When is a benefit not a benefit?

When it’s a story and not a calculation. We work with a lot of vendors and their marketing folks, especially in startups and smaller vendors, can be passionate about their products. So passionate that in creating a list of the benefits their solution delivers they can get too creative. We look at benefits as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th order. In short, they go from believable to not very believable. A solution that monitors the status and “health” of a server will likely reduce IT support costs but making the claim that it will also increase your revenues because you can keep your e-commerce Web site running more smoothly is a stretch. If you believe increased revenues you could also claim you’ll reduce healthcare costs because your IT folks are less stressed since they don’t have to monitor the server. Telling vendors that some of their benefits are too far-fetched to include is one of the harder parts of our job but we know that confusing the business case by adding dubious benefits will kill, rather than close, a deal. In the case of benefits that drive a business case, less (that your prospect believes) really is better than more (that your prospect doesn’t believe). Or as I like to say in sales training sessions, talk less, prove more, close deals.