Picture this: You arrive home to find ants crawling all over your kitchen. You whip out your phone and Google for an exterminator. You want a solution NOW, and the first company you find that impresses you in some way will get your business. You click through to the first company and…eh. Thumbs down. Company number two ends up getting your business.

Why did one exterminator get your business while the other did not? It could be that one “connected the dots” between their services and the benefits of working with them, while the other failed to do so.

I often write about the importance of focusing on the benefits that your products or services offer, rather than just touting the features. To refresh your memory, a feature is a fact about your product. A benefit is the reason why someone should care about this feature. It’s the all-important “what’s in it for me?” aspect of what you’re selling.

For example, a feature of a fencing product might be that it’s made of specially-formulated vinyl. The benefits of this vinyl are that the fencing will never fade, crack, warp, rot, break, attract termites or need painting. Plus, because this vinyl is so amazing, the product comes with a lifetime guarantee!

What are benefits associated with your product’s features?

When business owners write their own marketing materials, they often make the mistake of thinking that the benefits of their products are obvious. They talk about the features and assume readers will immediately “connect the dots” to make the connection between these features and their “obvious” benefits.

Unfortunately, this generally will not happen.

You need to “connect the dots” for your prospects

For example, say you’re selling a new dental handpiece sterilizing machine that uses fresh water with every cycle. If your marketing materials simply announce that your machine “uses fresh water with every cycle,” dentists are likely to respond with, “so what?” Very few dentists will see this and immediately understand the excitement of this feature. “Wow! Fresh water with every cycle! That means that this will completely eliminate the problem with oil and debris buildup that I’ve got with my current sterilizing machine! Woo hoo! This new product is for me!”

No. That’s not automatically going to happen. You’ve got to spell it out for them. If you only talk about the feature, no one will care. It’s the benefits that lead to sales.