One of the most simple yet powerful concepts in marketing and sales is of FAB Selling or FAB Statement, surprisingly yet, most people do not use it to get amazing results in selling.
One of the major reasons could be that it is so simple that people are convinced that they understand it, yet when it comes to its use, they often unconsciously don’t.
Do you want to learn a selling technique that can drastically improve your sales and marketing effort? Fact is who doesn’t? Chances are that you may be even aware about et. It is this FAB Statement or sometimes also referred as FAB Selling Technique.
While you may have known about it but if you try and remember your last marketing or sales attempt, you may realize that you did not use it.
Why is it so? The fact is FAB statement or Selling technique is easy to understand first, however we don’t use it effectively because we often underestimate the preparations and conscious efforts that goes into it.
While you go through the rest of I strongly recommend complete selling skills guide to build on the overall selling skill. ‘
Let us first try to understand what FAB Statement is:
FAB STATEMENT
FAB is a acronym for Features, Advantages, and Benefits. A FAB Statement is explaining the feature, what it does, and how that benefits it brings to the customer.
Very simple isn’t it? But how does it help in selling? The basis of FAB Selling is using benefit as the anchor to sell. Most people for each event in their daily lives keep on looking for WIIFM. Don’t get anxious about the abbreviation it actually means ‘What’s in it for me?‘.
Therefore, it becomes extremely important for a person selling anything to the prospective customer to hook him into the conversation by using benefit statement and thereafter using Advantages and Features to enforce the WIIFM factor and conclude the sales. I will be covering that in detail next.
1. FEATURES
Feature are the easiest one to identify. These are facts or characteristics about your product or business. For example, a “F 1.4 aperture in a camera lens” is a feature.
All that your read about product specifications, product information and product details are nothing but all its features.
Some more example of features
- Intel quad core processor with multi-threading
- Organic
- Double Malt
- IP 68 rating
While there can be hundreds of example from any product you look at, I will stick to only four to let avoid one of the major common mistakes – confusing features and advantages.
2. ADVANTAGES
Advantages are all that your features do. They are more about actual facts and at this stage does not completely connect with your prospective customer.
For example, “Allows more light to hit the camera sensor” in the camera lens example. For the above four examples could you think about the advantages?
Once features are given it is easy to guess the advantages. Below are the advantages of the four features mentioned in the feature section. Let’s see how many of them you got right.
- Intel quad-core processor with multi-threading – Faster Processing
- Organic – Healthy
- Double Malt – Great taste and flavor
- IP 68 rating – Water-resistant
I am sure most of you’ll get all of them right. This simple example will ensure that you don’t confuse features with advantages anytime in future.
3. BENEFITS
The most important of all ‘Benefits’. These are what provide answer to what value it creates for the user (remember WIIFM).
It connects the facts about your product to a solution for your customers. For example, “when you’re in a low light situation, you can still click grain free, sharp and beautiful images”
In the above example of camera lens let us try to phrase the FAB Statement
That’s it! This’s all about FAB statement for your marketing or sales campaign. Now the little less easier part. How do you implement FAB statement which leads to higher sales?
You will need to go through the second part to find an answer to this.
USING FAB STATEMENT WHILE SELLING
Using FAB statement in selling is also easy, provided you follow the following steps
STEPS FOR USING (FAB) FEATURE, ADVANTAGES AND BENEFITS IN SELLING
1.REVERSE FAB TO BAF
Yes, you need to reverse the order and start with Benefit statement, then substantiate it with the advantage statement and then tell about the specific feature that leads to it.
For e.g in the above camera lens, you will begin grabbing the attention of the customer by using the Benefit statement first, that is “not missing precious moments in life in low light.”
Now the most important point here is that you need to know a little bit about the customer before you frame a powerful benefit statement. And yes benefit statements can be for tangible products and even services.
2. FAB ANALYSIS OF YOUR PRODUCT, ORGANIZATION OR SOLUTION
At this stage you need to follow two things. First know about your product or solution features and also about your organization. Create at least ten benefit statements. It is alright if you cannot arrive at 10 depending on your product or solution.
Remember while you frame benefit statements, always work from Feature to Benefits. It is only with client that you will start using BAF statement.
Second, frame some questions or methods through which you can know which of these benefit statements will best create interest in your customer. Let us have an example here. A salesperson at a multi-product retails store is representing a brand of LED Televisions.
This television like may others, have multiple features. If he knows his product and brand well and has formed multiple benefit statement all he needs to do is ask a simple question.
What kind of programs do you spend most of your time watching on television?
It the person watches a lot of sports channel, the salesperson will highlight benefit statement of watch the game as if you were at the venue, due to fast motion advantage due to the feature .
If the customer watches movies more, the salesperson will use benefit statement using cinematic sound due to various sound enhancements in the television.
Now a mistake a normal salesperson selling television makes is, he is always focused on best selling feature or differentiating feature of the television. The fact is many times it may have no use for your prospective customers.
A person who uses televisions for mostly watching news channel will not be sold on your amazing smart TV features.
FINAL WORDS
I have seen drastic improvements in sales across products when FAB statement in incorporated into selling or marketing initiative. Start this technique now and share your feedback.