NO ONE BUYS PRODUCT

OR SERVICE FEATURES! 

EVERY sale is made by triggering an emotion!

People buy BENEFITS! 

     Why am I shouting?  Because I get tired of seeing the tidal waves of wasted money being spent by ignorant businesspeople trying to jam their product and service features down prospective buyers’ throats!
     You need not look any further for examples than what I would guess to be 2 out of any 3 websites! 
     The airlines are a perfect example of doing it right.  No, we do not buy the airline armrests, foam and inner spring ingredients we sit on that take us from one place to another.  We buy the d e s t i n a t i o n !  We buy the image of skipping through the surf holding hands with our lover, not the manufacturing specifications of the airline seat and breathable space we rent to get there. 
     We buy the luxury hotel suite dripping with amenities so we can feel important when telling friends and family about all the extras we were able to afford.  We buy the positive impression our presentations will make to clients and management, not the parts that go into the fancy new color copier.  The former president of a world-leading hair coloring company once told me that they didn’t sell hair products!  They sold, he said, “the promise of sex to single young girls!”
     We do not buy SUVs because they provide better traction, can carry bigger loads, pull out tree stumps, and (maybe) provide more safety; we buy them because we think we look good driving them, sitting way up there, authoritative elbow out the window. 
     Even the things you would swear up and down to be exclusively rational, logical, unemotional purchases are not!  We buy insurance because we like the agent or because we’re afraid of the house flooding, burning, or being robbed, not becausae of all the tiny-type policy features that nobody reads anyway. 

     We simply USE product and service features to justify our emotionally-triggered purchases. 

     When was the last time you heard someone tell you how good she or he thought he or she looked driving his or her car?  More likely, that person rattled off a long list of features (which I notice now include “can coolers” in the glove compartment of some hot new models to keep, of course, cold water available for long hot rides!)  Does anyone care how the engine runs anymore? 
     And it seems the bigger the purchase, the more we get sidetracked with features.  Does that new home you bought have great wiring or what?  And home inspections?  That’s a whole new business these days.  Why?  Because we’re preoccupied with the For Sale home’s emotional buying triggers: curb appeal, neutral carpets, wall colors (like you never heard of paint?), built-in appliances, window treatments (don’t we love buying someone else’s window shades?), neighborhood, and what the in-laws will think.  
     We get so caught up with what others will think and whether our image is appropriate for the location and amount of impressive extras that we now have to hire someone to tell us about the basics—that the wiring, plumbing, roof, crawlspace and all those features are okay, because we don’t really care; we just want to rationalize the important logical reasons we were so smart to buy it. 
     Buyers buy benefits.  So sell benefits!  Leave the features for customer bragging rights!    

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

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 Make today a GREAT day for someone!