I stumbled across a YouTube video whilst browsing one of my favourite sites and enjoyed five minutes on fab selling. Features, advantages and benefits, you know, turning a feature of your product into a benefit by making sure you use “which means to you” or “so that you can.”
It brought back fond memoires. But it’s so out of date now. Are you?
To keep ahead, we have to evolve as salespeople and begin to think about selling value and how our customer’s problems will be solved.
We have an Italian Spinone 4 year old, she’s a grand gun dog. Big, hairy with an inquisitive nose designed to delve into the thorniest of bushes to flush out the prey for the guns. Now she doesn’t do any hunting, she never has, but she is pregnant at the moment expecting 8 or so little Spinone puppies.
Being a pedigree dog, we had to follow the Kennel Club rules on having puppies and one was to ensure she was mated with a robust, royal blue pedigree boy dog. His name was Red and they met on a cold, damp April evening in Staffordshire. In a garage actually, very fitting. And an hour later, after much distress from the two dogs and waving goodbye to £750 in cash, we left praying that Brodie became pregnant.
Wow. Did you hear me say £750 for an hours’ work. And a pleasant one as well. But if you looked at it that way, yes it was a lot of money for an hours’ work. Red was very experienced though and came up with the goods because a short while later Brodie fell pregnant and is expecting the puppies in a weeks’ time. If all goes to plan and Brodie gives birth, we can sell the puppies for a handsome profit.
Now that’s a return on the investment. That’s value. The owner didn’t need to sell Red’s ability, he’s a pedigree and a Cruft champion but if he had a sales representative selling his services, it would be very easy to sell the value of his service. Just focus on the outcome i.e. 8 puppies, and you can clearly show the value generated. However, if the sales rep focussed on features and benefits, I doubt if the sale would be so successful and the price tag of £750 would seem very steep indeed.
The key to modern selling is to show the value, the outcome, the end result of using the service or product, not the products bells and whistles, even if you turn these into benefits.
Feature, advantage, benefit, shortened to fab. Talking about fab, I still think Red has the best job in the world. But right now I’m looking at the real value. 8 puppies at, how much was it…. Brodie take it easy, here have a biscuit, good dog, lye down petal, Brodie have a doggy chew, who loves ya baby.
If you want to find out how Brodie’s doing visit her blog at http://www.spinonepuppies.co.uk/
