Are you discussing value or features?

To ensure you’re adequately communicating value, it’s imperative that you define both value and features and recognise how they differ.

Features are the specific elements of your offering. Often, entrepreneurs are enthusiastic about the features of their product because they’ve worked hard to refine them. These may be how your business differentiates itself from the competition, and you likely know about them in great detail. However, customers don’t have the background knowledge that you do and may not fully understand, particularly if you’re selling a technical product. If they don’t recognise how the specificities benefit them, they’re likely to lose interest.

When you discuss value, you explain to a customer how the product/service can benefit them.

Value is defined as how you can do one or more of the following for your customer.

How can you:

  • make them money
  • save them money
  • save them time
  • add joy
  • remove pain

By encouraging people to think in these terms it pushes them away from the features and towards how the service genuinely makes an impact.

Communication with your customers is key to recognising where they see value. A specific group of consumers will likely see value in a specific way. For example, working parents are likely to value time-saving measures.

It is sometimes necessary to adapt your value explanation depending on your audience. If your business targets multiple groups of people, they may have different ideas of value. Whereas one customer may value efficiency beyond any other benefit, another may value cost saving.

Allow value to become the main theme of your messaging when you communicate with customers. For sales teams, this is what ultimately makes people decide to buy. Marketers use a value-based approach because it is more personally relevant to the audience. Business decision makers should consider value in developing their product and make decisions based on where they can add value to the offering.

To learn more about communicating value, click here.

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