Needless to say, given the title, this business secret is counterintuitive. Everywhere you look in the marketing world, people are telling you that you have to know everything about your product or service so that you can sell it better, more effectively, with more enthusiasm. And while that’s important, it doesn’t hold a candle to prospect knowledge. I believe it’s more important to understand the people you’re selling to and what they want than it is to understand the features of what you’re selling. I have four reasons for this.
Reason #1:
So you won’t get so bogged down in all the details.
Reason #2:
So you can stay excited about the main advantages of whatever you’re selling, directing your focus towards the end results achieved by using it.
Reason #3:
So you can take care of the prospect’s potential objections with a strong risk-reversal guarantee that makes it easy for them to back out if they’re not happy. If you’re with a prospect and they have a lot of questions, you can always just say, “Don’t worry about this.” Then go back to repeating the main benefits and assuring them that if they’re not 100% satisfied, then you don’t want their money. They’ll get it back instantly.
Reason #4:
It allows you to stay positive. Believe it or not, there’s amazing power in not knowing all the details behind every single product or service you sell. Your only focus is on the big promises and the big picture. This makes things seem simpler and easier for the prospect. Any of the difficult objections they bring up can be addressed after the sale by customer service. Your job is to bring in the sales; customer service’s is to make them stick. Features tell, benefits sell.
Now: what is a benefit? It’s the emotional end result the prospect can get when they give you their money. So what’s in it for them? What are they really searching for? What will they get when they give you their money? You have to know what they want more than anything else, and how your product or service can give it to them. The emotional end results are all that people really want.
Back in the 1980s, before I started my first business, I sold roof and parking lot coatings. You put the material over the parking lot and it made the asphalt or concrete last longer; you put it on the roof, and you could save yourself from having to do a roofing job. It was a kind of preventive insurance. All kinds of scientific material came with this stuff I sold; there were all kinds of studies and statistics I was supposed to learn, but didn’t. Yet I was able to sell a lot of it just from an amazing idea I got from the company I was working for. It was a brilliant idea. I made thousands from it.
All I did was take an Alka-Seltzer tablet from a two-pack and, right in front of that prospective buyer, I’d use tweezers to put one tablet into a little cup that was filled with this sealer I selling, for maybe 10 seconds. When I pulled the tablet out, it was coated with the sealer. Then I threw it into a glass of water — and it just sat there. It didn’t fizz at all. Then I took the other Alka-Seltzer tablet, tossed it in the water, and it bubbled like crazy.
I made so much money on that simple trick. That was what sold people, not all the scientific facts and figures about the product. The fact that it could make even an Alka-Seltzer impervious to water was a huge selling point. They loved it, especially when I let them seal the Alka-Seltzer themselves. I was selling the benefits, and was letting them see the benefits directly by using that little demonstration.
Everybody is looking for things to make their lives simpler, easier, and more fulfilling. They want answers to questions like, “Will it make me money? Will it take my pain away? Will it make me happy and safe?” So it’s important to focus on the benefits before the features. My simple sealant experiment was a brilliant way of illustrating this, and it shows that people can be influenced by the simplest things, as long as those things reach out and touch them in a way they can relate to. If you have simple solutions to anything major that plagues people, as well as many of the minor things, you’re going to make a lot of money. Just tell people you can make their life better — and then prove it.
That’s all they care about. They don’t care about anything that went into developing the product, or even the years of study you had to endure to become a professional. They just want to know if you can make them money, if you’ll make their life easier and happier, or if you’ll make the pain go away. If so, you’ll make money.
Think about the pharmaceutical ads you see all over nowadays, especially the ones in print. The front page has big bold promises and all the things it’s going to do for you. On the back are all the disclaimers in tiny print that tell you about the potential side effects. We sell benefits. That’s what people want to buy. Fortunately for most of us, we’re not selling things that have adverse side effects; but even if they exist, we want to downplay them. Everything has a positive and negative side, which most people realize. That’s the reality of just about every product that we use. But when you’re focused on the benefits, you do a much better job of selling.
Again, this is especially true when you couple those benefits with a strong guarantee, because it’s your job as a marketer to put your customer or prospect at ease. Too many marketers are too shy when it comes to guarantees. If you can make one, you’re telling your prospect, “There’s no risk here. If you’re unhappy, you get your money back. If you don’t like the results, we’ll buy the product back from you.”
Decide what kind of refund policy to use, and then put it in play. Just about every product should have a guarantee. That guarantee should be reasonable and thorough, allowing you to focus on the benefits of your product, guaranteeing the delivery of certain promises — or their money back, period. In many cases, if you have a compelling enough offer, people will respond quickly and confidently, knowing they’re assured a refund if they’re not happy. It will make them feel more comfortable, even before they have all the facts. Even if they still have some concerns at the end, they may order anyway because they know they can do their due diligence after the fact. They don’t want to miss out, and they don’t want to lose the discount or the free bonuses you offer. It all comes down to them knowing that if they decide to buy and something doesn’t check out, they know they can get their money back.
Let me re-emphasize: the more you focus on the benefits and the positives, the more you can sell. People want benefits, but most don’t need to know the details of how the benefits work. They just want to know that they do. That being the case, trying to tell them too much becomes a hindrance, because it gets in the way of that positive focus. Telling them too much can also reveal some of the negatives, which may hinder your ability to sell a product. I’m not encouraging you to sell products that don’t deliver on your promises, or that have no real benefits; just don’t focus on the negatives. All products have pluses and minuses, and too much focus on the negatives will result in a lack of enthusiasm that will hinder your ability to do whatever it takes to make a sale.
You do need to know your material, because sometimes prospects will ask some tough questions. What they want to know, though, is not necessarily the answer to all those questions; they want reassurance more than anything else. They want to see that you know your stuff, and that you really are going to deliver. Often, they’re also trying to control the conversation and the entire sales process too. Just be sure you have an answer for every objection; and whenever possible, work it into your pitch, so you answer the question before they even ask.
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