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[Please excuse any typing errors as this is a direct transcription]
Let’s talk about Features, advantages, and benefits. You will probably remember from your sales training when you first became a recruiter, about the fact that you needed to profile your recruiting service and that it had a feature and then that feature could be linked to a benefit and that’s how you sold.
Well, let me tell you that this works as well today as it’s ever done and it also works when it comes to your website copy and how you communicate all about you and your brand, which when you think about it is quite logical, because there’s a famous guy called Claude Hopkins, and you can download his report, it is here on the website it is on our blog and it’s Scientific Advertising ( no email required)
This is a classic work from many years ago; Claude always talks about the fact that when you write copy or when you write content, of any description, it’s like being a salesman in print.
If you think about it, if you have a potential client in front of you or a potential candidate and you are selling your recruiting service to that person, then if you can outline the features, what it will mean for that person, the advantages of working with you and the benefits to them, you’re more likely to convert them. Imagine if you did this in your website copy.
It’s really fascinating that a lot of people forget to do that.
What they will do is they’ll talk all about their wonderful recruitment service. However, what they seem to forget to do is make the connection for people. There’s a real gap here for you, and it will make a huge difference if you can answer the question that’s in your prospect’s head, and an easy way to do that is to explain what a feature of your service means for the individual concerned and what benefit that will give them.
Features
Using a very practical example, let me talk about how features and benefits work. Returning to your selling skill days, you will remember that a feature is a fact about your product. Very straightforward, so this car is blue or this is a four-wheel-drive car, so that will be an example.
Advantages
The next thing is what is the advantage of your product for your customer, so the reasons that a customer or a prospect might buy your product or service. If you think about it, it’s the so what moment.
That’s what an advantage is. Using a recruiting service obviously saves you time and in the long-term, can probably save you a lot of money, so that’s where the advantage comes in.
Benefits
The next part is the benefit. What is the benefit for your potential prospect in using your service? Now, for those of you who are real scholars of sales and sales training, which both Sharon and I are, you will know that if you look at anything like Spin Selling or any of the major selling programmes, benefits are all about a specific need that a customer might have, so a specific need that your avatar might have.
For many of you listening to this, I’m sure that the penny is dropping, that the more targeted your avatar, the better you can make your copy and the more explicit you can make your copy that really speaks to their particular benefits and needs.
Let me give you a practical experience of how this works and I’ll talk about buying a car. We bought a new car this year.
We had some criteria for our car, certain features, and one of the things was we wanted a car with a large boot because though we live in Cumbria, lots of our friends and family, live all over the country, so an advantage to us in having a large boot was that we can transport many items at once.
Now, the very clever salesperson who sold us the car also asked us some other questions, and then through his skilful questioning managed to work out what the real benefit for us of having the large boot was the ability to have a boot large enough for a dog crate. Therefore the dog’s all nice and safe because we do a lot of travelling, and also there’s still room to put suitcases, so that was the benefit.
Imagine if you knew as much about your avatar; what sort of copy could you write? It would make a huge difference because you are making the connexions for that individual concerned.
The thing was he didn’t really make the connection for us when it came to that feature and advantage of the car that we eventually ended up buying, so that was a lost opportunity for him, but we ended up buying the car anyway.
It’s thinking about, “Are you making the connections for your particular candidates and clients?” Let’s say that using your recruiting service, let’s say you’ve very experienced in your particular sector.
You’re a specialist recruiter, so okay, you’re a specialist. What does that mean? What is the advantage of that for your customers, for your candidates and for your clients? Obviously, there are lots of advantages that you need to communicate to people, that; “Well because I’m a specialist in this market, I know where all the jobs are. I know the key people because I do my market mapping, and I could provide you with A, B, C, D, E.”
You can see the difference there in sometimes saying what appears to be obvious to you, but will not be obvious to your candidate and it certainly won’t be obvious to your client.
Let’s just say that you have a large database. What exactly does that mean? Well, that would mean a real benefit for your clients or candidates. Let’s just say it’s a large database and the difference that can make is, therefore, you have a huge choice of people that you could provide for interview if you’ve already told them things about your recruitment agency or search consultancies that you’ve been around a long time, what a difference that might make for them. It’s just really making those connections for them. You may well do this face-to-face with people, and the question is, are you doing it on your website?
How We Can Help
Many of our clients are on for their best quarter because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we provide.
Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, too.
Thanks,
Denise
