How to be F.A.B. at sales!

Many sales people in technical sales are comfortable talking about the latest features of their instrument or consumable product. After all, they are in the role they have due their technical or scientific knowledge. However, it is an old adage in sales that customer don't buy features, they buy benefits. In this episode of the Luxury of Choice podcast, host Steve Vaughan is joined by Jayne Green and Christian Walter, where they discuss F.A.B. selling, or how to link features to an advantage, and to uncover the benefits these may bring to a customer in their work. 

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche and Jayne Green are Sales Trainers from george james ltd. You can email the show at: Podcast@georgejames-training.com

The trainers on LinkedIn:

Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/


george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:00.878)
Hello again and welcome to The Luxury of Choice, a B2B Sales and Business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan, I'm a senior sales trainer and also a director now with George James and also the host and producer of this podcast. And today I've got two of my colleagues with me, Jayne Green and Christian Walter. But before we start, I do need to apologize to you dear Lister, we're a little bit late putting this episode out. We try and stick to it at every two weeks cadence with the podcast. But to be really honest, we're all super flat out with training.

So guys, I know you've both been really busy. How things been for you, over the last couple of weeks?

Jayne Green (00:36.398)
Yeah, it has been hectic. I've been driving up and down the country delivering training, which is actually great, isn't it? So it's doing what we love doing and the purpose of why we're here.

Christian (00:40.997)
So.

Steve Vaughan (00:43.374)
Absolutely, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (00:47.458)
Yeah, we should say we're not complaining by the way. How about you, Chris? I know you've been super busy as well.

Jayne Green (00:49.282)
And now we're not complaining.

Christian (00:50.555)
Yeah, very similar. mean, between delivering training and planning the next one and putting proposals together for maybe less common stuff. I've been very, very busy, but I love it. It keeps me on my toes.

Steve Vaughan (01:05.868)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:11.325)
It makes the days go quick, doesn't it? Yeah, Same here, I've been to California, I've been to Chicksbury, which is less glamorous but equally nice, up in Macclesfield and all over the place. And of course we've got a bit of a catch up as well, Jay, next week with our colleague Pru on developing our new sort of content, but more of that to come in the future. So what are we gonna look at today? So we're gonna look at what we call Fab.

selling, F-A-B, selling. Now selling is always fab in my opinion. Now you guys are much younger than me, but if you have ever watched any children's TV when you were growing up, you might remember Thunderbirds. Anybody remember Thunderbirds? You're too young to remember Thunderbirds, I know, but what are the catchphrases when they were on their way to some disaster somewhere?

Jayne Green (01:51.246)
too.

Steve Vaughan (02:00.301)
you know, then they wanted to respond back to base. was always FAB. So we're not going to talk about Thunderbirds today. We're going to talk about features, advantages. My colleagues look at me like I'm gone mad here. Possibly I have.

Jayne Green (02:06.052)
you

Jayne Green (02:12.65)
No, no, I'm with it, I remember it, my kids used to love this and they had costumes to go with it but we're not going to go there.

Steve Vaughan (02:20.523)
I didn't have to say, yeah. You can never see the strings though on those black and white TVs we used to watch at home, could you, but still. It's on YouTube if you really want to watch Thunderbirds, but I'm not quite that sad. Anyway, let's move on. What do we mean by fab selling? It's features, advantages, benefits. In other words, how do we now move our product stuff into something that's of real value? And we use that word a lot today, real value to our customers. So.

I'm going to start with feature because it's the easy one. So when we talk about a feature of a product, I guess what we're talking about really is its specification or a particular widget on the product or a particular design aspect or the display or its fast auto sampler or something like that. But that's a feature. And one of the things I learned very early on in selling is that we don't sell features, we sell advantages.

and benefits. So Christian, I know you've got a great example that we could use here just to position features, advantages, benefits that isn't sort of scientific instrument specific. So perhaps we can all kind of relate to it. So do you want to just explain what you're going through with us before we start the recording? I think it's a great analogy.

Christian (03:34.867)
Sure. So I'm a keen ornithologist and bird photographer. I dabble, I'm not a professional by a long shot, but I just take great pleasure from being out in nature. And on the modern cameras, there's a feature called pre-burst. And pre-burst actually takes pictures before you press the shutter. And that's a feature that's quite popular with bird photographers.

Steve Vaughan (03:42.955)
You're very good.

Steve Vaughan (03:54.093)
Okay.

Okay. Sure.

Christian (04:04.411)
Because of course the advantage of the pre-burst system is that you might capture a very special moment, such as a parent bird feeding a little bird or a bird taking off for flight or two birds mating or something like that, which you otherwise miss. Because when it happens, you have a delay time until you press the shutter. So that's the advantage.

The feature is the Pre-Burst Mode.

Steve Vaughan (04:32.595)
I got you. So it's catching like the foot, like a second before you actually press the shutter to treat your camera's recording. Yeah. Okay. Got you. Yeah.

Christian (04:38.373)
Yes, yes. The advantage is you capture the special moment. And then, of course, the benefit always has to be felt in your pocket. And if you're a professional bird photographer, you want to sell pictures or you want to win an award. want to win the bird photographer of the year award and you want to sell to the BBC Wildlife magazine. And to do that, you need to capture that special moment. And so that's the story. know, pre-burst, special moment.

Jayne Green (04:38.532)
Yes, yes. The advantages you have to the special. And then of course the benefit always has to be felt in your pocket.

Steve Vaughan (04:41.581)
sure.

Steve Vaughan (04:57.869)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (05:04.516)
So that's

Christian (05:08.675)
Money in your pocket.

Steve Vaughan (05:09.856)
So feature, advantage, benefit. It's a great example. guess Jayne, features are what the product does. The advantages are general, why it's useful, but the benefit is why it's specifically of use to the person you're talking to, really.

Jayne Green (05:17.932)
Yep.

Jayne Green (05:23.78)
Yeah, mean, I think features are actually what it is, more than what it does often. You know, I think a feature, you know, would have, you know, it's like it's got a clear, it's got a clear screen. It's not what it does, you know. So I think it's what it is and we can dwell quite heavily on those.

Steve Vaughan (05:26.901)
Okay, yeah, true, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (05:36.811)
Yeah, yeah, true.

Jayne Green (05:42.916)
without understanding actually, you know, what actually the advantage is and then what is the outcome. So I think it might be prude and I might be wrong, but I know she talked about changing it to fav, like your fave.

Steve Vaughan (05:54.884)
Fav. I love that. Yeah.

Jayne Green (05:55.876)
you know, features, advantage and your value. That really helps me understand when we see benefits sometimes, I think we get that mixed up, advantages and benefits. What's the real value? Because that's what the benefit is, isn't it? The real value that is, like Christian said, something that's going to hit my pocket, save the company money, help them generate more profit.

Steve Vaughan (06:11.587)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (06:19.928)
you know, maybe help them or that person bring a publication that they didn't realize a product to market really quickly. You know, these are really good value, saving great money, saving time, you know, time actually normally equates saving money. So.

Steve Vaughan (06:21.325)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (06:27.151)
Sure.

Steve Vaughan (06:34.041)
I think that's great. I love that. That is your approval. Thank you for the input. Yeah, absolutely. It's all George James anyway. But yeah, love it. So I think as technical salespeople, we're comfortable with features. We come from a background where we may have been using the product, whether it's equipment or consumables or whatever. We may have been using it ourselves in the lab or in the factory.

Jayne Green (06:37.293)
Yeah, if not, I'll take that one.

Christian (06:37.851)
You

Steve Vaughan (07:00.841)
And because we like the technology and I'm guilty as charged there, we like the technology. We're comfortable talking about features. This one goes to 11. I'm full of references today, but you know what I mean? If this one's got a particular feature that you like and you think, it's really, really cool, really whizzy. And I think it's difficult then, many salespeople find it difficult to actually relate that to a real person really, in terms of...

putting yourself in the shoes of the lab manager or the factory manager or the process manager or whatever. So how can we get a better handle on what the customer's really looking for rather than what we think the customer wants, Christian? How can we do that?

Christian (07:40.571)
Yes, I think it's a big, it's a huge trap we might fall into. We talk about features and we go on and on and on about it and we don't even know whether those particular features are relevant for this customer because we never translate them into advantages and benefits. And I think what we need to do is ask good questions to understand what the customer is looking for. You know, perhaps the customer is looking for a super high

Steve Vaughan (07:43.819)
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (08:08.269)
Absolutely. Yeah, true.

Christian (08:09.345)
accuracy in order to prove certain scientific thesis. And then we might actually stress a particular feature, but we have to understand what the benefit is of that feature for this particular customer. And not every customer is looking for the same thing. And I think that's the challenge, isn't it? It's to find out what makes the heart sing of this particular customer.

Jayne Green (08:20.824)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (08:38.318)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (08:38.541)
Love that, So it's asking great questions, Jayne. And I think sometimes as salespeople we're a little bit reluctant to do so because we think we're a bit nosy or cheeky. But I think sometimes we have to recognize that's what we have to do in sales, yeah.

Christian (08:38.651)
and then talk about benefits that matter for this particular customer, and then go back to the features, why the instruments we sell deliver those benefits.

Jayne Green (08:49.604)
Hmm

Jayne Green (09:06.484)
Yeah, we have to. And it's the greatest sort of asset that we have, if we can be curious. You know, I think if we can then reframe that, I'm being nosy, actually, I'm being curious. You know, I was talking this week, I don't know about you, but with my children when they were tiny, they asked many what, when.

Steve Vaughan (09:20.557)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (09:27.396)
why questions continually over and over following me around the house because they're developing so quickly. You know, actually as we get older, we sometimes hold back from that. And I think, you know, restoring them that curiosity within ourselves as salespeople or particularly newer salespeople, be curious, you know, don't presume that we know or assume that we know what that person really is looking for. Ask lots of questions. And if we're

Steve Vaughan (09:48.102)
Yeah. It's a great point there, yes.

Jayne Green (09:56.164)
If we're asking mainly scientists, they are generally quite keen to tell us what they're on with, you know, and what they really want. you know, I think this whole subject is about, you know, customers, we think customer wants to buy a product and yes, they do. Actually, they want an outcome.

Steve Vaughan (10:05.549)
Great questions.

Jayne Green (10:13.58)
you know, and it's understanding what that is. And it's that bit, you know, if we could ask a customer and find a really nice way to frame it with really great open questions, what's in it for you? What do you want to get out of this? What difference is this going to make, you know, to you? And I think it's just keeping that curiosity level really high.

Steve Vaughan (10:32.213)
Super.

Christian (10:33.359)
I really love that Jayne. I think, you know, this childlike curiosity, this openness also to the answer, because, you know, many grownups ask questions expecting a specific answer. And I think that's a trap in sales. You know, we need to be open for any answer. We need to ask the question and then listen, listen really well. Sometimes our customers are not so extroverted. They need a bit of time to think.

Jayne Green (10:47.076)
chain.

Jayne Green (10:52.046)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Green (11:01.124)
Yeah, good point.

Steve Vaughan (11:01.359)
True. Great points. think as an experienced salespeople, sometimes we feel we have to keep the conversation going. We have to keep filling the gap of any

Christian (11:03.715)
And if we as salespeople fire too many questions quickly, sometimes the customers don't get enough time to think. So we should be curious and be open and sometimes shut up and listen. And then we find out.

Steve Vaughan (11:28.565)
of any sort of silence in the conversation really. And I think that's, it's an easy trap to fall into, but as you get more experience, you recognize that actually asking those questions and just giving the customer the space and the time to tell you what's on their mind is so important. You're so right about the kid question, Draene, my grandson's two now and he's just in that phase where, you know, what are you doing, mommy? Why are you doing it? And that question, I think is, if I can explore that with both of you, that question that starts with why.

Jayne Green (11:51.46)
you

Steve Vaughan (11:57.676)
You know, it's easier to say, you know, what are you doing here? You know, what kind of throughput you need? What kind of, you know, resolution are you looking for? What delivery period are you need? Who's going to use the product? Those kinds of questions. I'm not saying it's easy. know, we can get used to asking those questions, but I think sometimes we're a bit reluctant, Jayne, to ask that question. Why is that important to you? Why do you need that? What would happen if we couldn't do that almost really?

Jayne Green (12:21.933)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (12:26.168)
Yeah, but it's such a lovely follow on, isn't it, from an open question where we've asked them to tell us more about what they're doing and they've given us some understanding. And then for us to be able to, and I think this is part of active listening, you know, that leaning in moment of saying, you know, why is that really important to you? Because when we are prepared to ask that question about that thing that we're talking about that is important to them and we delve in that

Steve Vaughan (12:26.625)
Do you find that as well? It is.

Jayne Green (12:55.266)
a little bit deeper and we're prepared to listen, that's when we find out the real value moments, probably what their value is when we are prepared to ask. I mean, of course, lots of why questions become very annoying as I realised when one of my sons was two. Why, why, why? But using why really in a very crafted and careful way is really valuable to find out what the value really is here. That customer saying, what's in it for me?

Steve Vaughan (13:08.295)
Yes, it's not an interrogation.

Jayne Green (13:24.93)
you know, and understanding what that means is really important. And like Christian said, we only get that by asking questions and then being prepared to be quiet and listen, very, you know, active listening.

Steve Vaughan (13:34.624)
Yeah, super. And you make a great point there, know, what's in it for the customer. And we're talking about the person here, not the organization. You know, it's the person that is buying the product. Yeah, ultimately it's the company that will write the checkout, but the person that is buying the product or products or whatever it is that we're hoping they're gonna buy from us really. And then that value is what it means Christian to that particular person, that individual, isn't it really? Okay.

Jayne Green (13:43.789)
Yes.

Christian (14:02.839)
I think it's both. think if we can find values for the individual and for the different individuals actually that are involved in a sales process, it's always more than one. And if we can find value for the company, I think then we have the easiest chance of convincing the customer to sign the order. And I'm saying we need to find out what matters to

Steve Vaughan (14:11.105)
Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (14:20.621)
Yeah,

Jayne Green (14:21.218)
Yes.

Christian (14:30.071)
each of the people involved. And it may be different. know, a lab manager is looking for productivity. A lab technician is maybe looking for easy cleanability because they're fed up and spending too much time cleaning the machines. A scientist is maybe looking for better result quality so we can, you know, publish more relevant data. A procurement person is looking for a return on investment.

Jayne Green (14:33.624)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (14:39.95)
Yep.

Jayne Green (14:43.928)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (14:52.813)
Yeah. Super point. So how do we do that,

Christian (14:58.949)
So I think we really have to find out what matters to each individual and ideally find personal gains and overall company gains.

Jayne Green (15:02.915)
We are.

Jayne Green (15:08.834)
Yeah, very important.

Jayne Green (15:13.558)
We have to find the right people. You know, and that's the big one, isn't it? We can fall into that trap also of having a very enthusiastic person that might be the end user that we're talking to, that is really wowed by, you know, the product that we've got in front of them. And that seems great. And we put all of our eggs in one basket by talking to that person and presume that we might know everything. We have to, you know, I remember many years ago,

the family saying that if you don't have three people on your checklist, at least, this is your minimum, then you're possibly not going to win that sale or you're not going to win it very quickly. You're not going to win it without losing some profit within there. You you need to find all of the people that will be involved and that takes us to qualification when we are identifying the people that will actually, you know, be involved in making technical decisions and signing off the technical decision, even beyond the...

Steve Vaughan (15:53.9)
Great point.

Jayne Green (16:13.368)
the end user possibly, and the people that are dealing with the economic decisions and the commercial decisions, you know, they've all got different important aspects, you know, what is important to them and why is it important? And we do the same process, you know, we ask lots of great questions to lots of different people and we help, we find out the people that can help us direct as to the people that will also be part of that process.

Steve Vaughan (16:13.869)
.

Steve Vaughan (16:26.295)
Yeah, good point. Absolutely. And of course we've covered qualification previously in this podcast and it's a core part of our fundamental training. But just something that's popped into my mind when you were talking there, and I'd to explore this with you, Christian.

Jayne Green (16:41.687)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (16:50.793)
What do you do when the benefit that you would bring to one part of one person in the organization might be seen as a threat to somebody else? I'm thinking in terms of like when you're selling automation, robotic systems or any kind of automation that potentially might mean somebody might lose something or even dare I say not have a job afterwards.

Christian (17:12.805)
Yeah, it's a tough one. It's actually a tough one. I even have some experience of that in my personal life. was selling to a snack food company in the US, no, actually in the north of England. And it was chloride determination and they were doing it manually, very cumbersome procedure. We automated everything, including sample transport, sample preparation, and it resulted in the lab.

Steve Vaughan (17:20.459)
Yeah, me too. Wow.

Christian (17:42.779)
staff being reduced significantly. And of course, you know, in that case, it's very difficult to convince the lab techs that this is the right thing. On the other hand, it's also important to not feel too guilty, because I think in the long run, this company wouldn't have survived had they not optimized their analysis procedure in the laboratory. So

Steve Vaughan (17:53.836)
Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.

Christian (18:09.719)
You know, sometimes, yeah, it cannot always be win-win-win. But in the long run, you know, if the company goes bankrupt, they don't employ any people anymore and then everybody's a loser. So sometimes automation has an impact, an immediate impact, but a long-term benefit for the sustainability of the company.

Jayne Green (18:27.822)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (18:33.921)
Yeah, it's an interesting example. Yeah, no names are company, course. I was going to say Jayne, and so again, listening to what Christian was saying there. So, you know, what we're talking about is

Jayne Green (18:35.502)
Hmm.

Christian (18:38.191)
No.

Steve Vaughan (18:45.533)
to use the jargon is need satisfaction selling in many ways really. And what was clear in that example actually is that people have business needs, but there's also personal needs in banking decisions. And I think sometimes we don't really get to understand, or we don't try and understand the personal needs too often. I know I've made that mistake in selling. What are your thoughts on that?

Jayne Green (18:55.651)
Yes.

Jayne Green (19:04.132)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah, it's important, isn't it, that we do discover that. I think most people, when they're looking at a new piece of equipment, you know, make sure we've got the right person. mean, so thinking about Christian's example, what was a real example, you know, you wouldn't have been talking to the people that would have been.

Steve Vaughan (19:18.924)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (19:25.549)
Hmm. Hmm.

Jayne Green (19:28.236)
in the lab generally using that. You'd have been speaking to the people that would have been a little further up in that organization that were looking at automation. But it's understanding what that means to them. And actually for some people when they're buying, there's great examples, I think we've probably all got them, of somebody that has been maybe retiring from a department or leaving and they wanted to get something in, a big purchase in, that was like a legacy that they were leaving. They'd made a great decision, something that was

Steve Vaughan (19:54.522)
Each stick.

Jayne Green (19:58.132)
going to transform the work within that lab or in that department and I remember working with a gentleman many years ago that was pushing so hard to get this piece of equipment in because he wanted to be remembered for that because it would have transformed, it was going to transform the way that the team were able to work and get faster results and actually so for him there was a personal driver.

Steve Vaughan (20:16.493)
That's a great example.

Jayne Green (20:23.468)
of getting that through, you know, that was actually a little bit emotional for him because he wanted to be remembered for something good when he'd left that company. It was his legacy. How do we identify that within our customers? We asked some really careful questions once again, some really open questions. You know, what does this mean to the company? And I'd often try and find that if they know, you know, what does it mean that whole thing? Is there anything in this for you? Is there a, you know, what would be the outcome for you in

getting this? Why is this so important now? And then that came out, you know, I think it was probably, I'd like to say that was because of my questioning, I think it was luck. I found this out and then it was like, actually, this guy's the driver. I'm going to make sure I see all of the other people. He got influence, he was going to drive that sale through and yes he did.

Steve Vaughan (20:53.72)
Yeah. Great. Yeah. I'm sure it wasn't. I'm sure it wasn't. Yeah.

Christian (21:04.762)
You're too honest.

Steve Vaughan (21:18.509)
What a lovely example, a great example of the personal need as well as the business need. may have been, I'm sure there was a business need for the organization, but that person had a particular personal goal that you helped satisfy really. So great example. So we've been selling for X number of years between us for somebody that's quite new into technical sales and trying to the head round features, advantages, benefits.

Jayne Green (21:29.634)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (21:47.798)
doing this in real time in front of a real customer isn't easy. How can we get better prepared, Christian, for these kinds of conversations? What kind of things could we do to get so a bit more pre-warned or pre-armed, if you like, to have these kinds of conversations?

Christian (22:05.189)
So one thing which I would recommend all the companies in our industry to do is when they conduct regular sales trainings to practice features, advantages, benefits with a professional sales trainer and specifically to the instrumentation they are selling. Because people know the feature, all the sales guys know the feature, 40,000 steps resolution, touch screen display.

multi-port connection, wonderful software, you they all know these features, but we can practice to translate those into various different kinds of advantages and benefits. And I think that's something I believe has to be done on regular basis. It's in a way a little bit old-fashioned style, but I think old-fashioned is also time tested.

Steve Vaughan (22:38.689)
Hmm

Steve Vaughan (22:45.517)
Sometimes he's good.

Jayne Green (23:02.658)
Yeah, it works

Christian (23:03.259)
And it works. And so I would recommend to do that on the sales meetings, spend a bit of time, know, bring somebody in, do it yourself, practice the features, advantages and benefits. And then, of course, the sales guys, when they prepare a sales call, they should also anticipate what benefits this customer could be looking for. And you're not always right, but

Steve Vaughan (23:14.989)
Great wood. Yeah.

Jayne Green (23:27.374)
Yes.

Christian (23:29.763)
At least you've got a rough idea when you walk into an academic lab, it's probably going to be different than when you walk into a service laboratory or a contract laboratory, because these people have different aims. And so I think it's good to anticipate.

Jayne Green (23:37.988)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (23:44.526)
Would you ever have a of a list of features down one side of the page, a list of advantages that go with those features and then some potential benefits that the customer might be interested in? Obviously you need to find out. Would you go that far or is that a bit too extreme?

Jayne Green (24:00.828)
I think you've got to start somewhere, haven't you? So why not? You know, I think actually a lot of the brochures or the marketing material that is released whenever a new piece of equipment, know, a brand new piece of equipment is very feature heavy. And of course, of course it is. And I think that moment there's that danger with a brand new piece of equipment, we get super excited. You know, I just...

Steve Vaughan (24:02.708)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (24:15.629)
Cheers.

Jayne Green (24:25.246)
go straight back into my selling days, super excited about a new piece of equipment that we want to go out and tell everybody, because we've been waiting for that for so long. But I think we just have to press pause and understand what does that mean?

you know, what does that mean then on this brand new piece of equipment or I've started in a new company. So if you started in a new company and you've got some really great piece of equipment with features, you know, ask your team, what does this mean to the customer at the end of the day? I would write those down and I would start to build on those because the more people you talk to, you will understand, of course, as Christian said, that what is value to one person isn't the value they're looking for in another, even in the same organization.

Steve Vaughan (24:38.509)
.

Jayne Green (25:08.134)
So start to build up a whole portfolio of what your benefits and values are within,

Steve Vaughan (25:09.275)
Yeah. Super. Go ahead, Christian, yeah.

Christian (25:16.963)
I have super stuff, Jayne. I fully agree. It doesn't stop. It's still ongoing. Right now, everybody comes with artificial intelligence features to their instrumentation, to their software, automatic evaluation algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning. Yeah, but what's in it for the customer? What does it do? What's the... Exactly.

Jayne Green (25:23.832)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jayne Green (25:39.926)
Yeah, so what? What does that mean?

Steve Vaughan (25:40.254)
What does that mean? yeah. It says three little, three words, isn't it? Which means that, yeah. That's I was always taught to link a feature to an advantage. Here's a feature which means that.

Jayne Green (25:50.358)
Yes. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:53.454)
those three little words. was fuzzy logic in my time, I'm showing my age now. was always, remember fuzzy logic, Christian, yeah? I also remember the first time, you about new product launches, the first time I saw a balance with the doors that open automatically, and I still remember how I felt that day, the excitement about that. These days is when cameras are launched, that's because I'm getting old and do other things. yeah, great discussions, guys.

Jayne Green (25:56.418)
Yes.

Christian (25:59.247)
Yes, I do remember.

Jayne Green (26:00.004)
You

Steve Vaughan (26:20.169)
For somebody listening to this and that wants to get better, you know, apart from obviously coming on one of our training courses, I don't want to make it sound like this is a sales pitch, but for somebody that wants to get better at features, advantage, benefits, selling, what would be one recommendation from both of you? Let's start with you, Jayne. What would you say, you know, for an individual now, you know, who's listened to this, a sales person, wants to get better at, you know, selling benefits rather than selling features. What would be one takeaway from you?

Jayne Green (26:47.598)
So one thing would be ask the customer, you know, when we're talking to a customer, and maybe we can do some things before this, but talking to the customer, what is really important to them? What are they really wanting to achieve? What outcome is ideal for them? And then we start to capture value and benefits. And then we possibly need to work out whether our machine can...

Steve Vaughan (27:00.761)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (27:14.72)
or our instrumentation can match up to those. But we will often find that by speaking to customers very readily and understanding what their needs are. Even if we're just having a general conversation, we've all got kind customers and we've all had kind customers that will sit down and have a coffee. Explore with somebody that you trust and it could be somebody in your organisation. But explore with a customer. You know, what benefits would you be looking for? Have you looked for when you bought in the past?

Steve Vaughan (27:16.077)
Yeah. Super.

Steve Vaughan (27:42.825)
What would you like to do better? know, what would you like to do? think, you know, one of the things people get told sometimes in selling is to ask about problems. I've never been a fan about that. You people don't like, you know, we're not psychologists. Tell me about your problems. know, it's, it's, you know, people don't like often the meeting about problems, we can sort of ask, we can ask solutions. Yeah. You know, you

Jayne Green (27:44.289)
Yes.

Jayne Green (27:50.572)
No.

Jayne Green (27:57.942)
No, solutions or outcomes. What outcome? What will be the biggest outcome? Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (28:01.963)
If you had a magic wand, what would you like to improve? Things like that, know, or, you know, what keeps you awake at night or those kind of, those kind of questions really. What from you, Christian? One takeaway from anybody on the, wants to get better at benefit selling?

Jayne Green (28:08.749)
Yes, yeah.

Christian (28:16.025)
think learn from each other, ask your peers, discuss sales calls with each other and share stories. I think it's natural, we share the war stories, but then we understand a little bit what made us win this case. And I think the more we do that, the better we can become.

Steve Vaughan (28:17.421)
Great. Yeah, or lose for that matter, because I think you lose some lost sales as well.

Jayne Green (28:24.356)
Mm.

Jayne Green (28:34.478)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (28:40.964)
Yeah, yeah, so true.

Christian (28:42.351)
Yeah, of course, yes.

Steve Vaughan (28:44.789)
Yeah, I remember a conversation when I took over a Salesforce a long time ago and one the first things I told them when I looked at their numbers was they didn't lose enough sales and they thought I was crazy. But what I meant was they were just living within their existing customer base and not asking, you know, not trying to break into new accounts. But that's another podcast for another day. So Christian, Jayne, thank you very much for your thoughts on features, benefits. It is a core part of our training material that we deliver both as scheduled training and also as

tailored training as well. If you've enjoyed this episode, listener, don't forget to leave us a review. You can leave a review on Apple, but also on Spotify, and also leave a star rating. Five stars will be lovely. Thank you very much indeed if you can do so. Don't forget to subscribe to the show as well so we can make sure the podcast will come into your inbox on a regular basis. We will be having a break in August, so we're gonna record two more shows to take us into July, then we're gonna have a bit of a break in August, because...

People go on holiday, including you, I'm sure, the listener. So we're going to have a little regroup over August and then we'll be back in September with more episodes of The Luxury of Choice. Until then, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.