Take any feature and explain what it does and what that means for a particular buyer.
Buyers care about what a product changes for them. Your job is to work out that change before you speak, so the buyer does not have to.
Walk into an electronics shop and ask about a laptop. Within a minute, the salesperson will usually be talking about the processor, the RAM, the refresh rate and the battery in watt-hours. They know these specs well and they are genuinely trying to help. You nod, understand perhaps half of it, and still cannot tell whether this laptop will make your Monday any easier. The gap is between what a product has and what it does for you. The tool for closing it is old and simple, and once you have it you will notice the gap everywhere.
A feature is something the product has. It is a fact about the product and stays true whoever is buying: a 14-hour battery on a laptop (an invented example), a 24-hour gym, a policy covering 40 critical illnesses.
An advantage is what the feature does. The 14-hour battery lasts a full working day away from a socket.
A benefit is what the feature changes for this particular buyer. For a consultant who works from client offices, the 14-hour battery means no longer hunting for a power point in every meeting room. For a nurse on rotating shifts, the 24-hour gym means training after a night shift instead of skipping it.
The feature and the advantage stay the same for every buyer. The benefit changes with the person, and it is the only one of the three the buyer actually cares about. Because it depends on the person, you cannot know it in advance.
The bridge phrase is "which means that". It is a thinking tool that links a feature to its advantage and then to its benefit. The method has five moves:
State a feature. Add "which means that" and finish the sentence. This usually gets you to the advantage. Add "which means that" again and finish the sentence. This usually gets you to the benefit. If the sentence still describes the product, add a third "which means that". Stop when the sentence is about the buyer's day, money or worries, and no longer about the product.
Take accounting software sold to a cafe owner. The software connects to the business bank account, which means transactions appear on their own, which means you do not key them in on Sunday night. The first part describes the product. The second is the advantage. The third is the benefit: the owner stops spending Sunday evening typing receipts into a spreadsheet.
You do not have to say "which means that" out loud to buyers every time. Use it when you prepare. If you prepare with it, benefits come out naturally when you talk.
A benefit only counts if the person in front of you cares about it. The 24-hour gym is a real benefit for the nurse. For a retiree who trains at 10am, it is a feature they will never use, and leading with it shows them you have not listened.
Discovery, covered in the module before this one, Module 3, "Listen more than you talk", tells you which problem the buyer has, in their own words. That is what lets you choose which benefit to present. After discovery, pick the one or two features that connect to that problem and take each one all the way to a benefit. Hold the other features back until the buyer asks about them.
The same service can deliver different benefits to different buyers. Take a home cleaning service with three features, including a fixed fortnightly slot and vetted cleaners. For a busy couple with a toddler in a Sengkang flat, the fixed fortnightly slot is the benefit that lands, because they are tired of arranging help every week. For an elderly man living alone, the vetted cleaners matter most, because his daughter worries about strangers in the flat. You find out which one matters by asking.
Features are what sellers know best. Product training is mostly about features, and the spec sheet is the first document a new seller reads. Features also feel safe: they are facts, they are easy to say, and nobody can argue with them.
Benefits take more effort. You have to know the buyer and commit to a claim about what will change in their life, which feels riskier. The buyer, though, only cares about that last step. If you stop at the feature, the buyer has to do the translation into a benefit themselves, and many buyers will not bother.
Before you start the activity, pick one product you know well and write down five of its features exactly as the brochure or spec sheet puts them, without changing a word.
Pick five features of your product. In a three-column table, write the feature, the advantage and the benefit for each one.
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