Upping Your Selling Game

Sales and Marketing is an area rife with challenges that come in the way of communicating effectively with clients and prospects, and eventually selling them products or services. FABS is a Sales jargon which stands for Features, Advantages, and Benefits Selling, the understanding of which will slowly unfold here.

Many salespeople fail because they succeed in raising awareness about the need to buy a particular product or service, then fail to sell their company. This can lead to the customer shopping around for the cheapest option, which may not actually be in their best interests. They present information or Features of their products or company in statements such as: ‘Our calculator has a solar battery’ or ‘Our company has been established for 100 years’ when the customer really wants to know ‘What’s in it for me?’.

Hence, a more persuasive style could be: ‘Because it has a solar battery our calculator can run indefinitely in normal daylight.’ This goes beyond simple product characteristics. It shows how a characteristic or Feature can be used and applied. Such statements are called Advantages.

Catering to Needs

People buy because they have needs. If the seller can demonstrate that the product will meet those needs, then there is a high probability of making a sale. Statements that show how the buyer’s needs can be met by product features and advantages are called Benefits.

Benefits are the most powerful way in which a seller can describe a product. By having a clear understanding of the buyer’s needs, one can sell particular benefits of the product that meet those needs.

In this case, ‘Because it has a solar battery, our calculator can run indefinitely in normal daylight, which means that you will not need to worry about the cost of replacement batteries’ is a statement that can relate to the buyer. It says how the features and advantages will affect the individual and is, therefore, much more persuasive.

Benefits describe what is in it for the customer and reflect feelings of confidence, reassurance and peace of mind.

The Benefit phrases people like to hear are:

@ You don’t have to worry because…
@ You can be confident that…
@ You can be reassured that…
@ This will give you peace of mind because…

Whatever it takes to sell, as they say.

T K Ramesh, Managing Director and CEO
Micromatic Machine Tools Pvt Ltd

The views expressed by the author are personal and he can be contacted at rameshtkr@gmail.com