Selling

2004, ‘ Google will almost certainly flame out as a business. “I’d wager that odds are at least 90% that its profit margins and growth rate will be materially lower five years from now. I believe that it is virtually certain that Google’s stock will be highly disappointing to investors foolish enough to participate in its overhyped offering — you can hold me to that,” Tilson, Motley Fool

I learned much about the mentality it takes to succeed in a virtual business from observing my father. He started and failed in business many times. We were poor, and lived on welfare, which is not the ideal environment to start businesses given that it was an illegal practice while drawing welfare checks. I always felt, however, his attempts were doomed from the outset by his mentality. He was a man who only cared about what was in it for him. The reason he started each business was because he saw potential for personal gain, an edge, a way to get one over on the customer or competition. What is wrong with that, I hear you ask? Well, in my opinion everything.

The success mentality is not about gain, but service. It cares more about satisfying the customer’s needs than those of the entrepreneur. The first thing you must think of when you rise, and the last thing before you sleep, is “what is in it for them?” “How do they benefit from my efforts?” Your mentality must be focused on how you can serve, and then how you can serve well, and then how you can serve better. I call it the “benefit mentality.”

I have a friend who is trying to get a business off the ground. She has a new line of products, and has convinced herself that the secret to success with the venture is all about having an eye-catching label on the bottles. She sees the venture as a way to make a mint. She is obsessed with the brand, and not the customers. She is in love with the bright pink label because she likes bright pink. I have asked her a dozen times to explain to me what benefit her product would provide for a potential customer. She says, “Look at the label. Isn’t it a great color?” I nod my head and say “Sure, it is a nice feature, but what does it do for the customer?” “It’s bright pink,” she repeats as if that means anything at all.

Her business is going nowhere because she simply does not understand the difference between features and benefits.

A feature is a fact about a product or service that, by itself, offers no one a solution or satisfaction. It may be interesting, but usually not compelling to make us do something… like buy it. A benefit is what the feature means to the customer in satisfying a need they have. They buy it for the benefit it could give them not for the pretty label.

A pretty pink label is a feature that offers the customer no benefit whatsoever. A benefit could be that the product is allergy free, which means that anyone can use it safely, or that it rinses out easily which means that customers save on water costs and shower time or that it is more cost effective and lasts longer than competing products.

The secret to understanding the difference between a feature and a benefit is to constantly ask yourself “So what?” Follow every statement with the words “which means that.” If you cannot complete the sentence then you have a feature rather than a benefit. It is only by creating benefits that we satisfy customers, and only by having happy customers can be have a robust business. So many businesses lose money by advertising features.

If you have the mentality of “What is the benefit for my customer?,” you will create in yourself a serving mentality rather than the self-serving mentality that most companies who focus on features have.

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I rarely meet anyone in sales and marketing roles that actually understands the critical difference between a benefit and a feature. I think the distinction critical to building sales and a loyal following. I didn’t want to make this a long winded topic, but it is a nitpick of mine. Happy to help you find benefits in your features if you want to ask.

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