Like so many other marketers, Seth Godin, author of such marketing must reads as Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us,Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?and All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World,has taken some space on his blog to comment on the marketing machine that churned out this year’s presidential election. In his post “Marketing lessons from the US election” he made the following comment.

More than a billion dollars spent, two ‘products’ that have very different features, and yet, when …

Back in September of 2006, I did a K-cast with Nicki McClusky, of findyourvoicecoach.com. The theme was, “What are the qualities of magnificent coaches?”
Exquisite listening: they have a way of listening from the soul: for values, for vision, for purpose, in addition to hearing the client’s actual words.
Seeing the client as they truly are: which is absolutely magnificent! You see the client in their true magnificence. You see them in their very best, that they can do anything, and that they really do have all the answers.

Probably one of the toughest things you’ll learn in business is discerning the difference between benefits and features. And this knowledge can make or break your business … because people buy benefits, not features. So if you’re pushing the features of your products and services, you’re not going to sell much.
Thing is, features are easy to list and talk about. It is translating those features into benefits that gets a lot of people stuck — especially coaches, speakers and info-service professionals. That’s why I dedicated an entire call (call #6 …