Now that everyone understands what the needs are, it is finally time to show the customer how well equipped you are to deliver a solution. It is time to…

Demonstrate Capability!

Features – We are a local company.
Advantages – We have our own local technical experts, who speak your language.
Benefits – With our local technical team, we can handle all EQs within 24 hours.

All three methods demonstrate capability, but which method do you think moves you closer to an order? Is it Features, Advantages or Benefits?
If you guessed benefits, you’re right!

Features are facts about NCAB.
Advantages point out what the features do.
Benefits describe why this could be important for this customer.

A ‘Spray-and-pray’ salesperson will talk about features and advantages that could be useful to any customer. But SPIN selling is all about finding a solution that is specific for this customer’s needs. HEED the NEED! So you should only mention features and advantages that this customer needs, and put all your emphasis on what benefits this could bring.

Let’s have another example:
Features – We are one of the world’s largest suppliers of PCB’s, we are present in 17 countries, and have been doing this for 26 years.
Advantages – Our size gives us the opportunity to have a 80 strong factory management team that make sure we work with the best factories, according to our tightly controlled PSL.
Benefits – Through our FM-team, we have a deep understanding of the production process. So, if our technical team meet yours at an early stage, we can help you find design problems before they cause expensive delays in the purchasing process.

Can you see why customers will want to pay more for benefits than for features?
Remember, you can only demonstrate benefits successfully if you have asked the right questions to uncover your customer’s needs. What they need is probably quite different to what the customer you met yesterday needed, which is different from the needs of the customer who you visit tomorrow.

NARRATOR: Wow! What fantastic benefits! I sure want to buy from NCAB now! But the question is – will the customer buy from NCAB? Stay tuned for the final lesson in this SPIN-course about Obtaining commitment!