Quit Selling Features and Benefits
Hypothetical question:
Are you more likely to change your routines, way of thinking and paradigms to:
A.) Get something you want, or
B.) Avoid or move away from pain?
I’m not sure what your answer is, but studies overwhelmingly show that most people will do almost anything to avoid pain.
There are three types of pain we deal with in life: pain in the past, pain in the present and pain in the future. Obviously, the most relevant of these three is pain in the present.
Let’s look at pain from the perspective of the buyer.
Relax for a moment and take a deep cleansing breath. Think back to the past – back to that 111-degree August day. It’s Sunday at about 4:40 in the afternoon. You’re relaxing in your favorite chair, the dog by your side. You doze in and out, half listening to the polite applause on this week’s golf tournament on CBS. Startled, you suddenly wake up and discover you’re sweating.
The air conditioner is OFF! So you go through every diagnostic routine your father you taught you, and you deal with the miserable expressions on the faces of your wife, the boys, the dog (and even your mother-in-law). Sound painful enough? Desperate, you call the store.
Now think about how talented the salesperson needs to be to make that sale. Did you ask them for a bid? Did you say, “Send me some literature please?” Of course you didn’t! In fact, my guess is that you didn’t shop prices, take a bid or “think it over” at all. I know I sure didn’t when my transmission went out at 12,000 feet at Rocky Mountain National Park back in August of 1991. I was just thrilled to be towed to Boulder and to find an auto repair shop.
These are extreme examples, of course. There are also varying degrees of pain. Webster’s Dictionary defines pain as both “the physical feeling caused by disease, injury, or something that hurts the body” and “mental or emotional suffering: sadness caused by some emotional or mental problem.”
So pain is an emotional thing. Conversely, traditional selling is based on selling the intellectual. Most refer to that as “feature-benefit selling.”
Take this statement, for example: “My car has state-of-the-art electric windows, allowing you to roll down your windows with ease.” It assumes that the feature (electric windows) is important enough for you to buy. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the client something like, “If you had to name one thing you would change about your car, what would it be?” They might not know the answer, and if that’s the case, you can give them some examples of frustrations you hear from others. If they do know the answer, bingo! You now have an angle from which you can approach the sale. All because you listened.
I won’t tell you that traditional sales methods don’t work – they have for years. The problem is, they’re old hat. Everybody sounds the same – like a “salesperson” – and everybody talks about how great their features and benefits are. Selling this way not only perpetuates the negative salesperson stereotype, it also ignores the most important part of what highly trained professional salespeople do: they understand the real reasons clients buy.
The fact is that people buy emotionally – they only justify their decisions intellectually. As professional sales people, it is not our job to tell someone what we can do for them. Rather, it is our job to help prospects discover how their current situation is impacting them. Then it’s up to them to decide if they’re willing and able to change.
If you were the prospect, which conversation would you rather have? One that highlights the salesperson and his/her company, or one that seeks to understand your issues, the reasons these issues are occurring and the impact of these issues? Isn’t it time to treat our profession with the respect it deserves?
Good Selling,
Scott