Sales Exercise: Features versus Benefits

Purpose

This exercise helps delegate to practice understanding the difference between benefits and features. It is an efficient exercise to encourage sales and marketing people to use “benefits” when describing products rather than complicated “features” full of jargon that customer may not fully understand.

Objective

Consider features of a product and find the corresponding benefit.

What You Need

• A series of blank index cards.

Setup

• Get the delegates to sit around in a circle.
• Distribute one blank index card to each delegate.
• Explain the difference between “features” and “benefits”.
• Pick a product or ask the delegates to nominate a product. Choose a product that the delegates are most familiar with or that they want to sell.
• Ask delegates to suggest features of this product and as they suggest them write them on a flipchart or whiteboard. Continue until you have as many features as there are delegates.
• Ask the delegates to write one of these features on their index cards until all index cards have a unique feature described on them.
• On your mark, ask each person to write a benefit that corresponds to that feature on their index cards.
• Next, each person should write another feature of the product which has not been considered yet. They can check with the list on the flipchart to make sure.
• Next, each delegate should pass his index card to the person on his left.
• When each delegate receives an index card from the person on his right, he should identify the benefit that corresponds to the last feature written on the card, write another feature and then pass it on the person on his left.
• Continue this exercise until delegates struggle coming up with new features or you are happy with their progress.
• Ask delegates to read through each card one by one and state a feature and it corresponding benefit. Encourage discussion or correction on the benefit when necessary. Continue until all pairs on all cards are covered.
• Get back and follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes

Activity: 5 min identifying features together as a group + 15 min features and benefits + 10 min review indices = 30 minutes

Group Feedback: 5 minutes

Discussion

How easy was this exercise? Did it get more and more difficult to come up with new features? How did the benefits compare with the features? Which one is more useful from a customer’s point of view? How comfortable are you now to describe a product through its benefits?