Sales and Marketing Plans – Understanding the Buyer’s Needs, Features and Benefits and Body Language

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Back to Page 2: How to Qualify and Present Effectively – Key Parts of Your Sales and Marketing Plans

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Understanding the Buyer’s Needs; Features and Benefits; and Body Language as Part of the Sales and Marketing Plans

Continuing with the PRESENTING part of your sales and marketing plans, whoever sells must be proficient at uncovering the buyer’s real needs, identifying features and benefits to match up with the buyer’s needs, listening and reading body language.

These are all essential tools of professional selling.

UNDERSTANDING THE BUYER’S REAL NEEDS

Also, whoever is doing the selling must truly understand the prospect’s needs and how your product or service will satisfy those needs. 

One of the most common selling mistakes is guessing and assuming you understand without asking and verifying. More sales are lost by thinking you know what’s in the prospect’s mind and being wrong, than just about anything else.

And that’s crazy when all you have to do is ask.

FEATURES AND BENEFITS TRAINING

Your sales and marketing plans should accommodate ongoing sales training, particularly for everyone responsible for making presentations. 

For example, a persuasive presenter needs to know and understand the features and benefits of your product or service. 

FEATURES are specific noteworthy characteristics, like:

■the radio has three knobs;
■the sessions are conducted twice a week;
■It comes in red, black and green.

BENEFITS are what you get because of certain features or actions. Benefits generally have an emotional charge. For example:

■If you buy the new version of the iPad today [ACTION], you’ll be admired by all your coworkers and friends [BENEFIT] because you were first to get it;

■It comes in this unique aqua color [FEATURE] so you won’t look like everyone else [BENEFIT];

■If you refinance now [ACTION] you’ll have lower payments [FEATURE] which means your life will be much easier [BENEFIT] and you’ll have more money for the things you really want, like that vacation you’ve been dying to take [BENEFIT].

Most people list features without mentioning the benefits. But professional sales and marketing plans expect all key salespeople to be trained and conditioned to mention both the features and the benefits when presenting their case to prospective buyers. 

Have you or your reps been properly trained? 

Is your product or service demonstrated in a way that enables prospects to understand what they get when buying from you, and what they lose if they don’t buy from you?

LISTENING AND WATCHING BODY LANGUAGE

Effective presenters are great at really truly listening and watching body language. 

So, whoever is doing the selling, are they effective at reading body language, and at listening to what’s really being said? Or are they so busy thinking of their next sentence that they do not hear the customer’s subtle comments, objections, needs and concerns? 

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See Page 3: Developing Proposals and Making the Buying Decision Easier with Your Sales and Marketing Plans