Improve your sales pitch with the CAB Method

What is the CAB Method?

It's a variant of the CAP SONCAS method, which replaced the P (Proof) with Benefits. Indeed, the notion of benefits is broader and also allows you to enhance the emotional aspect of the sale. This sales technique makes your pitch more impactful after determining arguments adapted to your prospect's SONCAS psychological profile.

The CAB method is also useful in marketing—its great strength is that it allows you to project your potential client into using your product or service by creating desire. It therefore has numerous advantages for structuring your sales argumentation, but you'll also need to anticipate its limitations.

Definition of the CAB Sales Technique

The CAB method is a marketing and sales approach for structuring all your sales discourse. It's built on presenting your products/services in this precise order:

1. Characteristics: provide a definition of your product by stating its functionalities

2. Advantages: connect the characteristics to the product's advantages, explaining why these advantages make the product more efficient than others

3. Benefits: give the product's added value for your client and how the product will bring something positive and concrete to their life

The CAB method is therefore a framework to follow methodically to structure all your sales pitches.

Advantages of the CAB Method

When the method is well employed, it necessarily resonates with your prospect...

Indeed, by compiling characteristics and advantages, you offer clear and readable communication. Your client will feel valued and heard because you provide them with all the information they need.

When you focus your attention on a product's benefits, you're no longer just selling a product but a more interesting promise, on the order of lifestyle. Because all products have characteristics! However, if you manage to offer your prospect a solution that totally corresponds to solving a need in their life, then price won't even be a question anymore!

As a member of a sales team, therefore demonstrate strong arguments, creativity, and a personalized sales approach.

Limitations of the CAB Method

The CAB method requires good knowledge of your client beforehand. We invite you to research your ideal client by creating personas. But also to contact your prospects at the right time during your prospecting.

For this, ask yourself about your client:

• What would they like to know about your product?

• What are their problems?

• How could you perfectly meet their needs?

Your ideal client will now be the main character in your sales pitches!

The CAB Method Step by Step

Yes, listing all the technological prowess of your product is important, but not necessarily convincing! In this section, we detail how to write your pitch with the CAB method.

Objective: learn to convince to sell more!

CAB - Characteristics

The first element to present to your client during a sales process is one or several characteristic(s) of your product.

This could be a functionality or attribute of your product/service, which you'll always present objectively: its size, weight, duration, taste, a specific service, or even a manufacturing material.

In essence, it's the descriptive part of your pitch: a "cold" discourse that isn't particularly personalized but helps set the context.

Some clients will pay a lot of attention to characteristics, for example when they're looking for a technical product or very specific service. But this isn't the part of the story that will allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Most consumers will need other information to be convinced and make a purchase.

Examples of characteristic formulations:

• A t-shirt made from Lyocell

• A portable wireless Bluetooth and waterproof speaker

• A 50mm f1/2 fixed focal length lens

• Software for creating quotes and invoices

CAB - Advantages

You expose, in a second step, the "little extra" of your product. Always in relation to the characteristics mentioned previously. With advantages, you move to the lukewarm part of your pitch.

For each characteristic, make sure to find an advantage.

It's the attractive element that can pique your client's curiosity even if it doesn't necessarily correspond to a need... Advantages are positive factual elements capable of awakening imagination.

Examples of advantage formulations:

• A material that allows fabric breathability

• Ergonomics adapted to small spaces

• Reduction of braking distances by over 3%

• Water resistant

CAB - Benefits

Stating a benefit means highlighting how the product will help and change your prospect's life.

It's the ultimate argument to trigger a sale! We seek here to seduce, to persuade by appealing to imagination.

Prove to your prospect that by using your service, they'll save time, be safe, save money...

You can distinguish two types of benefits.

Those that are rational: they're measured and quantifiable. For example, a scientific study proves that using your product is beneficial because it was scientifically tested on a panel of users. A knockout argument!

But you can also appeal to emotional benefits, which can't necessarily be measured. This can include a notion of pleasure, meaning, taste... Be careful to use these arguments sparingly—they won't work for all products.

Examples of benefit formulations:

• Up to 10% savings on your electricity bill

• Time savings, you'll work faster!

• With this tool, you can create unique special effects!

• To protect you and your entire family

How to Use the CAB Method: Concrete Examples

We've seen that the CAB sales technique is a useful methodological framework to help you present your products. So, how do you use it daily?

Using the CAB Technique in Your Sales Proposals

Believe it or not, giving too much information to your prospect in your sales proposals isn't a good idea! Fundamentally, your proposal should talk more about them than about you...

Your role when preparing your sales proposal is to present your product (characteristics/advantages) while perfectly conveying the benefit your client will derive from it. Otherwise, they might wonder... All these functionalities, yes okay, but what for?

Let's say you're a communications agency—you could convince a prospect to use you for a digital strategy this way:

• Characteristics of your offer: web agency that designs websites optimized for search engines and specialist in web marketing campaigns (advertising)

• Advantages of your offer: a single contact with a 360° vision of communication; having a website today isn't useful if it's not designed within an entire ecosystem (social media/advertising)

• Benefits for your client: attract more traffic to their website, improve their brand image, earn more money

Leveraging CAB in Your Content Marketing Strategy

Today sales are plural. They happen in stores, at trade shows, on e-commerce platforms, or through social media...

For clients, the means of getting information are numerous. They can seek purchase advice on social media, by reading customer reviews, or by referring to influencer choices in a specific field.

Obviously, it's therefore interesting for your company to implement a genuine content marketing strategy to showcase your offer's characteristics, advantages, and benefits across different platforms!

By diversifying your content and communications, you offer your potential client different information sources to convince them.

The CAB Method for Your E-commerce Product Pages!

Just as you structure your communications with the CAB method, also think about this method when writing your product pages for your e-commerce site or on your sales page presenting your business.

Your web pages or product pages should be informative but also tell a story.

Beyond simple characteristics (raw materials used, functionalities, dimensions...), always think about your products' advantages and benefits!

Key Commercial Characteristics of the CAB Method: Summary

• The CAB method is a practical framework for conducting sales discourse by highlighting your product or service's Characteristics, Advantages, and Benefits. Combined with the MEDDIC method, you can't miss your sales!

• Even when creating your marketing materials, think CAB to answer all your prospect's questions!

• Don't hesitate to cross this sales method with SPIN Selling to know your prospect well during your sales meetings

• You can also use the CAB or CAP method with the CRAC method for handling your prospects' objections

• To go further... You can also reverse the pitch by starting with your benefits (BAC method) or by adding social proof with client testimonials... Make the method your own!

In brief, never forget that the CAB method stands out as a powerful lever for strengthening your sales pitch. It guides you toward deep understanding of your clients' needs, transforming each interaction into an opportunity to demonstrate the concrete added value brought by your products or services. By adopting this approach, you're not just selling an item; you're selling a solution, a way to improve your clients' daily life or business. It's the promise of a long-term trust and loyalty relationship. But be careful—don't lose sight that the CAB method is just one tool among others in your sales arsenal. Its effectiveness lies in your ability to adapt and personalize it according to your audience, thus transforming your sales efforts into tangible success!