Guiding Prospects from Discovery to Deal: Navigating 5 Critical ROI Process Steps? (Part III)
Part 3 of 5: Features aren’t Benefits
When working with business enterprise clients, I’ve seen — and been guilty of — a common practice for those of us in client-facing roles; namely, to focus on the technical or functional ‘features and benefits’ of our product or solution. Demos are notorious examples of this! How often have we heard a vendor rep say how excited they are about the demo: “I can’t wait to show you all the features and benefits of our solution!”
Key point #1. Features vs. Benefits: Don’t get sloppy…product features have comparisons, business benefits have $$-signs!
I would bet that most of the time we’re really not addressing benefits; in fact, demos are likely to dwell on all the features of our product and very little about the benefits to their organization. The sloppy and interchangeable use of these very different terms is dangerous. Even when we think we are covering benefits (…this widget has 3, unlike others who have just 2…), we actually confuse features with benefits. This laxity results in a weak business case and an increased risk of losing the opportunity.
Key Point #2. There are millions of product features, but only 3 types of business benefits.
In discovery and demo situations, it helps me to go back to the basics; i.e., there are actually only three types of business benefits associated with offering products and services to enterprises, whether large or small:
- Increasing Revenue
- Decreasing Cost
- Improving Quality*
* …and, really, #3 is just a means toward improving #1 and #2, right?!.
Now, more than ever before, with added economic and pandemic pressures, along with cost-cutting measures, “NOT” developing a true business case to quantitatively capture benefits of #1 and #2 is no longer acceptable (it really never was). It’s indeed a requirement that real business impact must be justified through comprehensive business value assessments.
Key Point #3. Not all product features will impact or meet the client’s needs. In fact, they won’t care about most of our features. Focus on the features that drive real business benefit.
The key, then, is to help a prospect translate solution features into tangible and quantitative benefits for their use cases and business. For example, in an enterprise software solution with a set of features, it is helpful to map the client requirements and business assumptions to the features that relate and impact those requirements.
Using a simple table layout can be useful in mapping features to benefits:
Column 1: List the primary business, operational and/or technical requirements. Use what you found out in the discovery sessions and subsequent validation of key assumptions.
Column 2: Highlight and map only the relevant product or solution features that address the requirements in Column 1. Several features can apply to each requirement, BUT, not all features will be important.
Column 3: Calculate the financial impact and business benefit (in $$), mapping the increased revenue and/or decreased cost of that feature to the respective requirement. Be sure to explicitly capture the driving assumptions and calculations for that impact. Then sum up the value of each line to arrive at a total estimated benefit.
The reality is that quantifying the benefits of revenue and cost — including the resulting ROI and TCO — has always been important. However, if we as account execs, sales engineers, solution consultants, or customer success managers aren’t equipped with, or cannot bring in resources with — skills in facilitating client discovery sessions to explore business goals, problems, and needs, or, in developing business cases, or, worse, we’re simply lazy and avoid going through this process, then we seriously risk losing the deal.
Coming next in Part 4: Don’t leave the client to do the ROI alone…this can be a “gotcha.”
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About the Author
Brian Eastley has been in the tech industry for nearly 25 years, in roles ranging from product management, marketing, solution consulting, sales, customer success, and start-up CEO. With this experience, he’s seen and learned from many situations where all the emphasis is put on the proposed product and solution, and NOT on the client and the corresponding impact on their business. He has conducted and facilitated about 100 enterprise client discovery sessions and has created discovery templates, sophisticated ROI models, and proposals to help clients, sales and marketing understand the impact of proposed solutions.
Contact info: Brian@BrainstormROI.com