Business growth: Build your sales model
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“Features tell, benefits sell” is a very appropriate phrase in the sales and marketing cycle. One of the basic principles of business growth is to continually strive for improving your product or service. If you lose touch with your market as it changes, your customers will leave you behind.
Many business owners do not understand the differences between features and benefits. A simple example can provide some clarity. The “features” of a rollercoaster consist of the metal tracks, the supportive infrastructure, and the brakes. The “benefits” to a rollercoaster include going fast, the thrill or adrenaline rush you get when riding, and the fear you feel as you go upside down through the loop de loop. As a rider, if you love rollercoasters, the benefits far outweigh the features. Hence the adage, “Features tell, but benefits sell.”
Many business owners and managers realize, when it is too late, that the element of change is constant. Many of them thought they had the perfect product or service and the world would beat a path to their door, only to discover the market dynamics and changes inherent in their industry did not subscribe to that line of thought. Businesses need to adapt their products or services to constantly changing market needs in order to improve their sales model by aligning their marketing strategy with those changing market conditions.
An article by the Kauffman Foundation cited the New Belgium Brewing Co. The founder of the company said, “From the beginning we have had a strategy to innovate continually when it came to our specialty beers.” The key point being that the company constantly strived to develop new beers to satisfy the thirst of their market customers.
In another example, the two founders of Moss Tent Works produced backpacking tents, even though, according to Kauffman, “They knew their core competencies were designing and manufacturing frame and fabric structures. They were so successful in the new market, they sold their tent division to focus on their trade show business.”
According to an article by Joe Keohane, in Entrepreneur magazine, iRobot, the company that makes Roomba, used the tag line “Let a robot replace you.” While it worked for several years, as early adopters rushed to buy the product, at one point, that segment of the market had been tapped and many potential customers who were very fastidious housekeepers, did not believe “a robot could replace them. And they were right. It probably couldn’t.”
Fortunately for iRobot, they realized the need to differentiate their approach for the selling of benefits to the new segment of consumers. Dwight Brown, the Senior VP of Global Marketing at the company made the following observations: “….if we start focusing communication on the benefit, and not force the consumer to think about the robot as a replacement, we might open the doors to opportunity.” He could not have been more accurate in his assessment. iRobot worked with a market research firm that concluded potential customers were aware of the existence of Roomba, but did not believe it would be good enough to clean things as well as they could themselves.
Brown immediately set out to revamp the company marketing campaign. According to Keohane, “The consumers it was targeting said that while they weren’t looking for a robot vacuum, per se, they did want a cleaner home. And in an ideal world, they wanted their home to be cleaned every day; they were just too busy to do it themselves. That was the opening iRobot was looking for. It crafted a new pitch, ‘Cleaner floors every day— all at the push of a button,’ and repositioned the product not as something that cleans for you but as something that cleans with you. Something that reliably frees you up from some mundane work and increases the baseline cleanliness in your home, without any additional effort on your part.”
Sales of the product continued to climb and it was obvious the market research and implementation of the new marketing plan had worked.
As a business owner or manager, it is always a delicate task to know your limitations, as well as your strengths, when defining and refining your strategy. It is also very important to know the needs of your customers or clients and have the wisdom to align your strategies with the needs of your clientele. In order to grow your business, you have to balance your strategy with the needs of your customers.