Just How Important are Features?
Products and Services
We’re often told it is benefits that sell a product or service. Nevertheless, it is easy to forget and try to market a product or service’s features. Usually, prospects are not interested because they do not know they need those features. So, just how important are features?
Features are elements of the design of a product or service. If you sell your product or service with through its benefits, there comes a point where your prospective client or customer will ask: exactly how are you going to deliver on your promised benefits? This is where features come into play.
Features can make a product or service special but it is important not to overdo it. For example, if you are selling a coaching service, you might offer two sessions per month. It might be tempting to think three or four sessions would be more attractive. It might but remember there is a limit to the workload your client can take on. You don’t want to overload your client and it is also more work for you!
Types of Feature
Your clients or customers need to know what they will receive for their money. An attractive list of features presented at the right time, ie once the prospective client or customer has understood the benefits, can go a long way towards making the sale. So, your features might include:
- The core elements in the offer you are making. For services you need to be clear about monthly features and features that are one-off. Core elements can be products, services or both.
- Documentation of various types, eg notes or recordings
- Delivery, eg is it online, by phone, by post, video, audio, pdf, etc.
- Any bonuses are usually relevant but not essential to the main offer. You can introduce them in a list of features or use them as incentives to purchase in various ways. You can also have surprise bonuses, although you can’t use these to market your product or service!
- For services, the duration of the offer if it is time limited
Pricing
Pricing is a special case. It is a feature but you may not need to include it if it is likely to vary according to the needs of the client. You may also wish to include incentives, such as discounts, which you can introduce as you get to know your prospective customer. Prices can also include variations dependent on the payment method.
Be clear why your features are special and what they offer that other similar products or services don’t.
Causes
Causes are different because usually the beneficiary is a third-party. So, the benefits are not primarily for the supporter. If someone is going to donate, however, they will want to know where the money is going and how it will be used.
Therefore these features are of two kinds. Some will relate to the delivery of the benefit to the beneficiaries. Or if the cause is a campaign, how the campaign is to be carried out and what support can be contributed to the campaign.
The other type is features for the supporter or donor. These might be things like reports, access to information, training for direct action, etc.
So, sign up for our direct action workshop, £20! The benefit is two-fold, the person who pays attends a workshop and the resulting direct action may bring about beneficial changes. Similarly, the features will be two-fold. The person who pays gets a workshop (and possibly lunch!) and perhaps joined up because a feature of the workshop is that the direct action is non-violent.
Remember this three-way structure of benefits and features. We normally consider a transaction as two-way. A business sells something to a customer who needs it. However, it is likely in almost all transactions, there are third-parties, those who have a stake in the transaction.
Implicit Causes
Where there is a cause, the beneficiaries are likely to be obvious. In a natural disaster, the beneficiaries are the main point. For some causes there are beneficiaries but they are not readily identifiable, eg climate change impacts everyone’s life, a general benefit.
But a transaction between a wholesaler and retailer for example, includes the retailer’s customers. These customers clearly have a stake in the transaction and where they have expectations of the products, in terms of quality or environmental impact, there may be a cause in there too.
And consider any commercial transaction where there is no cause articulated, there still may be hidden causes, such as additives to foods or environmental impact. The customers may not articulate interest in this aspect but it can have implications for their wealth and well-being.
The point is maybe the features of any product or service includes an implicit cause and that is the well-being of stakeholders. We see this already in some products, eg “this cosmetic was not tested on animals” is a feature of the product and relates to a particular cause that concerns some of its users.
Clearly this is a complex area and requires further exploration.