So recently I got funneled. Hey now… get your mind out of the gutter. I mean “funneled” as in “I saw an ad on Facebook, clicked on it… yada yada yada.” Anyone else done that? Yep, I see your hands. Good… it’s not just me.

Anyway, I can tell you exactly what happened. It was an ad from WP Elevation (who apparently just wrapped up their latest open/close launch of their course if I know anything about email sequences and Facebook ads – which I do) for a freebie proposal template to help you land higher paying clients. Well who wouldn’t want that? So I gave them my email address in exchange for the information (cause that’s how digital marketing works my friends) and immediately after hitting “submit” I was taken to their tripwire/upsell page. (If you have no idea what that means… let’s talk!)

The upsell page was a video telling me all about their $19 product, a guide called “Website Benefits Playbook”, how to sell benefits, not features to potential clients. Since I was sitting in a doctor’s exam room at that exact moment I wasn’t super inclined to whip out my credit card so I shut down the browser tab, flicked over to Facebook… and kept thinking about it. So much so that I went and purposefully sought out the entrance to the funnel again, fell down the rabbit hole ON PURPOSE and bought it. (Dang, that was a good video sales page I tell you what.)

Which brings me to this email. I wanted to share a bit of the content, because it BLEW MY MIND. When writing my proposals I was writing from one side of my brain – the logical, this is exactly what I am going to do – when what the client really wants to hear is what results you are going to get them, not how you are going to get there – which is entirely the other side of your brain!

This process applies to any industry, so listen up.

Here’s an example straight from my proposal process (prior to buying this guidebook of course) – in my quotes I would list out what is included, like:

• E-commerce capability
• Google Analytics set-up
• Personalized contact page

Really sexy, right? Um… no. This is an example of FEATURES. Now let’s take a look at how I should write it, focusing on BENEFITS. My services can help you:

• Increase sales by selling products and services online.
• Keep track of how people use your website so you can continue to improve over time.
• Eliminate going back and forth to find the right time with clients who want an appointment.

Welp… that second proposal is defintely the person I would hire!

Next time you are writing a proposal, think about THIS.

Features vs. Benefits

How can you speak to solving your client’s pain points? How can your services help get them the results they are looking for?