You’re about to introduce a new, expensive, and probably pretty technical product to your customers. You personally don’t totally understand the product yourself. This means that unless you really work on your presentation, your customers won’t have a chance of understanding it either, and they probably won’t buy it.
Get out all the literature, specifications, and, hopefully, your sample of the product. Start an outline of all the features you can come up with. Remember that features are what the point is, not what it does. For example, an on/off switch is a feature. The benefits are that it turns the machine on and off and saves electricity.
List the features in a logical explanation order and not particularly from the most to least important. If you do this on a computer spreadsheet, you will be able to easily cut, paste, and rearrange the features to get them in the exact order you want.
The reason you want to arrange this list in a logical order is threefold:
- As you know when giving a presentation, there are always interruptions, questions, and other disruptions. If you have your presentation in a logical order, you will find it easier to get back on track when you get back to selling, and you probably won’t miss some important features.
- If you present the highlights first, the other features might make your presentation boring.
- Once you do this, you will be in a position to become a real expert on this product.
Now that you have every possible feature you can find on your spreadsheet, add another column or two for the benefits of each of your listed features.
Most importantly, when you list the benefits beside the features, write them highlighting what those features mean to the user. For example, let’s say this new gizmo you’re selling comes with eight adapters to fit most major scopes on the market. Yes, this is important if you present it with “this gizmo comes with eight adapters to fit most major scopes on the market. This is important to you (Mr./Mrs. Prospect), so you will not need to buy any additional adapters and not need to look all over for the right adapter since all eight are stored right in the unit.”
Even though you will not be writing them on your spreadsheet, remember to trial close with these more important features and benefits.
“Do you like the convenience of all the adapters stored in the unit?”
Now, complete the task of listing all the benefits you can think of besides the features on your spreadsheet. This may take a while to do it right and may even involve a call to the company product manager or even the manufacturer, but in the end, you will truly be a product expert.
