Stop Selling Features and Benefits
One of the issues many sales professionals struggle with is selling features and benefits rather than selling on value by telling a compelling story. This problem is most prevalent in the IT/software space (where the products admittedly have lots of cool features and benefits). We recently hired an associate who comes from a strong IT background and decided it would be a natural fit to have her work with a client who works in IT consulting. When she started, the associate was struggling to schedule meetings because she was talking about the features and benefits of the offering, rather than keeping the value proposition at a high level. We sat down and developed an “unintended consequence pitch” that incorporated client voice (we originally we're in business X, our clients told us they needed Y, so we developed the ability to deliver Y) that moved her away from pitching on the features and benefits of the clients’ offering and towards telling a compelling story about how the client’s business model evolved over time.
It is important to place yourself in the prospect’s shoes: they get dozens of calls from vendors every day, all of whom have the “newest, best, greatest offering.” When they hear this, they immediately shut down. In order to cut through this vendor static, it is critical to keep the value proposition at a high level and tell a compelling story about your company and the offering. Remember senior executives are senior for a reason: they are pie in the sky, big picture thinkers. If you want to secure appointments with them, you need to keep their head in the clouds and have a compelling story to tell about your offering/company.
Posted by on 03/12 at 03:28 PM
