How My Toddler Taught Me to Sell Results not Features

Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.

Yoda, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

That quote is from Master Yoda, as he’s trying to help Obi-Wan Kenobi try to find a missing planet. Obi-Wan let his assumption (“that’s impossible because only Jedi can access this data”) get in the way of the actual answer — which was given to him by a young Padawan.

Similarly, my son Louis, who’s 2 and can only say a few words and sentences, helped reinforce a very important sales lesson for me:

Don’t sell features. Sell the results.

See, I was trying to get my son to abandon the wide-open world of the front yard (and active road), for the safer, albeit less exciting back yard. First, I ask my son if he wanted to go to the backyard (or the platform/product). He said no. What can the backyard offer him that the front yard can’t?

So then I ask if he wanted to go on the trampoline (a unique feature of the platform). Again, he said no. Perhaps he didn’t realize what the trampoline was, or what it can do for him.

Finally, I asked him if he wanted to bounce (the results of using the feature), and he said yes.

Don’t sell your product or service by talking about features (or worse, how you made it). Sell what your product or services can do for your customers.