Summary: When we talk about selling beyond features and benefits, we did sort of discuss the idea of trying to elicit some emotions from people. try to find out what they really want. Then we can start to focus more on emotions and experiences.<br> <br> What is the emotion you want to have them feel when they are taking advantage of this purchase? What is the experience you want them to have after they've purchased it?<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of selling beyond features and benefits. Welcome back, Jay.<br> <br> <br> <br> Jay: Thank you so much, David. This is an important topic for me because I feel like so often if we just convince them that the features are perfect for them or the benefits are perfect for them, then we'll get the sale.<br> <br> When as so often, what we've talked about, it's more about relationships than it is features and benefits.<br> <br> David: Yeah, and we did touch on this topic a couple of weeks ago in the podcast, and I thought it was worth it to sort of revisit it, expand it a little more, because it's the type of thing that people sort of basically know, basically understand, but maybe haven't really implemented.<br> <br> So I'm hoping we can flesh this out a little better for people. And if you've got questions about anything we talk about, that's one of the reasons I love these discussions is you think of things that I would never have thought of and hopefully vice versa. And we're able to come up with strategies that are going to be helpful to people.<br> <br> So in a previous podcast we had discussed when we're looking to get beyond the idea of features and benefits, how so many salespeople have been trained on this over so many years or even so many decades. That's kind of all they know.<br> <br> And if you recognize that there is a world, there is a life beyond features and benefits, it really opens things up for you. It opens up your mind. It opens up your conversations, your dialogue, your interactions with prospects and clients. It just gives you a lot more that you can work with that can actually help to elicit a response from them. Find out what they're looking to do, get down to their actual core emotions in addition to just what's coming off the top of their head.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah, I think I told you it's probably been almost a year since we talked about it, but I went to a week-long sales training. These were like the premier sales trainers in the country. And they told us the whole week that we were selling light bulbs. And that was all we could sell.<br> <br> We could never rely on our knowledge of the real product that we sold. That way we would have to focus on the skillset behind selling and building relationships. And what was so funny is that people would start making up features and benefits of these imaginary light bulbs, because they had to have something like that. Because that's all they knew was selling features and benefits.<br> <br> And the whole week they're trying to teach you No, no, no. Build relationships. Like you said, there's an emotional component here. There's so much more than features and benefits. And I came away with an incredible understanding. I think some people came away just knowing how to sell light bulbs, to be honest with you.<br> <br> David: Right! Yeah. So then they all had to go into business selling light bulbs. It didn't help me sell anything else, but help me sell light bulbs. It really is kind of funny, the way our minds work sometimes. Because if you're in the product zone, if you're just thinking in terms of the actual physical product that you're selling, it's one dimension. But it's not always the most important dimension.<br> <br> Because there's that old expression that people don't want to buy a drill bit, right? You remember that one?
