Sales Tip: Know what's in it for your customers

It is almost never a good idea to tell a customer that buying this will help you win some contest or qualify for some increased benefit. They may like you, but their primary care is what’s in it for them.

It is unfortunately easy to slip into “advantage” selling and neglect “benefit” selling. As in the example below.

• Feature: This is our cool, red dead blow hammer.
• Advantage: When you hit something the beads inside will slam forward to force the impact on your target and absorb the impact so the hammer will never bounce off what you are hitting.

So, in this example, you might make the sale with just the feature and the advantage, but the benefit will assuredly close the deal as the benefit shows your customers what's in it for them.

• Benefit: In addition to not damaging anything around what you are hitting, this dead blow hammer will not bounce off your target and injure you.