Random musings: The benefit of the benefit

Monday, April 12, 2021

The benefit of the benefit

A couple of days ago I came across a Facebook memory that talked about the benefit of the benefit of a product or service. You may be familiar with the difference between features and benefits. If not, check out this blog post on the subject.

Briefly, here are the differences:

Features are facts about products or services; they add credibility and substance to your sales pitch
Benefits give customers a reason to buy because they explain how your product or service improves their lives

As I said in the other post, there are only two benefits,,,time and money, but I think there are actually three:

Most of us want more of all of these!

You could use energy as a proxy for health, so the benefits that most people seek are more wealth, better health and more time to enjoy them. So, your job is to figure out how your product or service can help your prospects improve one or more of those three items.

So, what is the benefit of the benefit? That depends on each individual prospect...you need to find out what they would do with with more health, wealth and time, but you'll probably find answers like spending more time with friends and/or family, more travel, going back to school, etc. These are the emotional drivers of a purchase.

And these drivers can be boiled down, in my opinion, to one thing...relationship enhancement...that is, improving relationships with others by spending more time with friends and family, or improving your relationship with yourself by traveling or going back to school.

What does your product to do improve a prospect's relationship with others, themselves or their business? And then figure out how to tie that in with their specific benefit of the benefit they want in their lives.