Marketing Tip - showing our value to prospects

This summarizes nicely how we can highlight the values of our association - whether in technical services, out in the field, in our communications materials, in membership, meetings mgmt, or on the phone...

A friend that works at a car dealership was recently discussing a sales technique with me. "We're not allowed to let customers leave...until they take a test drive," he said. "If they take a test drive, the chances that they'll buy really improve."

What does this have to do with today's topic? The car dealership's policy clearly illustrates the difference between selling features and selling benefits.

So what's the difference?

Feature: The structure, physical description, or attributes of your product or service.

Benefit: The emotional reasons or connections your prospect makes with your product or service.

At a car dealership, putting the consumer in the driver's seat changes the way they view the vehicle. No longer are they looking at the "features" of the car, they are experiencing the benefits. (Hence the increase in sales.)

So what can you do to make sure your message is speaking to your prospect's heart and not their head? Ask yourself a series of questions:

How will their life be better, easier, or more fun with my product or service?
Why will they want to tell their friends about my company?
Without my product or service, what will the prospect be missing?
How will the prospect justify this purchase to themselves or their spouse?

By answering these questions, you will discover the benefits that will attract your prospects. No matter how tempted you may be to point out the incredible "features" of your product, sell with the prospect in mind.

When you constantly put the prospects emotions first, you will create marketing messages that drive sales like you've never seen before.

credit to Clate Mask, President, InfusionSoft

Even hockey is going green!

Zambonis benched in favor of electric IceCats


Growing up in Canada, every kid knows what the Zamboni is. But for the poor, deprived children of warmer climes, we'll fill you in. It's not a lunch meat or a pastry you'd find in Little Italy, but the ice resurfacing machine you see put-putting around the rink before, after and in the middle of hockey games. Created by Frank Zamboni in 1949, the company's pretty much had a monopoly on the market ever since. But the times, as Bob Dylan sang from the penalty box, they are a-changin'.

Toronto, Canada's largest city, is slowly phasing out their Zambonis in favor of Finnish-made IceCats (pictured above). So is the National Hockey League. And the reason is carbon monoxide: while the Zambonis run on propane or natural gas, the IceCats are all-electric. In an indoor arena, that can make all the difference: it's no big surprise to read that a study in the American Journal of Public Health determined that replacing carbon-emitting resurfacing machines with electric ones would reduce the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in indoor arenas by 87%, except to wonder where the other thirteen percent is coming from (flatulent spectators?). At a whopping $160,000 apiece – twice the price of a new Zamboni when many skating rinks already have their own – the IceCats aren't cheap (there are only four in all of Canada), but with carbon emissions on everybody's minds, Zamboni may get beaten to by the Finnish line.

found on autoblog.com by your favorite lipstick-wearing hockey mom :)