Jan 8, 2021
Your customers don’t care about your features…
When it comes to product messaging, the old sales adage “sell the sizzle, not the steak” is spot on. I’ve fallen for the excitement of talking about the cool technology behind the scenes, geeking out on the technical details — but (most) customers don’t care about the database table index you added to improve search speed, they care about the time they’ll save.
Enter: Feature-Benefit-Value
This trick has allowed me to transform my excitement of the feature into something our customers will value. This is the bedrock of product positioning/messaging for every new feature we release. Starting with the feature, work through to what that feature enables (i.e. the benefit) and then what is the value to the customer of having that new benefit. Here is how it breaks down (and when you should talk about each):
- Feature: What we all want to talk about, but shouldn’t. Obviously we need to know what it does and how it works, but don’t talk about it until you need to (i.e. in a how-to session when onboarding a new user or supporting an existing customer)
e.g. A new button that merges duplicate contacts in your account with a single click
- Benefit: A step in the right direction — this is what the features makes possible. You can talk about this, but it should be for prospects who are product-aware or most-aware (read more on stages of awareness here from Joanna Wiebe)
e.g. It declutters your contacts view, you can find contacts faster and simplify your workflow
- Value: This is the holy grail. How can you take the benefit your feature provides and turn it into language that gets at the core desire of your customer. How are they gaining something better for themselves (or avoiding pain). It’s all about status here and this really helps drive awareness for top of funnel prospects.
e.g. Save time organizing your account and spend it where it matters — reconnecting with the people that matter
With this matrix in hand, product teams can now deliver bullet points to marketing & sales teams that tie the functional-widget-thing to language that gets closer to the customer.
Extra credit… Internal & External Problems
When you are really in tune with how your customers think, speak, and feel, you can take the feature-benefit-value matrix and enhance it with internal & external problems. This allows you to really speak from the vantage point of your customer, because you understand their pain and desires.
In Don Miller’s Storybrand framework he covers two levels of problems customers have. Hint: it’s really similar to benefits vs. values.
External Problems — surface level things, problems that your product/service could solve directly. This is the “feature/benefit” trap. The feature solves a problem and too often we start with solving the external problem. But there usually is a deeper underlying problem, the internal problem.
Internal Problems — this is what your customer is really dealing with. They either want to avoid some type of pain, or are desiring something better for themselves. When you can offer a solution to their internal problems, you are speaking to their emotion. (And emotion sells, not logic, even though we do justify our purchase with logic).
This is an interesting leap that more technical PM’s need to make. Understand the possibility of what your feature creates…
Can you improve someone’s confidence?
Can you make them feel smarter?
Can you help save them time?
Can you make them look good?
It may not always seem obvious at first because your feature solves a particular function, but making that connection to the possibility it offers to your customers is the key.
