Features and Benefits

Through working with many clients over the years, a point that is sometimes hard to understand for some is the difference between features and benefits - a potential difference between winning and losing a bid. So what are features and benefits?

Features - are what your product/service does. Take the example of an iPhone - a feature is that it has a really good camera (usually). That’s great for me as a customer to know, but in a bid situation, I still need to know why this benefits me. Without the benefit to the end client/user, marks are going to be limited.

Benefits - are why the features benefit the end client/user. Back to the example of the iPhone, the camera benefits me because it means I can take high-quality pictures. Taking that a step further, it might mean I can use them for my Instagram account with my X millions of followers.

Hopefully that explains it reasonably well, even if the iPhone camera example is a bit silly.

Let’s look at another example - training your staff in customer service. The Feature is that the staff are trained in customer service, with the Benefit being that they should provide an improved customer experience. You could take that a step further and add in customer satisfaction data to show how effective the training is.

The key lesson is that for any Feature you talk about, always follow it with the Benefit, and specifically for the end-user client. Always talk about what it means to them, rather than only talking about what you do. This is particularly important when you are bidding for services that involve residents and/or patients, as well as the client/commissioner.