**Speaker 1**
So, a lot of times, particularly architects or analytical people, and most people selling anything actually, they end up standing over here and talking at people from a different, almost singing a different song, to what the buyer or the prospective client's talking and thinking. It's almost like one's singing a romance novel, and the other one's singing an analytical textbook. Okay, anyone? Bob, you put your hand up there.
Right, so what we've got to do is we've got to align our thinking with the way that the potential buyer is thinking. If we can talk the same language as them, then all of a sudden there's a sync. What happens when you're in sync with someone?
**Speaker 2**
It...
**Speaker 1**
...starts with R. You get? Resonance and rapport.
You're getting rapport. Now, what happens when you're in rapport with someone? You're on the same, yes. Yeah, you're on the same wavelength.
And if you're singers, you're both singing, and you're both working off each other, and it sounds better. When you're not in sync, you have two singers singing a different song, and it sounds terrible. They don't want to sing with you, and you don't want to sing with them. So it's this process.
When you get this right, it's almost like you're singing in harmony. Now the problem is you know so much, so you don't really want them trying to sing your song because they don't, they're not as good a singer as you. You know too much. So you've got to find out what song they're singing and thinking in their heart and in their head and connect with that. Okay? So this is how you do it.
In fact, yeah. So what we need to know is FAB. So you've got that in your books. This stands for feature.
This stands for advantage. This stands for benefit. Nice three-step formula. Now, what is a feature?
**Speaker 2**
It's what a building has.
**Speaker 1**
Yeah, it is what a building has.
**Speaker 3**
Details.
**Speaker 1**
Yeah, it's a feature. What's a feature of a car? You've got the steering wheel, you've got the wheels, you've got ABS braking. It's the thing you're talking about. What's the advantage? So this is what it is or has. The advantage is what it does.
That's what it does. That's the advantage. The benefit is the impact of this thing and what it does. So it's the impact.
Or in other words, saying it's how it affects someone's life. Right? So, for example, airbags.
Right. Feature, advantage, or a benefit? Feature. It's what it is.
It is a feature. What does it do?
**Speaker 3**
Protects life.
**Speaker 1**
Yeah, it deploys on impact. What benefit does that have? Saves your life, right?
Airbag saves your life. Which one is more logical? Or, yeah, I mean this end is sort of the logical end. Which end is more emotional? This end. Which end is easier to roll off and say, you know, we have this and this and this and this? Which end is easier to roll off?
We do this and we do this end, right? This is where most people, particularly selling professional services and everything actually, get caught up in their features. We have this and we can do 3D drawings and we can do BIM and we use ARCHICAD and come up with these concepts. They're all things, right? And then you might explain that means you'll be able to see it before you actually get it.
We go that far. We don't often take the next step over to here and explain actually what that really means. Now, this is the logical end; this is the emotional end. Which end is the money shot?
One end is far more... Right. Here is the money shot over here. Okay.
So this one, if I said you've got something in our car and it'll potentially save your life, or I said this car comes with three airbags. See the difference? Right, big difference.
People buy on emotion, justify with logic. Yes.
**Speaker 4**
So I see a lot of architects just talking about the benefits, and it becomes meaningless because it's like, like actually I heard one person here say, we really listened to our clients. I can't even tell you the number of architects that I've heard. Everybody's because yeah, that's an emotional benefit. And I'm sure that really feels cool but back that up.
Correct.
You know, and so I also hear things like our designs are more timeless or our designs are more contextual, and all of that just sounds like blah blah blah. Correct. Because I actually want to hear the features.
Like, how are you really going to do that?
That's right. That's right. So there are two ways to do this.
You need to make a connection all the way back and forward. Otherwise, it's just fluff and hot air. OK? So let's go up with another set.
Someone give me please a feature of architecture or what they do, something they do that's a feature.
**Speaker 5**
And BIM for facilities maintenance, one thing that we do is track energy monitoring.
**Speaker 1**
Okay, so that's BIM, is it?
**Speaker 5**
Yeah, well no, I mean the energy monitoring is the feature.
**Speaker 1**
Okay, so that's what it is, energy monitoring. What does it do?
**Speaker 5**
The advantage of energy monitoring is being able to track all of the energy use per client.
Okay, and what we found that change whoever's ordering it, how does that change?
What we're understanding is that it's going to save them a lot of stress and time in coming up with this manually.
Okay. So just stop. Watch this. Okay.
So save stress, save time. Right. Do we want to stop there? No, let's keep going.
Okay, if they save stress and save time, what does that ultimately give them?
**Speaker 2**
Save money.
**Speaker 5**
It definitely saves money.
**Speaker 1**
And what does that mean?
**Speaker 4**
They impress their boss. They justify their salary for the year?
**Speaker 2**
What else does that, what does that mean for them? Impress their boss, justify their salary.
**Speaker 5**
It's got to feel pretty good.
**Speaker 1**
Yep. Peace of mind. What will that give them? Possibly.
Okay, so we are stretching it here a bit, right? Don't know if you've noticed that. Energy monitoring, track each client, save stress, save time, save your money, impress your boss, justify your salary, give you peace of mind, maybe even give you a raise and make you more successful in your company. Now, how would you say that?
You can do it two ways. You can go this way. And both ways are valid. Hey, we've got this new thing.
It's called energy monitoring. Have you heard of it? No? Okay.
What it does is it allows us to track by client. There's not many other people using it. What people using it have said is it's saved them a whole lot of stress and time because they don't have to go and track things individually. It's all done automatically.
You know, the last guy I spoke to who did it, he said his boss was absolutely delighted with him, and he said he was so relieved because it made him look good to his boss. And what they used to do poorly or not at all, he was now doing like automatically. He didn't tell his boss it was all being done because of the system we put in. His boss was really happy with him. He ended up getting a raise and a promotion partly because of this thing that he bought into his company. Does that sound better than "we have energy monitoring"? Absolutely. Sure.
You spin the story. A good example, once again the ANZ Bank in New Zealand, they were running an ad. So before you go, "oh well that's stretching it a wee bit," they were running an ad, and the ad was for the ability to pay tradespeople or pay people straight off your phone.
So the tradesman would come up, and you'd just sign a thing on their phone or something like that, and you could make the transaction really quick. So what the ad was is him unable to pay the tradesman, he's looking around for money. He's late to catch the bus to go have a date with his girlfriend. So he misses the bus. He has to get a late bus.
He arrives wet and late. She's not happy with him. This is an ad, all in 30 seconds. She's not happy with him.
She's giving him the cold shoulder. He then goes, you know, he's sitting there beside her at the show and not getting much warmth or attention. He then takes her out to dinner, and at the dinner, he's going through the wine list, and she's still a bit grumpy with him. He's going through these cheaper wines, and then she's looking at him, and he goes, "oh, we'll take the expensive one." So he has to buy, and the ad goes something like, "look, the cost is an extra $80 because you've had to buy the expensive wine to make your girlfriend happy again."
So a bit of a stretch, right? But it's an ad on TV. No one's going, "hang on, I don't technically need that. I'm not going to save myself $80 because I don't even have a girlfriend."
We know the point, right? We can see the implication and okay, maybe it's not exactly that, but it's something a little bit like that. And then there's another ad, exactly the same ad, where the same thing happens except this time he pays with smart payment. He
catches the bus, he gets to his girlfriend on time, and he can order the cheaper bottle of wine saving himself $80.
Success, and she's still happy with him. So we know those little stories getting played out. We know they're not literally true, but they're kind of true, and they could be true. And if it's not that, it might be something like that.
So when we're doing this. So there's one way of doing it, which is going this way and then down here. The other way of doing it is you could say, you could go back this way. And this may be a better way to go.
Now, as Osha said, if you just go, "hey, would you like a raise?" Okay, install this energy monitoring. It's a bit of a stretch. Well, it's you just, you know, your house will look great, you know, energy, but if you said, "hey, I'm going to tell you about something," right, "I'm going to tell you about something." The last person we had who took this on board ended up getting a raise. I don't know if you're interested in making more money, but anyway, he put in place a system, which I'll tell you about in a minute, which saved a truckload of time, hassle, and stress.
He was able to get everything done without doing anything because it was all automatically done. But his boss didn't know that. His boss thought he was doing all this extra work with great precision. Saved him a lot of time.
His boss just thought he was amazing. And what it was is we decided to achieve that, we needed to track each individual client individually. So really accurate down to the, and to do that we implemented this thing called the monitoring system, the energy monitoring. So now what we're saying is, raise, peace of mind, happy boss equals that.
We've made the connection as opposed to we listen to you, and I'll just leave it at that, or you know, we're timeless living, we'll give you a timeless design that will never go out of... well that's just a benefit that's just left hanging. Okay, this is the justification. People buy on emotion, so this is what they're buying, this type of stuff, this is how we justify it. Make sense? Yeah?
Let's do one more together, and I'll get you to do one yourself. So what I need is another feature.
**Speaker 2**
A simple one would be high R value.
**Speaker 1**
What does that do?
**Speaker 2**
Reduce, I don't know if it's benefit or advantage, it reduces demand for energy.
**Speaker 1**
Is that emotional? What does the feature do?
**Speaker 6**
It's not emotional.
**Speaker 1**
No, so what it does is reduces energy use.
**Speaker 2**
Energy loss, energy gain.
**Speaker 1**
Reduces energy loss, okay.
**Speaker 2**
The benefit is comfort, higher comfort.
**Speaker 1**
Which gives you?
**Speaker 2**
A happy wife.
**Speaker 1**
Lower costs? Yeah right, happy wife.
**Speaker 2**
Lower cost to the builder, possibly more sales. I don't know.
**Speaker 1**
Yeah right, more sales.
**Speaker 2**
Environmental impact, positive environmental impact. Building is more durable over time.
**Speaker 1**
Okay, okay. Well, that might come back into here, but more durable, I don't know. Can you see that?
But can you see how the whole thing's, it's all connected around that, but we've spelt it out properly. We've got to the emotional side through the logic, and then it becomes emotional at the end. And this story can be as wonderful as is reasonable. But you've all got incredibly good stories about...
Have you got great stories about successes you've had by doing things a certain way and using a certain technique and using a certain product and it's ended up in a fantastic result at the other end for the client? You've got stories like that? And are you telling those stories in a format that makes sense? Are you linking it back to the feature, but are you making sure to have the great success for the client at the end?
Okay, I guess this is just a structure for telling evidence-based stories. Okay, if you talk just at this end, it's boring. If you talk just at this end, it might sound like unsubstantiated hype. If you link the two together, you have a really good story that's believable.
Make sense? This is where the emotion is over here, and you know ideally, we have some. It paints a story, so you can't just gloss over it. You want this to be a good story over here. But it all comes back to this simple feature.
Make sense? Yeah, Charles.
**Speaker 3**
Is this like having the client or the potential client have to buy into the emotion of what you're trying to...
**Speaker 1**
Good question.
**Speaker 3**
...Is that the whole idea?
**Speaker 1**
Yeah, quite possibly. It's putting an emotional spin on each of your features, I suppose. So, you know, if you're starting from here, the other way of doing it could be to say, how do you want to feel when your new home's been built?
Here we go again. Right? They might give you some of this, and then you can link it back to, okay, because you said that, we need something which does this. Therefore, we can do that, and if we did that, now you've linked what they want to feel.
Now at the moment, I'm guessing and making up stories which sound good. But you're right. If you went back the other way, it's going to be even better. So a good question over here is, imagine you've taken, like we did with Charles, imagine you've taken possession of your home and you're absolutely delighted with how it's turned out, and you're really happy with everything that's gone on. How would you feel in this new house?
What would you need to be feeling to know you've made a great decision and you're really happy? Oh, I'd be feeling, you know, relaxed, it's my sanctuary, it's this, it's that, boom boom boom. They're not going to give you that, are they? They're going to give you this.
Okay, great. And what would you be seeing? What would you be seeing? I'd be seeing this, and I'd be seeing that. Okay, great.
Now you can know when you go back and link things to your things you're going to do over here. You know what you need to link it to on this side. So you're making the, you know that, and this will give you this, which will give you this. You know how you said you wanted that? That's how we're going to give it to you.
You know how you said you wanted this? Great, well we need something which is going to do this result for us. So that leads to that. And we're going to do this.
Oh, fantastic. So what you could say, what you're saying is you need something which does, because you want all this, you need something which has this and this and this and this in the design. Absolutely I do. Because when they see those things, they feel and think these things.
You've made the connection. Now most architects will never make the connection between this side and this side. They'll start here; the good ones might talk about what it does. Hardly ever do they get over here, but you just assume that the client will make the connection over here. They don't. They've got so much going through their head, they haven't got time to make the emotional connection over here.
But that's where you can help them. Now, you don't make things which aren't true, but you can propose outcomes which can happen and which often do happen. And that changes everything. People buy on emotion, justify with logic. So this is how you justify it.
Make sense? It does. Okay. So what we want to do is, oh, I see he's got something to say.
But the exercise, if you've got something to say, that's cool. The exercise will be, I want you to list, say, three features, say two features. Two features that you think are kind of unique to you, something that you do that's a cool thing, and then I want you to spell out what that's what it is, this is what it does, and this is how it affects people's lives. So I want you to create a good story all the way to the other side.
Make sense? Yep, easy? No, I never said it would be easy. I said it would be worth it.
Right, let's go. I'll get you up the front, and I want you to pick out what feature you're going to talk about. Then I want you to move into what the advantage is, and then if you graduate, you get to stand on this side and talk about your benefit. So a couple of things I've noticed, and we've even picked up. The benefit, you need to make it personal, right?
If you can tell a story that they can visualize, imagine that. And sometimes, as John said, you can do it the other way. There's the cost of not doing it, or the potential cost of not doing it. That adds a whole deeper twist.
That's sticking the knife in and twisting it, which is very persuasive. Okay? So, John, bring your best feature advantage benefit up the front. Come over here.
Okay. Right, you can stand here on feature land. And I'm not going to let you come to the next level until your next one is an advantage and it's correct.
**Speaker 6**
Okay, maybe I don't want to go to the next level. Wow. My voice is so soft, I'm going to speak up.
I'm
talking about the necessity to use me for a feasibility study today, and the advantage of a feasibility study is that...
**Speaker 1**
Okay, hang on. So feature?
**Speaker 6**
Feasibility study.
**Speaker 1**
Right. Advantage? Come over here. I might push you back if it's not.
Right, go on.
**Speaker 6**
The advantage of the feasibility study is that I'm bringing my expertise in knowing the permitting process, knowing what departments need to get you approvals, and meeting with those right people to identify what potential pitfalls we have ahead down the road so that we can actually avoid them and make sure that your project can be built.
**Speaker 1**
Was that the advantage or the benefit?
**Speaker 6**
That was an advantage.
**Speaker 1**
Okay, now hit us with the benefit. Come over here. We'll see what we think.
You'll see by the reaction of the room.
**Speaker 6**
So let me tell you a story. I was working with this developer. Her name is Barbara, and she was just jumping into development.
Had she hired me for the feasibility study, I could have pinpointed some, let's say, unfortunate events that actually occurred during the project. In our town, there's a number of review panels. And what she did was try to rebuild on the foundation of an existing house. The reason she wanted to do this was that she could keep the existing septic system.
When you do an addition, if the existing septic system is working, then you can keep it. She was actually building a new house on the old foundation, and this would save her about 40, 50 thousand dollars of cost in putting in a new septic system.
**Speaker 1**
And if she had, so link it back.
**Speaker 6**
So what happened was the health department said, well, yeah, as long as you keep the foundation walls, it's still an existing house. She ended up tearing down all of the walls of the house. If she had come to me before she did this work, I could have explained to her what needed to be done for the building department, who would have ruled otherwise. The building department looked at it and said, you knocked the walls down. This is now officially a new construction.
Stop work order. So what happened was, because she didn't use me for this feasibility study, she got caught in this nuance between interpreting different regulations between different departments. Her job got shut down for at least six weeks. As a result, she lost her framers who were on the job because they moved on to other jobs. Eventually, this project got so drawn out that she went bankrupt and had to sell the property.
**Speaker 1**
Brilliant, brilliant. Excellent. Now what idiot could say no to a feasibility study after that one?
Right? You've been told, I've just told you.
**Speaker 6**
Am I going to graduate?
**Speaker 1**
Yeah, you did. No, that was brilliant. You can stay there.
So great start. Great start. So feasibility study equals saving from going bankrupt. That's effectively what he's saying.
Right? Excellent first time. It was a long story though.
It was alright. It did the job. Good job.
Alright, give him a clap. Alright, Kurt Krueger. The lone wolf who was doing it on his own without any help. Right, start over there.
**Speaker 7**
Okay, so the one that I tackled was design build. And the advantage is that you create the design as well as do the construction all in one house on the project from the same team. And the benefit of, oh, I have to keep stepping to each side. We want to see where you are.
Alright, I already did the advantage. So then the benefit of.
If this isn't good enough, you get pushed back.
Alright, maybe I should start with the story rather than the different things. Well, the advantage, or I'm sorry, the benefit is that it is less stress, less finger pointing, better execution of the overall vision that you have on the project. An example of this is that we had a client that now we're talking now now it becomes real.
We had a client that was interested in the design, but perhaps bidding it out to multiple contractors. And what happened with that situation was that what they found was either two things. One was that they were all very high or low balling it as being very low.
They decided to go that direction by hiring that contractor, and then what happened in the process was something happened, inevitable finger pointing. When you have a team that's all responsible for the same thing, that finger-pointing is all in one direction, in-house. We work to solve the problem rather than create more time, more expense that ultimately you will have to provide for.
So make the link, but what's the feature?
The feature is the design build process.
So doing the correct design build process right and you avoid the...
Done right, you will avoid less stress, have a happier end result, better execution of the project, and overall a streamlined process.
Okay, well done. Okay, Tanya, Tanya, Tanya. Yes, you should.
I was going to go Jeffrey and I just at the last minute just yeah.
**Speaker 8**
Okay, I will go with the specification book in conjunction with drawings.
**Speaker 1**
So what does it do?
**Speaker 8**
The advantage of that is that you are clearly identifying each and every product, fixture, and finish in the project, and it's all in one place. My specification book includes a color photograph of each material.
**Speaker 1**
Great. What's the advantage of that? What does that mean for me? How's that going to affect my life?
**Speaker 8**
The benefit of that is that it eliminates confusion and mistakes. For instance...
**Speaker 1**
I like it. As soon as she says for instance, I know we're going to get some... I'm going to get a picture.
**Speaker 8**
For instance, I was working on a project where we had specified a particular slate backsplash. When we went into the installation, we noticed that the slate was not the right color. If we had been using our specification book that we use now with the color photograph, the builder or the installer or someone would have caught that earlier on.
**Speaker 1**
So what was the ultimate cost of not having that being caught?
**Speaker 8**
Well, it was already in production, it was midway through installation, so they had to tear it out. They had to reorder the correct material, and it slowed down the project, took more time, and cost more money.
**Speaker 1**
Right, so it'd be good to say, you know, put an extra $50,000 on the cost of the project or something like that.
**Speaker 8**
Right, I mean this was a small bathroom, but.
**Speaker 9**
And so you simplify.
**Speaker 8**
Don't worry about it.
**Speaker 1**
We won't talk about it. So the point is, not doing it costs them an extra $10,000. Simplify it right down to something like that, and they go, oh, okay, I get the point.
Right. Nice job, well done.
**Speaker 6**
I guess we get to keep track.
**Speaker 1**
Yeah, okay. Okay.
The topic here is universal design, which for you commercial guys is the ADA, the residential version of ADA, highly simplified. Not highly simplified, it's different. Universal design, that's what, okay, that's the feature.
The advantage is that in residential design, it's just common sense, and it isn't just about aging in place gracefully, which is the core concept. You might have a visitor that has a walker, and if you have stairs, that's a barrier. So in residential design, no steps, wider hallways, lever sets in lieu of handles, knobs rather, space planning for aging in place with grace.
Okay, so these sound like more features to me.
It's a mixture of feature and benefit.
Because you started talking about examples of a disability.
And it's not wrong. It's just we're just trying to, just because we're training ourselves to go feature, advantage, benefit. So the feature is the things.
What it does is give you, say to keep it real simple, gives you more mobility in the house.
Aging in place with grace.
Yes. And the advantage is, that ultimately means for your life, come this way.
Okay. Benefit or advantage?
Well, the advantage is you can stay, you can have more mobility. What does it do? It gives you mobility and stuff. Well, the house is barrier free. One step is a granny killer.
We all know in commercial it's not even allowed. In residential it is. We all know people that take one step and they end up in the emergency room. It happens all the time.
You might have a pet that simply can't navigate steps anymore. You can have an Uncle Harry that has a walker. It goes on and on and on. So the advantages are numerous.
I'm not sure how to...
They're benefits.
Well, I'm stuck. The advantage is what the feature does. That's what it says here.
Yeah. Okay. It's execute... What the feature does is provide quality of life for a longer period of time.
Okay. Benefit?
The benefit is...
Come this way, just a bit of spatial work.
The benefit is we actually had clients. We were already doing this and we sold our spec house at the dirt stage because this elderly couple came along and they were living in a multi-level house and one member of the family just could not navigate the steps anymore. She was 80 at the time, maybe, no, 75, I guess, and they saw our house,
bought it on the spot, navigated through the customization process, which was finishes, nothing to do with universal design.
The benefit for them is that they were together instead of in a retirement home with all the extraordinary expense. So we saved them a lot of money. Richard actually reminded me of that. Saved them a lot of money, which was exponential to the extra amount of money they spent for new construction versus trying to remodel an existing home.
And they were together for at least 10 years longer than if they had been, one of them had to move into a retirement home.
Okay great. So, yep. So, aging in place with grace principles equals quality of life.
Quality of life, nice. Simple as that, that's a good job. Alright.
We have the same one.
0, okay, you're on the same team.
Oh, and we get pre-Sanctusgiving dinners every year.
Wow, good. That's good. So he's good at it. Yeah, good.
Oshia?
**Speaker 4**
Mrs. Wilson.
**Speaker 1**
Mrs. Wilson.
**Speaker 4**
All right. So we call our needs and options review the pre-designed package in our company. Great.
In our pre-designed package, the features are we do five things. We do the site visit, the scope discussion, the code analysis, the space plan, and then we get a price and schedule from our contractor partners. The advantage of having all of these things is that you know before you sign your lease for your tenant improvement, that's who we're selling to, is tenants doing tenant improvements. You know before signing your lease whether the space really works for you and how much it's truly going to cost to build out.
And the benefit is that you avoid potential disasters like one client we know who got stuck in his 10-year lease for a space they ultimately could not afford to build out, which could bankrupt your business.
That's it.
Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well done.
Thank you. We'll do one more. Let's go for Earl. And if anyone has a burning desire to, they've got to get something off their chest.
That's after Earl.
**Speaker 10**
All right, I'm calling mine the wish list management system.
**Speaker 1**
Oh, sounds good. I like it when they name it themselves.
**Speaker 10**
That is the name of the feature.
**Speaker 8**
Shall I add more description or move over?
**Speaker 1**
No, well, that's the feature. No, no, that's good.
Wait, one more time.
Well, I'm calling it the wish list management system or program. It's a series of spreadsheets. Well, now are we in the advanced?
It's the WMS. Yeah, what does it do?
Okay, well this is how we track the project size and cost as we go through the design process with the client.
Okay, good. Yep, how does it affect my life?
I once had a client.
Nice, nice transition. You're becoming a salesman.
Whose eyes were much bigger than their wallet or their bank account for the project. So they lived in a charming older, it was this charming older Spanish style house, and they had a long list of things that they wanted to do to the existing house and they wanted to do a relatively modest two-story small addition to the house. And in every conversation and iteration of the design as we went through, they kept asking for more and more in the addition.
And they were really focusing their mental energy and their idea of how much money they had. They were putting all of that into the addition. But they also wanted new windows in the whole existing house. They wanted to upgrade the HVAC system, really replace it, because it was extremely old and barely worked for the whole house.
So a completely new kitchen, even though that wasn't really part of the new square footage. And they were lovely people. We really enjoyed working together. But I realized at a point that all of my protests gently put to them in these meetings about what they wanted and how much money they had, which they kept kind of gently brushing off and saying, oh, we'll just, we'll, we'll sacrifice something else to have that second floor balcony be bigger and stuff like that.
So I finally compiled a spreadsheet and just assigned values in a kind of budgetary way, not like even a bid or anything like that, but just a budget document in a spreadsheet form that had sort of three different columns for three different options that we were pursuing with the design with different features in it and so forth and all of them were like way over their budget almost one, you know, the worst one was almost double their budget. They ended up terminating the project, and we all ended on friendly terms, and they still invite me over, and I use them as a reference in that neighborhood when I get a proposal. But I'm perfectly happy to be paid to draw pretty pictures all day long, and you know I got a good design in my portfolio out of it. But ultimately, it didn't serve them, and our proprietary system for wishlist management that we've developed at Parson Architecture will save you money.
Yeah, nice job. Well done. That's great.
That's great. Can you see how it transitions? You know, just from here to here to here. So you guys are doing a really good job.
Often it takes people, they get stuck somewhere along the path. But I think because we started so well with John, and everybody stepped in, it's really good. You've done a really good job. So anyone else got a burning one they want to get off their chest, I think would be a good example for everybody to...
**Speaker 4**
Actually, I wanted to try going backwards.
**Speaker 1**
Okay. Can I try that? Absolutely. All right.
This will be fun.
**Speaker 4**
Just for an experiment. So this is about integrated project delivery, but this feature that I'm going to talk about is the same as you would get in design build. So this is for commercial clients.
Going back to your board of directors over and over for more and more money to cover the change orders as the budget continues to increase over the lifetime of the project could very well cost you your job.
You've got my attention. You've got my attention.
All right. You avoid this by getting a firm bid early in the project. Not an estimate, but a bid that you can actually hold the team to.
And the only way to do that is to hire the actual builders who will really construct the project from the beginning so that they can establish the budget and work with the designers.
Nice job. It works.
That's excellent. Well done.
Well done. So it's just about having a bit of a structure. That's all.
And like I say, you can go that way, or sometimes it's even more powerful to go back that way. The story here can be how great life will be when you've got it, or it can be how terrible life will be if you don't have it. That's it. Simple as that.
Kind of reasonably easy, isn't it?
**Speaker 5**
Is there any philosophy that anyone could come up with, any scenario where...
**Speaker 6**
Is there any scenario anyone could come up with where you would start off with the advantage and then go back and forth between the feature and the benefit? That's something I just, we haven't heard yet.
**Speaker 1**
Probably. You could start here maybe and move to here and then say how we would do that would be this.
**Speaker 5**
It's not that effective though, right, as the other models that we're talking about it seems like.
**Speaker 1**
I don't know. I haven't looked at that.
**Speaker 5**
That's my challenge for you.
**Speaker 1**
Fair enough. Fair enough. Good.
**Speaker 1**
Just wanted to say that what Usha just did was, in my mind, super effective because she got our attention right away. Yes. It was like boom.
And like, okay, how do I get there? How do I get there? Yes. That was well presented. I agree. I agree.
Going this way is more effective. But learning it, going this way is a good way to learn it. So let's just do some key points. In fact, let's do it on this one, and then we'll just throw that up on the wall.
So this is benefit busting, feature advantage benefit. What are some distinctions? In fact, write them down. Write what some of the distinctions you just learned from doing this exercise.
What did you learn? What are some of the key points? So we want to get objections done today as well. So then do the objections and then do a wrap up.
**Speaker 4**
Do you write down or quietly?
**Speaker 1**
Quietly. Righto, that a loop? What do we got? What's one key distinction learning?
**Speaker 2**
If I'm hearing you correctly, I see that doing it backwards, quote unquote, is more compelling. Benefit first, advantage second, feature third. Yep.
Another one I had is that it helps me to present a better value proposition.
Just any key distinctions you've picked up. So we're just summarizing here. Yep?
**Speaker 10**
Because earlier we talked about it's a lot easier to be different than to be better.
Yes.
And so just by thinking through the processes that I already utilize, you know, and distinguishing them according to the sort of the three P things that we just talked about and even coming up with a little clever name, but you don't even always have to do that. But you can, I figure out ways to talk about your services that just, you can make what you do sound like it's very distinct from the way the other people are doing it, even if on first blush, you know, before I
came in here this week, I wasn't sure how those things would be? And it's just a matter of sitting down and thinking it through and making up those things, identifying those and to be able to just discuss my work in a different way.
Well, as we saw when we were out and around the room earlier, everybody is very bad at explaining why you should, you know, deal with me over all other options. We struggle. We say we listen more.
We've been in business a long time. We struggle to say, but this is how, by breaking it down, by breaking each thing down, we can turn each thing into a life-changing advantage or a life-changing cost if they don't do it. Oh, 0, hang on. Yeah, all right.
Here we go. A Milky Way and a lollipop. Good lollipops too. Well done.
Good. So you can differentiate yourself using this process. Good job. Okay, Charles.
Smart group.
Also, I've learned from this process is to have, to create an emotional tie-in to the services I'm trying to sell to the client.
Right. So that they have a vested interest.
Yes.
Great.
Great.
I noticed that in delivery that it was much more compelling when we said less.
Right.
Because a couple of people got up and listed a lot of features and benefits.
And you can't remember what they said. Your mind goes foggy, so it's better to focus on one or two.
Or at least one at a time. Less is more. We're not great multitaskers taking in three different features at the same time.
Just give us one and extrapolate it out.
You're talking about the male gender?
Probably both, but...
Just to build on getting to the emotion, telling a story is really effective?
Yeah, right. Well, what stories do is they hypnotize people. Because to listen to a story, what they have to do is suddenly stop what they're doing, start picturing in their head the characters and the...
So the more you can spin out the characters and the theme and the story and how it went from here and what's going to happen next, they have to go into imaginary land, and they're starting to see this thing. And as we saw with the lemon, seeing, the subconscious doesn't understand the difference between what's real and what's imagined. Even though it's not happening to them, they're imagining it and they're reacting at an emotional level as if that story is happening to them. So pick the right story, and you're onto a winner, yep.
I find it's naturally speaking benefit language, and you drop off the logical stuff when you start to recall the story. So it kind of helps me to not get trapped. Yeah. Good stuff.
Any others? Yes, Nancy.
I just wanted to go further with that story. And some people took longer than others to get to the point. And as soon as they said, let me give you an instance, or let me tell you a story, all of a sudden I was back with them rather than glazing over.
Very honest of you. All right. All right.
Okay, that's all right. All right, that's good. Reasonably easy once you know the one-two-three, isn't it? And you've had a chance to play through with it.
That's the beauty of stepping outside and coming away for a couple of days. When would you ever sit in your office and think about feature advantage benefit and then sit there and go and write up one and then write up another and then write up another and then listen to other people? You'd never do it. Who would?
You just wouldn't do it. But the beauty of stepping outside and coming in here is we get to do it and slow down and work on one thing at a time, build up a skill. So there's another skill you've got now and get to see it developing. So once again, you probably need a little FAB for each of the features that you think are important, and you should have at least five or six pre-organized in your head, written down on paper, so that when you need to just bang them out, you can just pop them out without having to think.
Say, hang on, can I go back to my desk? I've just got these things I did at this workshop in Las Vegas. I need to run them through. Just wait there.
It's really good.
No, you just roll them out because you already know. Feature leads to this leads to this and you've got your stories organized. Brilliant.
So just imagine for a second, imagine you're able to talk and explain things, not just what happened and not just how it worked, but you're also able to explain how it's going to affect them positively when they do it, or potentially, dangerously and negatively if they don't do it. Just have a think of the impact that might have on your ability to communicate and persuade people if you keep working on this and develop this over the next 12 months just this alone. Yes John.
I don't blog yet, but I understand it's an important thing to do, and I can definitely see a connection between telling the story through a blog and tying it into selling your services.
Right, fantastic, thank you.
Charles? What I'm reading here from you is the pain and pleasure, the carrot and the stick. Yeah. This is what will happen if you don't do this.
Well, I say can, because to say will, yeah, but say can. Right. And it does happen to people, yeah.
Correct. And then imagine what will happen if you do this. It's going to be fantastic for you.
Yeah. Nice. All right. And imagine if you don't do anything, you don't keep practicing this and developing it where you'll be in 12 months time, maybe the same place, still frustrated, still thinking, you know, I should be earning more, and I should have closed that deal the other day, and I didn't quite connect with them for some reason.
Don't know what was missing. I went through all the features of our presentation, listed them all, listed them all. They must have loved them. I went through truckloads of them. They just didn't get it. Idiots. No, let's flip. Sorry, scrape that one. Let's say you do talk to them in a way that they understand, in their language, because of course your buyers, you do way more buying than you do selling, so you'd think that you'd be a really good at selling. All you have to do is just link it up with how you're buying, and we know that when we're buying things, we're thinking, how will this make me feel? How will it affect my life?
That's how we make purchases. So all we have to do is adapt our talking and our communication in line with that. They don't care about your features, they care about the result those features deliver to them. Okay, so people are buying results and outcomes.
They're not buying features. They're buying the results that those things can give them. So that's it. That's benefit busting.
Kind of simple. Kind of common sense almost, isn't it? You sort of already knew it, didn't you? Emotional pictures, same thing.
Same sort of thing as that fast track pictures.
All right, Richard, thank you. So Richard's shown us how to take features that we all talk about, turn them into advantages, turn them into benefits so that we can have the benefits and then that's what we're actually talking about is the benefits, right? So round of applause for Richard.
Thank you, Richard.
Thank you. Thank you. |
