A man walks into a hardware store and tells the sales assistant that he wants to buy a drill. The smart sales assistant doesn’t ask the customer what sort of drill he wants, he asks the customer about the size of hole he needs. The smart sales assistant knows that the man doesn’t really want a drill; he wants the benefit – the hole that the drill will make.
You could take this idea further and claim that the benefit of owning the right drill makes the man feel like he is defining his masculinity and creativity by creating structures to nurture his family and achieve the highest status in his community. I’m going overboard to labour the point; which is that we make buying decisions based on benefits, both tangible, (the hole) as well as less quantifiable (status).
If you apply this concept to your business; for your customer the benefit of buying a widget is not the widget itself, it’s the difference the widget makes to their life – does it make a task easier, quicker or cheaper? Or a combination of all three? There could also be less tangible benefits including your customer being proud of their widget or how it might make them feel.
When people are selling things to me, I’m really interested in their approach to selling benefits and also which benefits make me want to buy their product. Some of my friends find this mildly amusing while others find it massively irritating. I want to tell you about a time it happened recently.
Last year I was in Marrakech. There is a fantastic night market in the main square. There are rows and rows of stalls selling tagines as well as meats and vegetables that they grill for you while you wait. Each stall has benches that you sit at to eat your food and watch the world go by. Most of the benches are filled with locals and tourists. It’s crowded, hot and noisy and the food smells are divine.
With so much choice selling is hugely competitive and I enjoyed listening and watching some of the different tactics the sales people used to sell their products. They sold benefits; the best food, made from traditional recipes passed down from generation to generation, the best view of the square, a safe space to sit and enjoy with your friends, opportunity to mix with the local people who all eat here because it is the best. The list goes on.
One seller had a less full stall and when I heard his sales technique I understood why.
“Madame, when you eat my food I guarantee you no diarrhoea for 24 hours.”
Not getting diarrhoea is indeed a benefit, but until he mentioned it, getting diarrhoea wasn’t something that I’d even considered. I had taken it for granted that I wouldn’t get ill from the food.
I was so surprised by the no diarrhoea claim that I stopped (perhaps that was the real tactic), and he said it again. I tried to explain that his flamboyant and gleeful claims of ‘no diarrhoea’ was not making me want to eat at his stall, and all I could think about how was getting ill from his food. To which he reiterated that he provided a full no diarrhoea guarantee.
As we wandered off to find some home-made, fresh recipes and sit in a quiet place and watch the world go by, the no diarrhoea seller made a last attempt and shouted hopefully after us, ‘cheaper than Primark?’
I believe in being different and standing out in a crowded marketplace, but when selling benefits, surely they have to be benefits that appeal to your customer?
What do you think? Would you eat at the no diarrhoea stall?