The Product Profile Sheet
The Product Profile sheet analyzes your products in terms of the concepts discussed in this chapter, such as:
Features. List the key features of your product that add value to it. The more specific the description, the harder it is for competitors or customers to redefine them to your detriment.
Benefits. Express them in terms of time or money savings. Express a benefit as a verb followed by a noun.
Value Type. Decide whether the benefits are perceived or measurable.
Focus. Determine if the benefits have an internal or external focus or both.
Unique Strengths. Review the summary on unique strengths before you classify a feature as such.
Value Rating. Assign a 1 for a feature everyone possesses, and a 5 for a unique strength only your company has.
Analogies. What everyday event parallels your highest-value unique strength or strongest feature?
Use this data to decide which market segments your products best serve. You develop a Product Profile sheet for each product. A Competitor Product Profile sheet should also be filled out for each product. (Microsoft Word templates for the sales tools shown in Exhibit 2-5 and Exhibit 2-6 can also be found as downloadable files on www.measuremax.com.)
Product: Talk Free and Clear Calling Program
Features
Benefit
Value Type
Focus: Internal, External, or Both
Unique Strengths
Value Rating
Digital Signal
Improves reception
Perceived
Both: you can reach customers more easily (I).
Customers can reach you more easily (E).
Yes
5
Increases battery life
Measurable
Both: same as above
Yes
5
Extends talk time between recharges
Measurable
Both: same as above
Yes
5
Hands-Free Operation
Increases safety
Perceived Value
Internal (external to other drivers)
No
1
Free Weekend Minutes
Reduces weekend costs
Measurable
Internal
No
1
Analogy: The difference in reception between digital and analog is like using a satellite dish to get your TV picture versus a set of rabbit ears antennae.
Exhibit 2-5: Product profile sheet example.
Products/Services: Predicto Services, ProdoGain, and CodeCheck
Products/Service
Feature
Benefit
Value Type
Focus
Unique Strengths
Value Rating
Predicto Services
Variance Alerts
Prevents Unscheduled Breakdowns
Perceived Value
Both. It ensures uninterrupted shipments to their customers (E) and saves money from lost production (I).
Yes
5
Tolerance Checks
Analogy forVariance Alerts: It is like the low-fuel warning in your car. You look for a gas station before you run out of fuel.
ProdoGain
Single-Operator Controls
Eliminates Need For Two Operators
Measurable Value
Internal
Yes
5
ProdoGain
200-Unit Capacity
Increases Capacity By 15%
Measurable Value
Internal (more revenue) and External (more available stock to their customers)
No
1
ProdoGain
5-Year Warranty
Eliminates Repair Costs
Measurable Value
Internal
No
1
Analogy for single-operator controls: It is like flying your own private plane; you do not need a copilot to help you get where you are going.
The CodeCheck Program
Computerized Program
Analyzes Operations for Potential Violations
Perceived Value
Internal
Yes
5
Analogy for Computerized Program : It is like using a geopositional satellite to navigate you through a gigantic legal maze. It tells you how to stay on track, and how to get back if you get lost.
Exhibit 2-6: Product profile sheet example.
The example in Exhibit 2-5 shows how you record the Talk Free and Clear service package on a Product Profile sheet. The Market Profile sheet in Exhibit 2-6 on page 64 illustrates how a salesperson, Steven Smartsell, working for a fictitious company called Future-Tech, fills one out. The company provides high-tech products and services to computer manufacturers. (Subsequent chapters will follow Steven’s sales efforts throughout the process of using the selling system described in this book.)
It Only Takes One
It only takes one feature and benefit to make a customer to say yes. It just needs to be the one that achieves his or her top goals. Avoid reciting diluting features that diminish your products’ value to customers. Always ask yourself first, “Does this feature help the customer achieve his or her goals?” If you answer “no,” do not mention it unless the customer asks you to discuss it.
Summary
Features produce potential benefits before they connect to customers’ goals, actual ones after they connect.
Features that do not relate to customers’ goals dilute your sales presentation and diminish your product’s value.
Specific descriptions of features make it difficult for customers or competitors to redefine them to your detriment.
Internal benefits provide value to your customers; external benefits provide value to your customers’ customers. When you have both types in a sale, you generate the most value.
Value is either measurable or perceived, but the key to value is whether the customers accept its worth.
Perceived value has no proof.
Measurable value has proof and shows your expertise in the customers’ industry.
Indirect savings use cost-avoidance calculations and perceived value; direct savings use measurable value.
Products without unique strengths are commodities that will be chosen based on Column 1’s lowest price and fastest delivery—or Column 2’s measurable benefits.
When you know your unique strengths and those of competitors, you choose sales opportunities that give the best returns.
Selling to customers that place the highest value on your unique strengths is the catalyst to success.
Unique strengths must be considered unique by customers, not only by your company; produce measurable value and generate direct savings as cost justifications; and use measurable value to create barriers to competition.
Packaging enables you to combine unique strengths of various products to form “new” products. It also helps you to create new products with unique strengths from products that did not have them separately.
If you fully understood customers’ goals, you would not need to ask them whether a particular option interests them.
Use analogies so that customers can relate to your unique strengths through everyday experiences.
Product Profile sheets analyze your products so that you can evaluate their strengths.
Competitor Profile sheets analyze your competitors’ products so that you can evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
Chapter 3: Receiving Value
Overview
You and customers need only one thing in common to make sales happen: You both must be able to achieve their goals. When you help customers to achieve goals that produce expected value for them, you complete half your mission. You complete the other half when customers compensate you for providing that value.
This chapter crystallizes how customers think about receiving value by explaining:
How the differences between needs and goals affect value
How goals choose customers
How customers assign value to goals
How customers make their goals measurable
How Market Profile sheets highlight the ways your products help customers achieve their goals and receive value
Note Terms such as suspects or prospects are not used to describe potential buyers, only the word customers. Everyone is somebody’s customer, and the only question is: “Does it make sense for him or her to be yours?”
Needs
It may sound like an exercise in splitting hairs. What is the big difference whether you use the word goals or needs? The answer is “plenty” when value-driven sales are at stake. It is more than just a question of semantics when you focus on goals and not needs. Goals motivate you to think first like customers; needs encourage you to think mostly like, well, products. It is the difference between you selling features or customers buying value. Goals and needs are not interchangeable terms or concepts.
In selling, these terms are diametrically opposed. As a point of interest, in the top-selling book of synonyms (talk about great vacation reading), The Synonym Finder, the word goal is not listed as a synonym for needs and vice versa. This probably explains why no one ever refers to needs-satisfaction selling as goals-satisfaction selling. You cannot help but think of needs-satisfaction as being a submissive mindset. Are you really in sales to satisfy needs the way Barbara Eden did in the TV show I Dream of Jeannie (“Your wish is my command, Master”)? The answer is an emphatic no. Again, you are in sales to exceed customers’ expectations and to receive higher profits for doing so.
According to Funk & Wagnalls dictionary, the word need means “to have urgent or essential use for [something lacking].” This definition implies that customers are urgently aware that something needs fixing. Because most people are urgently aware of pain, it is easy to understand why most sales methods equate needs with pain. For salespeople, the words needs and pain are interchangeable.
Therefore, a popular sales strategy is to ask customers, “What hurts or keeps you up at night?” in order to uncover their pain and then focus on remedying it. This strategy works on a simple principle: The greater the pain, the greater the urgency, and the bigger the sales opportunity. When you focus on pain, the logic behind the ease of selling water hoses to people with houses on fire is beyond dispute. Yet, not every customer’s house is on fire; and you do not always have water hoses to sell. When you focus on needs, avoidable problems arise.
These problems arise because needs are very specific. Customers think they have a good idea of what they “need” to remedy their pain. Again, people with houses on fire know they need a water hose. Customers with evident pain make sure you—along with every other competitor they can remember—have ample opportunity to satisfy their needs. They need delivery dates and prices to compare so that they can find the cheapest prices and the fastest deliveries. You are now in a reactive, not a proactive selling mode. You are responding to specific and out-of-the-blue requests. It is difficult to build value when specific requests force you to join the crowd that competes on price and delivery.