Features for Africa
• All of our products and services have features. What is a feature? It’s a distinctive attribute that your product or service has or offers.
• For instance, a car might have 12 airbags or have an economy of 5.5 l per 100km. Or you might offer a 24-hour response, you might have 10 vans on the road, perhaps your business has easy parking or an App users can use.
• These are all features. We can probably all list many features of our businesses. Take a moment to note some down now.
How do those features help your client?
• It’s often said it’s not what we do for clients, it is how we make them feel. In truth it’s both. But if we think only about what we do, or the features of our business and advertise or promote only those, we are assuming clients and potential clients understand the benefits those features will bring to them and how it will make them feel.
• So when we talk about features, we need to make it easy for clients to understand the benefits of those features.
• For example, the benefit of 12 airbags is that our family will be safe – that’s an easy benefit to understand but by mentioning family we make the client actively consider the benefit of the feature.
• Take a minute now to write the benefits of the features you have already listed, brainstorm with the person next to you if you struggle to describe the benefit of the feature.
“But wait, there’s more!”
• The “As Seen On TV” style of infomercial does a great job of showing how the features of a product can change your life for the better. Who hasn’t almost been convinced by the Fishmaster 29000 or the Ultimate Abdominiser? (who has been?).
• They always demonstrate the amazing benefits the product will give you, fish to feed your amazed and happy family, or the Abs that will bring you ultimate happiness.
• These adverts are painful, to say the least, but they work, even though they are often inferior products.
• We aren’t saying a “but wait, there’s more” style of promotion is appropriate here but adding the benefits you bring to your client and including them in all of your promotional and sales activity works.
Emotional Connection
• A recent example of an advert that creates an emotionally charged connection without even mentioning features at all is the Toyota Hilux TV advert where they all love their Hilux so much they are just out for a drive and coincidentally meet for a yarn at the top of a remote hill. It portrays a feeling of what owning a Hilux is like. We don’t all have Toyota’s budget but does your marketing convey that emotion?
Further Action
• Book a One-to-One with another member and get their perspective of the benefits your business brings to your clients and prospective clients. This can give you fresh insights into how others view your business.
• Review your website, social media activity, and your BNI sales pitches to make sure you are not just mentioning features but including benefits as well.
