Benefit Language in Sales: How to Use It
What is benefit language?
You surely know the saying The client does not want to buy a hammer. They want to drive in a nail. By buying your product, the client wants to satisfy a need, solve a problem, achieve a goal. Benefit language is a technique of presenting an offer that uses the benefits the client will achieve as the foundation of the message.
Using benefit language increases your chances of winning the client - they see the real value that working with you can give them.
Where does the effectiveness of this method lie? Benefit language is above all a more personalized message, focused on the client and their specific needs. A classic product presentation is based on listing feature after feature - great, reliable and unique ones. But what does it actually mean that a product is great? In what way is a service reliable? Buyer awareness has grown significantly - artificially inflated descriptions are not credible. Everything you tell your clients must be confirmed in practice.
First, get to know the need
Although it may seem that benefit language is a recipe for instant success and using the technique is not particularly demanding, it is easy to stumble here too.
Skillful use of benefit language must be preceded by getting to know your clients and their needs thoroughly. Why is your product so good for your client? What will they change for the better thanks to it, what problem will it solve?
How do you want to convince them to accept your offer if you do not know what they could use it for?
Assume that your clients' needs arise from two reasons:
they do not have something, they lack something,
something they currently have does not quite meet their needs - they want something better.
Depending on their situation, the way you communicate with them will differ. Addressing a person with no experience of your industry yet, you will focus on explaining exactly why they need to work with you and what they will gain. It will be different with a client who has already used a solution similar to yours. You will have to justify why working with you will bring them more benefits than using a competitor's offer.
It is therefore worth building a persona for each of the reasons mentioned above. It will represent the specific target group you will communicate with. On that basis you will create effective communication tailored to the needs of that group.
Each such persona should be built by defining:
demographic traits (name, age, gender, education level, place of residence, job position, income),
the places and circumstances in which they encounter your brand,
what your client wants to achieve, what prevents them from reaching the goal and what they need to change the state of things.
Why is this so important? Every one of your clients, current or potential, is different. So are their needs - for each of them, the need will be something different, at a different time and with a different priority. When presenting the benefits your product brings, you must take into account the client's situation. It will determine what the client expects from you in order to satisfy their needs.
The curse of knowledge, the salesperson's curse of success
You already know what you want to tell your clients. How you do it is just as important. Note that as a salesperson you know your offer inside out. Being in the industry has also accustomed you to speaking its jargon, including during offer presentations. Although industry vocabulary is your daily bread, your clients may struggle to decipher certain phrases. Especially if they have not dealt with a similar product category before.
Have you heard of the so-called curse of knowledge? It occurs when, having acquired knowledge on a given topic, we assume it is just as obvious to others and cannot imagine how anyone could not know it.
Why do salespeople so eagerly overuse industry jargon in client conversations? The main reason is the desire to present themselves as professionals in the field. After all, what highlights above-average skills better than complicated vocabulary? Unfortunately, this approach very often backfires. The overwhelmed client goes looking for another company whose representatives present the product in a more accessible (and understandable) way.
How to avoid such situations?
Step in among your clients. Learn the way they talk about your product. And speak the way they do. Use an internet monitoring tool for this, e.g. Brand24 or SentiOne. First, however, define which keywords your target group uses. Too general an approach will not give you sufficient knowledge.
Read opinions and reviews about your brand. Among them you may find ways of talking about it you would never have come up with yourself. Relying on client statements reduces the risk of falling into the trap of the aforementioned curse of knowledge. It will help you learn to speak your audience's language, so they will easily understand what you want to convey. You will also focus on the aspects that matter most to them. Remember, too, that a potential client at the beginning of their buying journey does not have to be perfectly versed in the topic. Your role is also (and perhaps above all) to educate them.
Use laddering
In his book "Jak pisać, żeby chcieli czytać (i kupować). Copywriting & Webwriting", Artur Jabłoński mentions laddering. It is a research technique that helps uncover the motivations driving clients in their purchases. Knowing them, in turn, makes it easier to create messages meant to encourage a purchase. We get hints on what to base our message on so that it effectively supports sales. We know what to say to interest the client.
What is laddering about?
It is nothing more than asking a series of questions that dig into the topic to gradually reach its core. A seemingly simple answer is broken down by the asker into its components to arrive at the motives that decided it. Very often, seemingly clear-cut decisions have motivations hidden much deeper in the subconscious.
In practice, the laddering pattern looks like this:
Asker: Why did you choose A?
Respondent: Because B.
Asker: Why B?
Respondent: Because C.
Asker: Why C?
Respondent: Because... (reaching the heart of the matter).
Sounds interesting, right? This method is genuinely effective. It will lead you to motives you had overlooked at first glance. If laddering has caught your interest, be sure to read the aforementioned book by Artur Jabłoński - you can buy it on the publisher's website, Onepress (in Polish).
Features, advantages and benefits - not the same thing!
It may surprise you, but the concepts of features, advantages and benefits are often confused.
A feature is a physical property describing the product,
an advantage describes how the product can be useful to the client,
a benefit is the positive result the client achieves, delivered by the product's advantage.
Although speaking benefit language seems to be a recipe for success, be careful not to go to extremes. Such messages are undeniably attractive, but without reference to features and advantages they would be completely incomprehensible. Features and advantages are the proof behind benefits. Take buying a mobile phone as an example. You choose a model with a durable battery (feature), which lets you use the phone for two days without charging (advantage). The benefit will be, for example, the ability to spend a weekend out of town without worrying about losing contact with the world.
Stories, not boring data
Speaking of benefit language, storytelling cannot be left out. This form built on telling stories is a good way of showing clients why your product is exactly what they need. Why? People remember stories much more easily than dry data. After a product presentation, 63% of people will remember its story, while only 5% will retain the statistics. Moreover, telling a story makes it easier to illustrate the less tangible benefits your solution provides.
When using this method, remember two basic things:
let the hero of the story be strikingly similar to your client. Bring them close in terms of the problems they want to solve, the values they hold or the goals they pursue,
present the problem as your hero's (client's) greatest enemy. Your product, in turn, will be their ally in the fight against it. Tell how their battle with the enemy went (what they defeated it with, and to what effect).
Thanks to this device, your clients will identify with the described hero. At this stage, the persona you created earlier will come in handy. The details described in it will help you build a story hero who reflects your client's character as faithfully as possible. Remember, though, to keep your language simple and understandable for the client. A vivid message can absolutely be built without phrases that sound abstract to them. First of all, make sure it is understandable to your client and that the benefits they can achieve are clearly emphasized.
Storytelling also gives you an opportunity to appeal to emotions. Although most of us claim to be guided by logic when making decisions (purchase decisions included), it is emotions that clearly lead the way. We wrote more about it here.
A good source of inspiration for those looking for advice on creating effective sales content is Artur Jabłoński's book Jak pisać, żeby chcieli czytać (i kupować). Copywriting & Webwriting. You can buy it on the publisher's website, Onepress. If you want to learn to write and speak benefit language, it should be a must-read for you.
Benefit language in sales is a support technique worth practicing and constantly refining. Although its principles seem obvious, many companies skip it in their activities - to their own loss. Speaking benefit language to clients will make both sides feel the difference. Clients will appreciate the personalized character of the message and will engage faster with communication that takes their needs into account. For the company, in turn, it means a better chance of winning the client and keeping them.