More often than not, desire is aroused by beauty, appeal, and attractiveness. Functionality and features usually come second. So in essence, you work to stimulate your customer’s desire, first through the physical attributes of your products. Its features and capabilities come second.
This may look too easy but aesthetics is not a simple science. Aesthetics is rather vague and is very general. The old adage still holds true – beauty depends on the person who appreciates it. You have to keep in mind who your customers are and what their preferences might be, before you can appeal to their senses. This is especially hard if you do not have any control over your product’s aesthetic abilities and you are just selling it. We will get to that later. First, here are the different channels of attraction and how you can use them to present your product to arouse your customers’ desire to buy.

Vision

The first step is to appeal to the eyes. Consumers want a product that looks good visually. Again, this is why companies are investing so much in remodeling and repackaging their products just to look new and trendy. Never mind the features. They can improve on that later, or maybe never. Some companies just opt to create an entirely different model of the product instead of adding good features to it. Repackaging is always costly, but a lot do it anyway.

Hearing

If there’s any music or sounds associated with your product and it is very engaging, capitalise on it. Let the music arouse desire. Music and sounds have the innate ability to do that. There might be times that you went walking in the mall and you heard your favorite song play somewhere. Do you remember how you stopped and just listened? You might have even walked right into the store just to enjoy the music. Music can relay a message of your product. Music uses the power of words and the melody of a good tune. That’s why songs and jingles are always created and used in television commercials. People love to hear a good harmony. That is one reason why the music industry is always flourishing.

The Sense of Smell

What is your first reaction when you are walking in a busy street and somebody with your favorite cologne walked right past you? You intend to look at the direction of the person, no matter how far away he may be. You might even search for his face in the crowd. Some people would even stop and savour the scent. Whichever your reaction is, the point is clearly stated. You simply can’t resist the allure of a good smell. Whether it is the smell of somebody’s cooking or the fragrance of your favorite perfume, you tend to turn your head even without meaning to. That effect is something you would like to achieve for your products.

The Sense of Taste

This one is for products that have something to do with eating or ingesting. It could be food products, drinks, or even medicines. If it has to go through the mouth, you have to make sure it tastes good. That goes true even for medicines. This is something basic. You won’t sell a chocolate bar that doesn’t taste sweet, right? Therefore, if you have to sell food, you have to make sure eating it will become your taste bud’s enjoyment. People like to try something new every now and then. Most of them are tired with the usual taste of the food they eat. This is the reason why companies are coming out with an orange, cherry, or apple flavors of their products. You don’t want to eat plain Jell-O’s every morning for the rest of your life, right? Or wheat grain cereals? Or plain fruit jellies? People like some variants. So benefit from that.

The Sense of Touch

But what if you are still considered as a low-level sales person and you do not have any control of the product’s aesthetic abilities? Well then, since you can’t be changing your products, change the way you present your products. Answer these questions:
What are the selling points of your product?
Of them all, which do you think is the most significant?
How can you promote this particular selling point?
Using which senses are you going to endorse the product best?
Can you combine two or more senses together to achieve optimum results?
Are you creative enough to appeal to all of a person’s senses?
Your choice of approach, of endorsement, or of advertisement is going to count a lot. Use the right one. Better yet, be imaginative enough to create your own. Make your own market plan. Make your own commercials, posters, and other attention-grabbing materials whenever you can. It may mean extra work, but it would surely take you closer to your goal.

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Features and Benefits

No study of the Sales Process would be complete without a study of Features and Benefits and more importantly how to link the two together.

“Selling is: matching the benefits of your product or offer, with the needs of your customer by bringing them together in a reasoned and clearly communicated case.”
Firstly, though it is important to define just exactly what features and benefits are, as it is surprising just how many people mix them up.

Features

What is a feature? Salespeople love to talk about the features of their product or offer, especially when they are enthusiastic about it.
A feature is a single characteristic of a product or offer. It explains what is different about a product or offer, compared with different products or services or the same from other suppliers.
Any characteristic could be a feature, including Packaging, Pricing, and Service etc. Features explain why or how a benefit can occur; they are a means to the end – the end is the benefit.
Sadly, features, on their own, are meaningless. Many a slick sales presentation bores the customer to death as they think to themselves “So what”.

Benefits

A benefit on the other hand is “The promise of a future positive result, forecast or event, upon taking certain action”. It is therefore the favourable result of taking that action.
A benefit must always be customer related, whereas features are supplier related.

Benefits can also be unique to the individual person. In business to business selling, a service or product can also confer different benefits to different departments.

This will depend on the hierarchy of customer needs. Benefits can also be emotional as well as logical even in business to business. Never underestimate the feel good factor.

Features support benefits and they are linked to them. There is an art to matching the correct benefit. Benefits differ by customer type.
Firstly, preparation and customer knowledge is required to determine customer needs and therefore relevant benefits. This benefit should then always satisfy a customer’s needs, otherwise it is irrelevant.
This is because customers buy benefits not features. Think back to your last major purchase. Why did you choose that particular product or supplier? Did the seller communicate a benefit, which met one of your needs?

Linking Features to Benefits

The key to linking benefits to features is to answer the questions: “So what!” “What does it do for the customer?” or “Which means that!”
“What does it do for me?” “What does it mean to my business?” If you can still keep saying, “So what!” you haven’t got to a benefit.
As I stated before, it’s worth repeating, customers never buy features, they buy what those features will do for them in terms of benefits.
Benefits also need to be relevant; Your Sales proposals or presentation should always therefore contain a link between the benefits of the proposal / offers and your customer’s needs.

So a benefit must therefore satisfy a customer need. Your skills in questioning and listening will determine how well you can establish your prospect’s needs.
Questioning and listening are therefore the key selling skills you should perfect more than any others, if you wish to become adept at the art of selling.
Matching your offer benefits to your customer’s needs is the most vital element of any proposal. When drafting your proposal or presentation, you should therefore be able to answer these questions:

– “How can I turn the features of my product or offer, into the benefits most relevant to my customer’s needs?”

This is a true Customer orientated approach
When presenting your proposals, practice using the following Link Words, as these naturally link the feature to a benefit:

• Therefore you have
• Which will give you
• So you get
• As a result of which
• That leads to
• Which means that
• Which allows you to
• And in addition

Communicate clearly and concisely and do not speed through, to ensure understanding. Always consider your audience, by checking understanding of the key benefits meeting customers’ needs.
Feature + link words + benefit = matches need
The customer benefit must always satisfy the customer need. If it doesn’t, then the sale could be lost!

The action threshold

When you are in the sales process and trying to help people to buy ie selling, there comes a point, hopefully, when their resistance to buying is less than their desire to buy. This will be unconscious and is a result of all the positives minus negatives. It will also include any limiting beliefs they might have.
Therefore your job, as a sales professional is to lower their resistance whilst at the same time increasing their desire. It would therefore be tempting to give them all of your benefits straight up front. But don’t. Keep your powder dry, save your good stuff until the end.

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