Top tips for benefits selling in sales jobs


by UK Careers - Date: 2007-08-14 - Word Count: 702 Share This!

Pretty much every sales course you have ever been on will have a section of features and benefits. To be more specific, the need to covert every feature to a benefit for the customer in order to increase your chances of a sale. One rather crude measure I remember was to add ‘which means that' after every feature slipped out of my mouth, to try and drill home the need to convert each feature to a benefit.

To this day, I still don't believe many sales people do this at all, let alone do it well. People sell to me in my present role everyday, yet nobody seems to latch on to the essence of true ‘benefits selling'.

Contrary to popular belief, sale jobs are not about taking a product or service and pushing it onto a person with no need or even want for the product. Images of insurance and double glazing spring to mind. Good selling is about finding people who have already made a decision to buy, and your job is to persuade them to choose your particular offering over a competitor. With this in mind, success in sales jobs becomes broadly a two part process

a) Finding enough people who have made a decision to buy
b) Persuading them to buy your particular product.

a) is a complex subject all on it's own involving aspects of marketing and a variety of sales skills. For b), mastery of true ‘benefits' selling is essential.

The key to effective selling is to truly understand what is going on in the mind of the buying. In particular, to understand the following

A decision to buy is usually made on a rational and conscious level (eg I need a car)
The decision what to buy, is usually made on an emotional and sometimes subconscious level ( I want to buy a Porsche)

To explain this a little further, consider the purchase of our family holiday. Clearly the decision to buy is both conscious and rational, that is, we need a holiday! We actually buy an ‘all inclusive' holiday. There are many clear benefits for us, it's cost effective with all food included and alcohol. It saves time not having to shop for food, prepare food etc. It's family orientated so there will be other children for ours to play with, the list goes on. So what was I thinking of when I choose this holiday?

Can you remember the last time you cooked a big meal, perhaps Christmas dinner? Imagine the moment you've just tucked away your second helping of Christmas pud, Uncle Jo and Aunt Hilda are settling into the Wizard of Oz with a glass of sherry...and you retire to the Kitchen to the biggest mound of dishes you've ever seen. You spent 3 hours preparing it, half an hour eating it, it will take another hour to clear it all, everyone else is now relaxing, was it really worth it?

Well that rotten feeling sticks with me every time I know I have to prepare food for the whole family and clear up afterwards. With the holiday, I was being presented with the opportunity to have my food prepared by someone else, eaten by me, with all the dirty dishes taken away by someone else while I read a paper....3 times a day everyday...fantastic, I‘ll take three!

Inside every buyer of any product or service, lies a totally unique set of powerful emotions fuel by their past experiences, which used correctly are the most powerful motivators you could imagine. Your job as a sales person, is to find and unlock these powerful emotions, alongside the presentation of your product.

There are a variety of skills required to unlock these powerful emotions all centred around questioning skills, and this is a topic all on it's own for another article. Aside of this, next time you present your product or service, spend some time considering the broader impact of the features of your product. What are the benefits these features bring to your client, and can you latch on to any powerful emotions that may be associated with these benefits. Good questioning may focus around emotions previously associated with products in this area, positive and negative.

This article is written by John Bult of Jobs in sales

Related Tags: sales jobs, uk sales jobs, uk sales careers, sales vacancies

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