SELL LIKE CRAZY: How to Get As Many Clients, Customers and Sales As You Can Possibly Handle

by Sabri Suby

The purpose of going after a dream buyer is to focus your message and marketing budget on whichever market is most likely to buy your products, as well as those prospects who would be your dream customers. Focusing on your dream buyer brings clarity to your marketing message, and your copy becomes sharp and hard like the tip of a spear that cuts through the noise in your marketplace, which ultimately leads to a more profitable business.

1. Where does your dream buyer hang out and congregate? Name both online and offline places where your dream buyers hang out and congregate. The more detailed and specific, the better. ‘Hangs out on Facebook’ is too general. ‘Hangs out in the Mothers of Melbourne Facebook group’ is more precise and actionable.

Knowing exactly where your dream buyers are hanging out influences a lot of things including where you should advertise, what you should advertise, the tone of your copy, and vernacular to use.

2. Where does your dream buyer get their information? When your dream buyer is in research mode, where do they go to find the answers they seek? Is it Google? A particular blog? Books? Magazines? YouTube? Write your findings as a simple sentence: ‘When Sally is curious about a topic, the first place she goes is Google search on her iPhone’.

3. What are their biggest frustrations and challenges? Truly understanding and empathising with their biggest frustrations and challenges are the most important keys to defining your dream buyer avatar. By knowing what it’s like walking in your customer’s shoes, you’ll be able to create better products and services that address their specific pain points and problems. Here are a few examples to get your creative juices flowing: ‘I wish someone would just write this sales copy for me’. ‘I need to lose ten kilos before my wedding’. ‘Ugh. I wish I could just have someone run my Facebook ads for me’. Your dream buyer’s frustrations and challenges are integral to the products and services you offer. Whatever it is you are selling has to solve a problem large enough that your dream buyer will happily part with their hard-earned money for you to solve it for them. Knowing their biggest frustration and challenges also will determine the emotions you speak to in your copy and advertising. There are a number of emotions behind the challenges and frustrations your dream buyer is experiencing – they could be sadness, anger, fear, remorse, hope, a desire for something better. By speaking to ...

4. What are their hopes, dreams, and desires? Knowing your dream buyer’s hopes, dreams and desires helps you paint a vivid picture of what life could be like after using your products and services. Think of it as selling the dream and painting a picture of the Promised Land. When your products or services help your dream buyer attain their hopes, dreams, and desires, it becomes much easier to write ...

5. What are their biggest fears? What are your dream buyer’s deepest fears? What keeps them up at night, tossing and turning, unable to sleep? What do they worry about in their mind but never tell anyone? Fully understanding your market’s deepest and most primal fears is an often overlooked component to crafting a customer avatar. However, in my opinion, it’s equally as important, if not more, than understanding their hopes, dreams, and desires. Why? People are motivated more by pain than they are by pleasure. They are more motivated by fear of loss than they are by the desire to gain something. Therefore, calling out their fears in your copy and ads is an incredibly important element to get your dream buyer to take action and motivate them to move away from what they fear most.

6. What is their preferred form of communication? Email? Text? Chat? Facebook Live? Or do they prefer physical mail? This is a matter of where your audience wants you to communicate with them. The fundamental lesson here is to communicate with your customers where they already are. Don’t try and move them onto something that is more convenient for you rather than where they already are.

7. What phrases, exact language, and vernacular do they use? As previously mentioned, Robert Collier has this fantastic quote: ‘Enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind’. You see, there is already language and niche-specific terms being used in your customer’s mind for their hopes, dreams, pain, fears, and desires. Your job is to listen and write them down. What industry terminology are they using, what specific vernacular and niche-specific terms? When using The Halo Strategy to conduct research on where your buyers are hanging out and congregating, you must document the exact phrases and terminology they use and store them in a spreadsheet to spark ideas for website copy, landing pages, and ads. Take specific comments from Reddit, Facebook Group, or YouTube, and document your audience’s word-for-word responses. In today’s day and age, scepticism is rampant. Now more than ever, people are attracted to people (and businesses) who speak their language, get their sense of humour, or share the same point of view. Every time they read your copy, your goal is for your dream buyer to say to themselves, ‘Whoa, it’s like they’re talking directly to me’.

8. What does a day in your dream buyer’s life look like? 7:05am - Mike wakes up to the sound of marimbas on his iPhone’s alarm clock. 7:15am – Checks his inbox to make sure the world isn’t coming to an end from any emails that came in overnight. Then opens up Instagram to see who’s commenting and liking his latest post. 8:10am - Brews the new Colombian roast using his shiny new French press. 8:32am - Stuck in traffic on Punt road listening to his favourite Drake playlist on Spotify. 9:03am - Gets into the office. 9:18am - Checks email and calendar. 10:01am – Checks the stats in Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and custom dashboard. 10:40am – Has a meeting with his team about current week. 12:05pm - Eats favourite Poké bowl from new hipster joint on the corner. 1:12pm – On his way back to the office, checks Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 2:04pm - Afternoon lull, wishing his office had a nap pod for him to have a siesta. 2:38pm – Write new Facebook Ads and email sequence. 4:05pm - Brainstorms how to generate more leads to meet quarterly growth goals and revenue targets. 6:15pm - Drives home ready for a House of Cards marathon on Netflix. Imagining what your ideal customer’s dai...

9. What makes them happy? The customer journey is more than the exchange of money for goods and services. Your clients are emotional beings, and people want to interact with companies and brands that make them feel good about themselves. Where are the touch points in your dream buyer’s journey where you can insert surprises, do the unexpected, be remarkable, and bring a smile to their face? Maybe it’s a handwritten thank-you note after signing up for your service, a personalised email sent on their birthday, or a free box full of company swag and cookies (who doesn’t love cookies?)....

The End Result After answering all of these questions, write a paragraph summarising your findings. It could look like this summary of Sally, the dream buyer for a new app focused on environmentally-friendly mothers: ‘Sally loves spending time reading stories and getting tips from other mums, and learning about parenthood in the Mothers of Melbourne Facebook group. It’s a much cherished pastime of hers. Her biggest frustration being a mother of two is simply that there is not enough hours in the day to do everything. When she’s in research mode, the first place she goes is Google on her iPad in the kitchen. She’s a frequent (kinda obsessive) visitor of mummy blogs like Rockin Mama and Mamavation. Her life-long dream is to start her own interior design business, so she can have a creative outlet and more ‘me time’. Last week when she was shopping at her local farmers market and browsing Instagram, an ad popped up with an invitation to download a new app for environmentally-friendly cleaning products’. The end result is a much deeper, more intimate understanding of where and how to reach your dream buyers, and how to speak to them. The compounding result will cause massive breakth...

Action Points Identify the 20% of customers who account for 80% of your sales volume and profits, and your Power 4% of customers. Using The Halo Strategy, identify what they struggle with. Orga...

With the insights gained in Phase 1, your next move is to create the most irresistible bait for your dream buyer. In this chapter, I will help you identify the prospects who are interested in what you’re selling but who want more information, which you’re going to give to them. This way, they’ll have more of what they need to make an informed decision and move up the pyramid from the research phase to the buying phase. This allows you to generate hundreds of leads while positioning yourself as a trusted authority almost instantly – even if nobody’s heard of you! As an example, we’ll take a homebuilding company because it’s easy to see how a small shift has huge benefits. The typical full-page new home ad has the company name at the top and some sort of ‘SALE’ or ‘DISPLAY HOMES NOW OPEN’ headline predominantly placed. It’s exactly the same as all the other homebuilders taking up all the other advertisement pages. They’re practically leaving it to random chance to compete for their share of that 3% of people who are buying now. Now imagine the ad began with this headline: WARNING: Do Not Buy A New House Before Reading This Shocking Free Report… What You Don’t Know About Building A New House That Could Cost You Tens-Of-Thousands Of Dollars And Threaten The Financial Livelihood Of Your Family 11 Things No Homebuilder Would Dare Tell You Before Taking A Deposit (Number 5 Could Cost You $100,000S) 6 Fatal Traps Of Buying A New Home Exposed! The Dirty Little Lies No Real Estate A...

IMPORTANT: It’s called a High-Value Content Offer for a reason! There not only needs to be perceived high value, but it must deliver on that promise. When you offer information as an incentive, make sure it’s substantive rather than the cheap gibberish that clogs the Internet. This is the very first exchange of value your prospect makes with your business. They receive the information you have on offer in exchange for providing their contact details. You can’t simply trick people into giving you their contact details and then send them a crappy two-page free ‘report’ that is simply a promotional piece about your company. The goal is to wow them with this experience. If done right, this will prompt a conversation to take place in their mind: ‘If this is what they’re giving away for free, imagine what their paid products/services are like!’

Value-Based Marketing Built on the simple premise of ‘giving before asking’, value-based marketing is about offering value to your customers without asking for a sale in return. In my business, we use this in everything we do to create goodwill in the marketplace. Because when you deliver massive value to your prospects, you score a double whammy: First, your prospects thank you for the materials. Second, you position yourself as the trusted expert. So while everyone else is just screaming, ‘Buy, buy, buy!’ you’re building goodwill by showing people you could help them… by actually helping them!

By today’s standards, the copy isn’t spectacular; it’s more the overall approach that’s so brilliant – the way they phrase the call to action, which of course is, ‘Let us know if you want more information’. The call to action (CTA) goes on to say, ‘We can’t cover everything here as it would take several volumes and naturally you probably have further questions, we’d be glad to send you a copy of this ad in pamphlet form, at no charge, no obligation… just write or phone us’.

Only Marketing Morons Believe That No One Reads Long-Form Copy You might think that no one in today’s day and age reads long-form copy. But the truth is, when it comes to making sales, long-form copy will beat short-form copy every single time. I’ve spent $30 million dollars on generating traffic and running thousands of scientific split tests, and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that long-form copy works. With one caveat: The copy must be entertaining and engaging. You can’t simply write long copy and think that it’s going to make your prospect buy. With that said, when your copy is entertaining, people won’t care how long it is. You might still be saying, ‘But who reads all that text?’ The buyers are the ones who read it. They are the ones who have all the burning questions, the ones who are looking for answers. The people who aren’t going to read your copy aren’t going to buy in any case. So would you rather gear your copy towards those who are never going to buy, or would you rather convert more of the people who are deep in research mode, genuinely interested in buying, and looking to be pushed over the edge? The answer should be very, very simple. The approach used by Merrill Lynch was brilliantly effective for several reasons: it created goodwill in their marketplace by giving something of value away for free before ever asking for anything. Over the years, this approach has been reskinned and renamed many times, from permission-based marketing to content m...

There are three ways we can influence people: Talk about how good we are. Have others talk about how good we are. Demonstrate how good we are. In sales and marketing, #3 is the most effective.

Scenario 2: You send the same 100 people to a website or landing page that speaks to the burning questions that market has with a HVCO. This type of offer generally converts at 25% because it’s aimed at educating the market rather than selling. Because the offer is more educational, naturally there is less buyer intent behind it, so these leads close at a lower rate of typically around 12% if nurtured correctly. Resulting in three sales. Net result? Same cost to generate the 100 visitors, with triple the amount of sales. So, now you know that HVCOs work, and can dramatically increase sales for your business, you should think about the type of HVCO that would really provide value for your prospects, whether that be a free report, video, cheat sheet, webinar, seminar, or otherwise. Remember, it must be geared towards mass market appeal, answering the most prominent burning question, and offering the single most valuable and immediate solution to that problem. All while drawing into the top of your funnel as many targeted people as possible.

There are three rules you must follow when putting together the kind of HVCO that will explode your sales: HVCO Rule #1: Create an Attention-Grabbing Headline HVCO Rule #2: Make sure every point touches a burning issue. HVCO Rule #3: Keep it simple.

Identify your Dream Buyer’s single most pervasive and persistent hair-on-fire problem – and then offer them the single most valuable and immediate solution. Once you’re clear on this, really labour over figuring out the best possible title for your free report. Because the truth is, the title of your free report is the number one factor in the pulling power of your HVCO and will largely be responsible for the amount of people that enter your funnel… and the amount of sales you make.

Like the example earlier, you don’t want to call your free report How to Make Men Want You. It’s a vanilla offer and it doesn’t intrigue the reader. You want to name it, Make Him Beg to Be Your Boyfriend in Six Simple Steps. Consider an HVCO that King Kong put together: 22 Money Murdering Mistakes That No Web Designer Would Dare Tell You. It’s a lot more compelling than Five Things You Should Know When Building Your Website. We dialled up the volume, using strong imagery that provoked a visceral response. You want to make your title burn with intrigue and be absolutely irresistible

HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #1 – YOU NEED A HEADLINE THAT GRABS THEM AND PRACTICALLY FORCES THEM TO READ YOUR MATERIAL

You guessed it – HEADLINES. Their headlines are so powerful and have so much grabbing power that every week, people who’ve sworn they’ll never again buy such a publication are almost forced to purchase it despite themselves.

Look at the wording: ‘Exposed!’ ‘Revealed!’ ‘Confession!’ ‘Horror!’ ‘Secret!’ ‘Torture!’ These are all emotional trigger words that strike up very visceral emotions.

HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #2: NUMBERS Numbers give your prospects a tangible object or logical idea to wrap their head around. They also lay out a structure the reader instantly knows will be easy to follow (not forgetting it makes it easier for you to write). Would you rather read ‘5 things you must know before hiring a wedding planner’ or ‘Some helpful information about hiring a wedding planner’? The answer should be obvious.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, this is cut and paste: ‘Shocking reporting reveals the 5 things you must know about X’. I’ve used it in hundreds of industries and it’s never not worked. Remember, your prospects are more distracted than ever before. People browsing the web are basically sleepwalkers and you must jolt them awake like an electric shock. Remember, they’re only one click away from seductive porn or irresistibly cute cat videos.

HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #3: CREATE IRRESISTIBLE INTRIGUE It’s not enough just to get their attention and sell the benefits of your offer. You also need to pique your reader’s interest and have them burning with curiosity. The best way to do that is to dial up the intrigue. A great way to create irresistible intrigue is by using words such as ‘Must’, ‘Alarming’, ‘Shocking’, ‘Won’t Tell You’, ‘Exposed!’ ‘Revealed’ ‘Confession!’ ‘Horror’ ‘Secret’.You can download an additional list of power words to help you get started at https://resources.selllikecrazy.co/

HEADLINE ESSENTIAL #4: SHOW THEM WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM Your HVCO should ultimately be about them and their desired outcome. Your prospect needs (and wants) an immediate benefit and the key is to write about them – not you. Show them how they’ll learn simple tips that will help solve their problem. Show them what their desired outcome looks like, and then educate them on how to get there. That’s the payoff the reader gets in exchange for their email address. You must add as many specific and vivid details as possible. Let’s look at one of the titles for a free report we looked at earlier: ‘7 Things You Must Know Before Hiring a Financial Planner’ That’s already better than most. Most people would generally go with something very vague like: ‘7 Things to Know About Financial Planning’ How can we juice this up and make it more irresistible? Lets add in some power words. ‘7 Alarming Things You Must Know Before Hiring A Financial Planner’ ‘7 Shocking Things You Must Know Before Hiring A Financial Planner’ ‘7 Horrors You Must Know Before Hiring A Financial Planner’ That’s a bit better, but what else can we do to really get these singing? Well, one more thing we can do to take these titles to the next level is to make them as specific and bursting with intrigue as possible. ‘7 Horrors You Must Know Before Hiring a Financial Planner (Not knowing these could cost you $10,000s!)’ ‘7 Alarming Things You Must Know Before Hiring A Financial Planner (#3 Will Blow Your Mind!)’ That last ...

Timeless Formulas For Your HVCO Titles Timeless Formula #1 X ways to achieve [Desirable Thing] without doing [Undesirable Thing] Example: 6 Ways to Get Washboard Abs Without Doing a Single Sit -Up Timeless Formula #2 [Do Difficult Thing] in [Specific Period of Time] Even if [Shortcomings] Example: Pay Off Your Mortgage in 7 Years Even if You Have a Modest Income Timeless Formula #3 Achieve [Desirable Thing] like [An Expert] Even Without [Something Expected] Example: Paint Masterpieces Like Picasso Without Ever Having a Single Lesson! Timeless Formula #4 How to Eliminate [Biggest Problem] without doing [The Thing They Hate] Within [Specific Timeframe] Example: How to Eliminate Your Muffin Top Without Giving Up the Foods You Love – Within 21 Days or Less! These are all pretty good starting points for your HVCO title. They speak to your prospect’s needs in a clear and concise way.

HCVO Tip #2: Make Sure Every Point Touches A Burning Issue Make sure every point in your HVCO touches on a burning question your audience has. If you’re writing a report or an ebook, do this in the sub-heads to ensure anyone just skimming it will get pulled in. For example, if your headline is this: ‘5 Shocking Ways Internet Thieves Are Stealing Your Private Data – And the Secrets to Protecting Your Family!’ Every point or subhead in the text needs to support this assertion. For example, a subhead could be: ‘#1 – Think Your Password Keeps You Safe? Think Again!’ And, ‘#2 –Destructive Malware Will Fry Your Computer!’ The point is that if you make an assertion in your title or headline, you must back it up in the text. Keep up the pressure!

HCVO Tip #3: Keep It Simple Start by writing a free report or ebook. There are lots of different types of HVCOs (see below for a list), but reports and ebooks are easy to create, and you can have one up and sucking in leads in no time. All you have to do is write a short report (5-6 pages is plenty) and convert it into a PDF. (Don’t let the simplicity fool you into thinking they’re not effective. Some of the most popular HVCOs I’ve ever deployed were only eight pages.) You don’t even have to write your report from scratch. You could compile your most popular blog posts into one easy-to-digest guide, jazz it up with basic styling, and convert it into a PDF. Or you could interview experts on a subject, compile the answers into a report, write an irresistible title, and away you go. (Many experts are happy to do this as long as you provide a link back to their business).

The content and title of this HVCO should address the #1 most common ‘hair on fire’ question or concern your market is having and that kept coming up from your research.

Yes, the single purpose of the opt-in page is just that: to get people to give you their contact details in exchange for what it is you’re ‘selling’, typically a HVCO.

Everything You Need To Create A Killer Opt-In Page When building your opt-in page, you should include these elements: A headline that grabs your reader by the throat. A subheadline that restates your offer and what they’re getting. Ultra-compelling fascination bullets: Short and punchy explanation of how the content is going to help your prospect and make sure they’re oozing with intrigue. A visual representation of what they’re getting – a free report, cheat sheet, etc. A basic form for people to enter their name and email to access the content.

The Opt-In Headline The headline should snap your reader’s eyeballs to the screen and promise them a specific, vivid benefit. Focus on solving one specific pain point for your prospect. If it’s too vague it will roll over your prospects like water off a duck’s back. It should focus on your prospect’s exact needs and then offer an immediate solution to their problem.

Headline Formula: Finally! How to Get [DESIRED RESULT] Without [THING THEY FEAR MOST] in [SPECIFIC TIME FRAME] - Guaranteed. ‘[PROBLEM]? Get My [SOLUTION] and [RESULT]’ If you’re struggling to come up with a unique headline, this little puppy works a treat, every, single, time. Guaranteed.

The Opt-In SubHeadline The subheadline simply restates your offer and what they’re specifically getting, such as this: ‘26-page Paleo cookbook including 16 delicious Paleo-friendly recipes you can make in under 20 minutes PLUS beautiful high-resolution pictures’. It should then go on to explain how this will be delivered, and leave nothing to question, such as: ‘Simply enter your email address below and a PDF copy will instantly be sent right to your inbox’.

Ultra-Compelling Fascination Bullets Bullet copy or fascination bullets are small nuggets of tantalising teaser information that intrigue the reader while offering or implying a benefit. They’re designed to crank up the curiosity of your prospect and make not opting-in virtually impossible. It’s what can give that last nudge required to push your prospect over the edge. The number one thing that impacts the effectiveness of your bullets? It’s curiosity. ‘Curiosity’, said the legendary American advertising pioneer Claude Hopkins, ‘is among the strongest of human incentives’. So instead of barraging prospects with blatant benefits, you want to craft bullet copy that teases...

Fascination Bullet Copy Formulas How to X without Y: ‘How to get washboard abs without doing a single sit-up’. ‘How to meet single men without speed dating or hanging out in bars’. ‘How to invest in real estate with no money down’. You need X, right? Wrong! Address a common belief and then create massive curiosity by talking against it. ‘Drinking 3 litres of water a day is healthy, right? WRONG!’ ‘Discover the number one thing you can do to stay 20 times more hydrated than drinking water’. This creates massive intrigue. X ways to Y: This is the most classic of all, ‘Five ways to meet single women in Melbourne’. Classic, straight forward copy. Where to find Y: ‘Where to find the most ravenous hyperactive buyers online’. How to eliminate X: ‘How to stop joint pain forever’. ‘How to never pay another cent in tax’. What you should never: This is a great one, as people are more compelled to know what they shouldn’t do than what they should. Fear of loss (pain) is greater than fear of attainment (joy). ‘What you should never say to a woman on your first date’. ‘What you should never do when trying to win over a prospect’. Say goodbye to X [frustration]: ‘Say goodbye to calorie counting and hour-long cardio sessions’. The truth about Y: ‘The dirty truth about fish oil revealed’. ‘The truth about flossing only after you’ve brushed your teeth’. Have you been doing X wrong? (And does it really matter?) ‘Have you been boiling your eggs in the wrong pot? (And does it really matter?)’ ...

It’s not enough to just tell your prospects about what they’re going to get. You need to show them, and make it polished so the perceived value is very high. Just the same way an online shopper wouldn’t buy something online without seeing high-resolution images, your prospects will be reluctant to hand over their contact details without seeing what they’re getting. If it’s a free report or ebook, show them a physical book or brochure mock-up. If it’s a cheat sheet, show them how many pages they are getting.

Collect Their Name and Email Address Don’t ask them, tell them where to put their contact details to get the mouth-watering content you’re offering in exchange. The less information you ask for, the higher the conversion rate on your opt-in page. I suggest collecting just two pieces of data: their name and email address. All we’re trying to get our prospects to do is raise their hand and identify themselves as being interested in what we’re selling. We’ll then use email automation to nurture these prospects over time.

It’s my secret weapon. And it has allowed me to invade and conquer multiple industries in multiple markets with multiple businesses and crush much more established competitors into a fine powder that scatters in the wind. This is the Godfather Strategy: Make Your Prospects An Offer They Can’t Refuse Simple, isn’t it? An ‘offer’ consists of two things: What your prospects want when they respond to your marketing. What they have to do to get it.

The Godfather Strategy is about making an irresistible offer with balls. It’s about making some huge claims and some big promises. It’s about having an offer so white hot that it melts objections and obliterates any friction between you and the sale... and... almost forces your prospects to buy. Sadly, what I see all the time is that most business owners start in a position of weakness. Their promises are weak and watered down. They have no resemblance of a compelling offer. Instead they have an impotent offer that looks something like this: ‘Use our service and you might see some sort of benefit sometime in the distant future’. Or, ‘Download this free report, and we’ll tell you how great it is to have our products and services’. These horrible, weak, and frail offers are simply not good enough to withstand the competitive gale force winds that rage through online marketplaces.

Sell What People Want To Buy This might sound elementary, but you wouldn’t believe how many supposedly smart, university-educated people in business don’t understand this. They start by looking at what they would like to buy, and not their market. They swim against the raging river that is the desires of their marketplace and begin with their own interests in mind. They ask, ‘What would I like to buy? What is convenient for me to sell? What do I think is a cool gizmo or service?’ They don’t ask, ‘What is the market starving for?’ Once you’ve done your research using the Halo Strategy and have discovered what people really want in your market, then sell it to them!

Most business owners and entrepreneurs spend tens of thousands of dollars developing a product or service before they’ve done deep market research or put together their offer or sales message. They then try and mould their sales pitch to fit what their product and service can actually do, removing this claim or promise, or that benefit, ultimately castrating the sales message from the get-go. The right way to approach this is to write your sales message before ever creating the product and service. Make the biggest claims, give the market what they’re starving for, create the dream-come-true experience for your market. And then, and only then, start to develop the product or service to deliver on it.

Create A Detail Sheet: Features And Benefits First, create a ‘Detail Sheet’ about the product or services you want to sell. On this sheet you should have two columns, column one should be titled ‘Features’ and this is where you list the full list of the features of what you are selling. The second column should be titled ‘Benefits’. This column is where you convert all the features into corresponding benefits.

You should literally list every single feature about what you are selling that you can possibly think of. Once you’re finished with this step and your Detail Sheet is as comprehensive as you can make it, we are now ready for part two which is to write a Benefit List. What we do here is go over our Detail Sheet and we translate each feature into a corresponding benefit, wherever possible.

A feature is simply a detail or specification. Like the fact your mattress is made from latex, or that it comes in a cotton sleeve. A benefit is what your product will do for the buyer.