Why the features and functionality of your product or service don’t matter
By Jim Logan • Jan 23rd, 2008 • Category: Lead Generation Content
Something hi-tech marketing and sales people in particular love to talk about is their product and service seeds-feeds-features-functionalities. These are the numerous things bulleted on datasheets and technical bulletins. And they’re the things a prospective customer cares little about…unless you let them.
It’s true. Customers don’t want to buy whatever physical product or service you sell.
No one wants to buy a router, switch, test equipment, managed services, software, etc. They want to buy the things they can do with these products and services to enable an opportunity or solve a problem within their business. It’s the business issue you should be focused on in your white paper, case study, presentation, web copy, etc.
The more you directly address your prospect’s underlying business driver, the better your chance of gaining a new customer.
Your speeds-feeds-features-functionalities only matter to the extent they prove your ability to deliver a benefit.
Do you disagree? Are your product or service speeds-feeds-features-functionalities equally or more important than your ability to address your prospect’s underlying business problem or opportunity? Why?
Jim — This makes sense to me, and I agree with the concept — I*ability to address the underlying business problem or opportunity* ranks higher than the specific product/service used to get the job done. That is what you’re saying, correct? I’m curious to hear more — I’ll be reading/listening.
Hi Gloria! Thanks for the comment…
Another way to say it is the things we do and how we do them aren’t very important. What’s important is the results of the things we do. True, many products are services are unique, but the uniqueness only matters when it results in something valuable.
What this means for most of us is we should talk more about the things our products and services do to enable a customer’s opportunity or avert a problem, speaking less about the things we actually do. And when we speak about the things we do (features and functionality), we should speak about them as proof of our ability to deliver meaningful benefits.
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