The products line
In this post we’ll take a look at the difference between promoting products as compared to promoting your services. In order to better understand each other during the discussion we should first agree on the most basic (if not obvious) differences between a product and a service. For the purposes of this discussion: A product is tangible! A service is not tangible!
Products often have cool features that show results quickly. You can talk about the benefits of a feature and how it will make your customer’s life easier and you will probably get a sale based on one product feature or another which is displayed clearly for your prospect to see.
About services
Services on the other hand, are intangible. There are no buttons to push or “before and after” pictures to see. Services often get categorized as “luxury items” we can usually survive without. They are more challenging to sell because the “results” of a service can be difficult to quantify, measure or prove.
Many “hard sell” sales trainers shy away from working with service providers. It is easier to train someone to sell products with features you can see and results you can prove than it is to sell a service which is devoid of such features or results proof.
Say, for example, that you spent a few years in the corporate world selling products like electronic telephone systems, and then went into selling yellow pages advertising. Many of the techniques used to sell telephones wouldn’t work in selling advertising! You’d probably have found out that you needed new sales techniques in order to promote the intangible results of advertising.
Value, essentially!
Authors, Coaches, Consultants, and other such professionals produce results that improve the human side of life and business and “Alternative Healers” deal with subtle energies that may take longer to produce quantifiable results. To the average consumer, these are luxuries that, although desirable and beneficial, can be crossed off the shopping list if money is tight.
You would also have found that most of your advertising clients hadn’t a clue about how to tell people about the benefits and results of their excellent services due to a sense of frustration they felt, and wondered why clients were so hard to get. Even today many are good at explaining how they work and what tools they use.
The problem is that most consumers couldn’t care less about how you work. They care more about the benefits they will experience after hiring you. They want to be clear on what results you can deliver in exchange for their hard-earned money.
“What’s in it for me?” your customers are asking. It is time to stop feature-dumping! Features only imply that a “process” is beneficial, or a “technique” is going to help…. As a service provider you must be able to describe clear results to potential clients.
A success story scenario
Service provider is in despair. She has a great service as a professional organizer and sadly, few customers to show for it.
She is asked to list the top 10 benefits of her excellent service. However, she – like so many others responding to this request – provides a list of features instead.
She lists “features” that describes how she gets to a result. Features like:
- Customized quotes
- Office flow organization tweaking
- Creation of new filing systems
- Ergonomic layouts for offices, etc.
They sound pretty good, don’t they? Sure, and the service provider’s customers seemed interested and keen, BUT they were not following through and hiring her.
Then she got some help in articulating a more effective sales list displaying a number of benefits and results relating to her excellent work. Results like:
- Added value of charging only her client’s specific needs
- Improved and streamlined office procedures
- Saving time and reducing frustrations
- Ability to provide better customer service
- Increased efficiency with an improved filing structure
- Less time wasted due to poor office layout
Resulting in increased productivity all around. She was also successful in creating a list of 6 good questions she can ask to uncover if a client needs organizational help. The reason being, why waste time telling clients all about her services if they don’t need them. Seems to make sense, right?
Service promotion proof is in the results
Now, this service provider will always ask questions to find out first if someone seriously needs her service. If they do, she tells them with confidence about the results she can provide and is more secure in asking for their business. By following these guidelines you too can get hired faster with more confidence practically every time!
If you are a service provider with very little sales background and you struggle to close the deal with potential clients, you can enlist the help of one or more business / life coach classes to learn the format, confidence, clarity and momentum needed to get out there and get more clients! A quick search on Google for business / life coach will get you a lot more information on this subject. – Good luck!
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