Lead With Benefits and Value
Today I purchased a couple of things at some different stores. Twice I was asked whether I was “in our system.” To the surprise of the clerk, I answered, “what does it matter?”
In both cases, I ended up asking the clerks a simple question. “What is the benefit to me of being in your system?” In both cases, the clerks had difficulty articulating how I would benefit from taking additional time to complete the sale by giving them my name and address so I could be added to their customer database.
While I’m not surprised that neither clerk could articulate the value or benefit of being in their customer database, it did remind me that this sort of thing happens all the time in the technology industry.
Some companies assume that it is enough to do a good job of describing the features of a product. This is equivalent to the clerks who–in the form of a question–said, “One of the features of our store is a customer database. Would you like to use this feature? It will only cost you two minutes.”
This approach puts the burden of translating the feature into a benefit or value on the customer, who is often ill-prepared to make this translation. Why didn’t these clerks instead frame the feature in terms of its benefits? And not its benefit to the business; i.e. the ability to send me advertising, but in terms of its benefit to the customer. Something like, “If you’re in our system, we can process a merchandise return twice as fast. Are you in our system?”
Remember that while it’s good to describe features, it’s better to lead with the value or the benefit of those features. Save for the feature descriptions for after you’ve hooked a prospect with the value or benefits of your product or service.
If you want to discuss ideas for using content marketing to get the word out about your product, drop us a line at TheLions@wordlions.com.
