It continues to amuse me regarding the overall lack of understanding between an advantage and benefit your product or services offers a customer.
In fact, the lack of understanding regarding these terms often lead to lost sale opportunities.
How does this happen? When a sales person does not understand the difference, they will first confuse the terminology and second they will either confuse or lose rapport with the customer.
So, what is the difference between an advantage and a benefit?
An Advantage are general statements related to benefits – no proven however – and are implicit or implied by default to the benefit the customer. When a sales person uses advantages when discussing their product or service – well, it works in some cases for small sale situations – however it creates gaps or disbelief on the part of the buyer.
A Benefit – a true benefit – are explicit statements impacting the performance or results of the buyer / customer account. The true benefits are clearly stated and agreed to by the buyer as valid statements or beliefs of conceptual ideas being sold at a higher level in an organization. True benefits have an very positive effect upon both small and large sales opportunities.
The key thing for a B2B Sales person is to learn as much about the customer’s situation, the business impact of the situation and exactly what areas must be improved for the decision maker to give their commitment to your offering.
Again, the questioning model of b2b sales is the method and path of choice. Learn the questioning process and then link it to the discovering exactly what the decision maker needs and wants to solve their issues.
Voss Graham
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