It's Time to Stop Selling Features and Benefits

Today's guest post is by Charlie Johnson, a leading sales force and global sales leadership training consultant with 16 years of experience working with startup and Fortune 500 companies. Prior to that he served as VP of global education, VP of sales, and a corporate officer at US Surgical for 17 years.

After 16 years of training more than 60 companies, I am convinced most salespeople don’t know how to sell effectively. Most salespeople are not able to listen well, which means they almost always lose the chance to learn about their customer.

Instead, they focus on demonstrating features and benefits. They occupy their mind thinking about their next question or the next product or service they can demonstrate and ignore the sales skills of probing, listening, and confirming to identify the customer’s wants, needs, and challenges.

By and large, successful salespeople practice empathy during their interactions with customers. They ask a question, listen to the answer, and ask a new question based on the customer’s response. They then confirm what they heard by repeating the needs, wants, or challenges back to the customer. This is critical for two reasons.

1. You are demonstrating to the customer that you are truly listening.

2. You are reinforcing the seriousness of the situation by confirming the customer’s needs, wants, and challenges.  

An empathetic salesperson will ask how the customer’s problems affect his or her business and even personal life. That salesperson will also be happy to collaborate with the customer to solve his or her challenges – even if those solutions do not initially tie to the salesperson’s product or service. This builds trust and will create a customer relationship that might eventually lead to a sale and a long-term relationship.

The most successful CEOs have high emotional intelligence. In his book, Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman states:

Resonance (a quality that makes something personally meaningful) comes naturally to emotionally intelligent leaders. Their passion and enthusiastic energy resound throughout the group. When there are serious concerns, emotionally intelligent (EI) leaders use empathy to attune to the emotional registry (any of the varieties of language that a speaker uses in a particular social context) of the people they lead.

A highly emotionally intelligent salesperson will connect with their customer at a different level if they use empathy. Additionally, salespeople with high emotional intelligence (which can be taught) can be expected to have greater success creating a trusting relationship with their customers.  

We all know that selling is a process, not an event. People buy from people they trust, and very few sales are made on the first call. A collaborative interaction with your customer opens the door for you to come back. So, stop hammering customers on features and benefits during your meetings and instead work on developing your emotional intelligence. That’s the way to smooth your path to a positive relationship and an eventual sale.

Comments

[Imoyse]

It is now about selling outcomes, what wiill your sale allow the customer to do or achieve that makes a top or bottom line better situation for them and/or their business. Listening now also extends to social selling, listening to your customers on social to understand more about them and to engage with them on multichannels.

[Dwyaw]

Agree and disagree. Empathy is only sincere when it is founded in a true understanding of your customers processes and challenges and how the features and benefits of your product can solve their problem(s). Customers recognize false empathy immediately and reject empathy without substance. You better not only know the features and benefits of your product but thoroughly understand your customers processes and how the two fit. Anything else makes you a waste of your customers time. This is not evolution, it is "blocking and tackling".

[Markaroberts]

Great Article!

Sales has evolved and our teams must as well. If you are still "over coming objections" and not truly listening...you will miss your sales growth goals.

If you are throwing features and benefits against the wall waiting for a buyer to yell; BINGO I now understand the problems you can solve for me...you will not hit sales growth goals.

Emotional intelligence is the key today and will differentiate you. Most people do not understand that you can learn and improve in this area as I shared in a post some time ago https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-secret-sales-success-today-emotional-mark-allen-roberts-?trk=mp-reader-card

Great Article I will be sharing.