What’s in it for Me?

I have a friend who is starting up a new business and she recently contacted me looking for advice on how to put more WIIFM in her sales presentation. She said, “The audiences are only focusing on what I’m getting out of the deal. Not what’s in it for them!”  So, today I thought I’d talk about how to tune into that sometimes hard to get station WIIFM.

Most sales people can rattle off their products or services features without skipping a beat.  Yes, it’s 20 times faster, it has a 3 year warranty, and it comes in three colors. Features are great, but they don’t relate and can’t fix the problem or pain the prospect is having. Prospects tune out because they don’t care about features. They want to know how your product or service is going to fix their business problem or pain. Remember the commercial where the little old lady screamed, “Where’s the beef?” Well, your prospect is screaming, “Where’s the benefits?”

A good rule of thumb to whether you are talking features or benefits is to say “So what does that mean?” If you can say so what, then it’s a feature, if not it’s a benefit, i.e., it has three colors, so what does that mean to me? The three colors allow you to match it perfectly to your existing model, which means you won’t have the added expense of having to upgrade it.”

Here’s a simple exercise to get you started thinking about benefits. Make a list of all the facts and features you can think about regarding your products and services. 
Next, go through each fact and feature and put yourself in your prospects shoes and say “So what does that mean to me?”

Then, write down the answer. Once you have done that, you should have a compelling list of customer-centered benefits. Once you have that list of benefits, it will be easy to make your prospects and customers understand what’s in it for them.

Features are like wrapping paper that can make a plain brown box look great, but it’s useless unless you have tape to attach the paper and a ribbon that can tie it all together. What holds features of a product or service is the prospects pain and the ribbon that ties it all together is the benefits.

 Happy Selling!