Training “Features” to Become Benefits

Recently, I was discussing the values of training with some colleagues, and the process also helped to clarify a few of our sales objectives.

Candidly, during our sales process at Suite-Soft, we tend to focus on the relevant differences between the product benefits to the customer, versus feature-sets. There are quite a few contemporary business texts that will illustrate this to be the most effective sales approach. The theory is to inundate your customer with benefits of your product/service rather than your generic deliverables. This process requires the sales team to analyze your customer and determine which feature-sets can be functional benefits for the customers during their implementation of the product. On the surface, this seems valid since we (as developers) are much more in tune with our own products' features and what they were designed to do than presumably our customers would be.

The mistake to this theory, in my opinion, lies in the arrogance that assumes that our customer may not be able to discern all the benefits from a group of features, but we most assuredly can conclude how best to use these features based on our “expert” analysis of their business cycle. I think this can be a very big gaffe, especially for small businesses.

Instead of operating in a vacuum, we look at a tandem approach to the sales cycle and add relevant product training allowing for the customer to extract benefits from feature-sets. For us, training becomes much more than a support tool and rather is viewed as instrumental in both the pre-sales and post-sales processes. By incorporating training curriculum and tools such as webinars and online discussion groups, the customer is much more equipped to extract benefits from the feature-sets described. By incorporating benefit discovery during the post-sale training, the door is now open to greater future sales and customer-relationship development.