits, quality beats quantity:
- Salespeople are often tempted to explain every feature of their product. Yes, prospects want to get their money's worth - but they usually don't equate more features with higher value.
- When a rep throws the kitchen sink at the buyer, two things happen. First, the buyer feels like the salesperson doesn't truly "get" him or his situation. He's invested time and energy into answering the rep's questions, so why is he getting a one-size-fits-all explanation?