Every prospect wants to know why they should buy from you. They want to know the outcome they will experience before they want to know how you will create those outcomes. Let’s start with four basic facts …
1. Every prospect has a problem. This problem creates some negative emotions.
2. Every product has features: Features are merely objective facts about a product (or the company behind it). In three-dimensional products, features include size, shape, weight, construction, color options and more. You need to be able to tell your prospect the feature of your product or service that will solve the problem. In information products, features include number of pages, size, frequency of publication (for periodicals) and the types of information that are presented.
3. Fortunately, most features are there for a darned good reason: Prospects don’t want features. They want you to change their lives for the better. Product features are merely the means to that end. That means features can have a place in ad copy – like telling prospects how many issues they’ll get per year … how many big pages are in your book … or that your widget is made from carbon steel for strength or carbon fiber for lightness.
Beyond that, features are a yawn because they’re about the product; not about the prospect. Or, as in the examples above, they can help demonstrate how your product delivers a benefit. The good news is, just about every product fact – every feature – is there to provide a benefit that your prospect IS willing to pay for. Tell your prospect in no uncertain terms the benefits of a particular feature. But we do not want to stop there.
4. Each benefit has a positive emotional outcome for the buyer. Many time there are more benefits associated with each product feature than are obvious to the average buyer. Each benefit or combination of benefits producing one, two, three or more new benefits you never thought about before. The secret to selling and marketing and most any other revenue generating activity is to identify each and every benefit a product provides – and the emotional outcome your buyer will experience.
5. Your prospect is buying emotionally first, then they intellectualize & justify the purchase. Connecting the feature, benefits and outcomes makes it very easy for the buying to understand why you are the right and safe choice.
Outcome that sing and soar – in five simple steps
Here’s a little exercise to help you drill down to the outcomes prospects are willing to pay for and then connect those benefits with powerful response-boosting emotions that your prospect already has about those benefits (or the lack of them) in his life.
By the time you’re through, you will have a complete list of company and product features … you will have squeezed every possible benefit out of those features … you will have fully defined the outcomes of those benefits and you will have connected each one to a powerful emotion your prospect has about each one of them.
In short, you’ll have a comprehensive “features/benefits/emotional outcome” inventory you can refer to as you create your marketing message, write your copy, build your sales presentation or create contents for your website.
Going through this exercise can go a long way towards finding new themes and adding power to your sales and marketing.
To begin, create a spreadsheet with these headings:
- Problem
- Negative Emotional Outcomes of Problem
- Feature that Solves the Problem
- Tangible Benefits of that Feature
- Positive Emotional Outcome Prospect with Experience
- Rank
Write until all know problems are identified and documented. Document how they feel when they experience this problem. Next write the feature of your product or service that solves the problem and document the benefit of that feature. Finally, describe the positive emotional outcome the buyer will experience.
When complete, rank them in order of importance.
He is an example of what your table should look like.
Problem: Sales have plateaued
Emotional Impact of Problem: So frustrated because no matter what I do, I just can’t figure out how to take the sales to the next level. And I’m always the one having to do the sales
Feature: Learn how to build a sales and marketing system
Benefit of Feature: You can stop being the only “sales guy” and start leveraging your marketing and sales processes so that customers come to you to purchase, instead of you chasing them. You will grow sales!
Emotional Outcome: You’ll feel a great sense of relief … no more anxiety about “where is the next sale going to come from?” and you won’t have to be chasing prospective customers all the time … prospects who are hiding from you.
When you complete this process you will have all the material you need to write a great sales letter, create compelling web copy, and build a powerful sales presentation and some much more.
This process is where increase profits and grow sales begins. You need to understand your prospects better than they understand themselves. When completed, you can tell them exactly what they can expect when they work with you.
