Blazing Moon teaches this sales methodology in its Articulating Value Propositions course. This course can split into 4 x 3 hour sessions facilitated live online in MS Teams or in a 2-day Face-to-Face intervention.
Features + Advantages + Benefits = Value Proposition
Articulating Value = Builds Customer Trust, Integrity, and Commitment
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Feature
A feature is a distinctive attribute or aspect of something. It is easy to understand a feature when we examine a particular product feature example.
For example, Let's take a digital camera. It may have many features such as a single-lens reflex, 18-135mm zoom lens and be 24 megapixels. If you are into photography these features are well known however if you are new to the market then they require explanation. Most people will be new to your company or product thus for most people they will not know or understand the basic features that you have and why they are important, so they need to know the benefit.
Advantage
An advantage is to put something in a favourable or superior position. The advantage helps us understand how we get from the feature to the benefit. It is the context between the features and benefits.
Taking the camera example, the advantage of a camera having 24 megapixels means that you have a larger number of dots per area meaning you a capturing more of the image. This makes the image sharper and enables you to enlarge the image without losing quality. The advantage of a 35 - 200mm lens is to enable you to zoom in or out using the one lense, enabling good shots to be taken in a variety of situations, thus making the camera more flexible.
Benefit
The benefit is how the feature helps the customer. The benefit is what the feature can do for you.
So if we consider our feature example of 24 megapixels then we can explain several benefits to the person taking photographs including a sharper image, the ability to enlarge without losing quality, and a better quality image overall. If we take the 18-135mm zoom, benefits include greater flexibility when taking family shots, the convenience of not having to change lenses for different shots.
The benefits are derived from the features but as you might pick from the benefits examples, there is a missing link. If I didn't know anything about photography then I wouldn't understand how you go from 24 megapixels to a sharper image or 18-135mm to greater flexibility. There needs to be an explanation of how you get from one to the other. This is the part we often miss when selling something that we ourselves know very well and this is why the FAB selling technique is a great tool to use. We assume that people make the link but often they do not, and it leaves them not truly understanding or truly believing what we are telling them. Therefore we need the advantage.
So combining features advantages and benefits provides clearer communication and understanding. It then aids the memory of the prospective buyer because they understand how the benefit is derived. This is especially important for complex technical sales, selling professional services which are not well known or for selling your competitive advantage. It can then be worked into sales presentations, sales scripts and certainly into all marketing communication materials.
Blazing Moon Articulating Value Propositions Course
In our Articulating value Propositions course will take you from developing your FAB selling methodology through to how to use this sales method by providing telephone or online sales script examples, ways to use it in B2B selling and B2C selling and how to use it when overcoming objections.
Contact us: bookings@blazingmoon.co.za for further details.