People Don’t Buy Features or Benefits. They Buy Emotions.
Before I was in marketing, I was in sales.
One of my first sales jobs was at a jewelry store in a shitty mall in a small suburb. I wasn’t very good at it. Better than some, maybe, but never the best.
I had been sold this idea that, to be a good salesman, you had to talk to customers about benefits, not features.
By this logic, nobody cares that their engagement ring is princess cut — that’s just a feature of the stone. They care about how much it sparkles, how good it looks on their hand, and how pretty the cut makes it.
But that’s bullshit too.
Over the time that I worked in jewelry, I learned that the best salespeople weren’t those who sold the benefits the best.
They were the ones who could convince the customer that their purchase would make them feel the way that they wanted to feel.
When a bride-to-be asks to see a particular ring that’s caught her eye, she’s tapping into something subconscious. She’s hoping to find the ring that she can see herself wearing every day for the rest of her life. One that she’ll never be ashamed to compare to her friends’. Maybe, if she’s the particularly romantic type, a ring that reminds her of her mother’s or her grandmother’s.
