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Selling Your Product

Are we ready to sell?

Before moving on to the selling stage for your product we must be ready to naturally move from needs confirmation to discuss our products and services with confidence. We can only do this if we are sure we have agreement with the customer with regard to their explicit needs.

Now we are ready.

The structure

F - Feature
A - Advantage
B - Benefit
C - Close

This structure will be used in a conversational way, which means we will deliver against all of the relevant customer's needs, whilst delivering information about our organisation, products and services.

This does not mean we will machine gun them with a list of product features. The moment we start listing things we are not engaging the customer and will reduce our chances of success. Don't talk at them, talk to them. This is also not an opportunity to show off how good your product knowledge, you will only bore them.

Feature, Advantage, Benefit, Close

Feature - A statement of fact or a description of the product or service.
Advantage - What the feature allows you to do.
Benefit - Relates the relevant benefit back to the customers needs, no need no benefit no sale.
Close – Confirming your customer has understood and agrees

Used together correctly FABC will;

Show you understand the customer's needs
Show you have listened
Demonstrate your product can fulfill the customer's needs
Help you to gain agreement when looking to close the sale
Help to reduce the number of objections

Do Not;

Use features that are irrelevant to the customer
Oversell your product i.e. Sales Patter,
Machine Gun - Give more than one benefit at a time
Try to blind your customer with technology

In order to maximise your chances of persuasion at this stage, it is important to be aware of how people 'buy into' product information. When given a piece of information, people tend to follow a sequence of questions i.e;

"Why are you telling me this?"
"What's that got to do with it \ what does that mean?"
"What has this got to do with me"
"What about my opinion?"

So taking one sales point at a time, present your product in a way that answers these questions i.e.

Need - "You mentioned that you need to keep running costs down"
Feature - "This car has the latest direct injection engine technology"
Advantage - "It ensures that only the fuel necessary is used"
Benefit - "Which means it will keep your ongoing fuel costs to a minimum"
Agreement - "Does that sound like what you need?"

Rules & Guidelines

Ask the client to prioritise the needs they have told you in order of importance.

Always cover one need at time, doing the complete Key FABA sequence for each one. If you mix all the needs, features and benefits together you will end up talking for too long and \ or getting confused, both of which will bore your client.

Answer the most important need first. It might be so important that the client will buy on that alone.

Always gain agreement after each benefit. If you don't you Will lose the client's interest and won't know whether they like what they hear or not.

Try to think of as many different advantages and benefits as you can. The more you have at your finger tips the better equipped you will be to tailor your sales points to individual client needs.

Now we have sold our product we need to close the sale.

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