Last week, I was teaching a workshop about how to write effectively for presentations. In one of the exercises, I showed the group a slide that they had created about the benefits to potential clients of choosing their company. Trouble was, it was actually a features list, which isn’t nearly as compelling. Learning the difference between features and benefits can help you to bond with the audience and convince them to take action.
What are features?
Features are facts about something that can be used to describe it. Here’s an example:
- These gloves are red with grey padding
- They’re constructed from man-made materials
- They’re manufactured in the United States
- They’re insulated
- They are ski gloves
What are benefits?
In the context of presentations, benefits are the positive results that come to the audience when they act on the presenter’s recommendations, such as buying a product, hiring a company to provide a service, learning new information, etc.
What’s the difference?
Don’t get me wrong; features can be important. And they’re a great starting point for getting to the benefits that matter to the audience. But they’re not enough. The difference between features and benefits is that features are dry facts, while benefits clearly define how what you’re talking about helps the audience in some way.
To give a classic example, when Steve Jobs announced the then-revolutionary iPod back in 2001, he could’ve led with the features:
- Only 4″ x 2.5″ x .75″
- 32 MB ram provides over 20 minutes of skip protection
- 5 GB storage
- Battery life up to 10 hours
Instead, he introduced the iPod like this:
The main benefit of the iPod? “A thousand songs in your pocket.” Keep in mind that up until that point, portable media players like the Sony Walkman, Sony Discman and boom boxes were big and bulky. They could only play as much music as was on a cassette or CD. In contrast, the iPod not only held much more music, it was tiny! But rather than say “It’s tiny,” Jobs simply slid the device into the front pocket of his trademark jeans. Those were HUGE benefits for music fans in 2001!
So what?
Your audience is filled with skeptics who are asking “So what?” to themselves when you’re talking. They want to know what the benefits to them are if they buy your product, hire your company, learn new information, etc. If you can answer that question for your audience, you’ll demonstrate that you understand their needs, that you have solutions to their problems, and that you want to improve their lives.
For these reasons, you should take a good look at any lists of features in your presentation and ask “So what?” for each one. Keep asking this question until you come up with the benefits to the audience that each feature provides. If there’s no clear benefit, then don’t include it in the presentation.
Let’s get back to the gloves. We’ll transform the first feature into some sweet benefits.
“These gloves are red with grey padding.”
So what?
“These gloves are really bright and the padding is thick.”
So what?
“If you drop these gloves in the snow, their bright red color makes them easy to find. And the extra padding on the palms cuts down on wear and tear. So you don’t have to worry about spending your hard-earned cash on mid-season replacement gloves.”
Now THOSE are some benefits!
The Takeaway
There’s no doubt that features are important. But features alone can be boring. If you want to drive action and get the audience on your side, focus on the benefits, the good things that will come if they follow your recommendations.