Urgency is often overlooked, underused and underrated in sales.
Urgency is by far one of the best ways to get your prospects to take action and make buying decisions.
When urgency is used correctly it can be one of the most influential tools you have in your sales toolbox. However, on the flip side, there is a danger to overusing urgency and using it incorrectly, and risk coming across as a sleazy, unethical salesperson – we’ll address that in this article too.
To get things started, let’s talk about why it’s so important in the first place.
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Why is urgency important in sales?
Urgency is a big part of decision-making. Â It’s how we make progress and why we make the decisions we do every day. Urgency breeds action, plain and simple.
As a matter of fact, urgency influencing our decision-making is so ingrained in us from a very young age, and most people don’t even realize it. So, for the salespeople that are afraid of adding urgency at the fear of sounding pushy, just know that you’ve been making a lot of decisions in your life based on urgency since you were a young child.
Let me give you some examples:
When we are young children and our parents tell us we have to be in bed by 7:00 PM. Guess what? That’s putting urgency on you to plan your activities accordingly at a young age. Do you spend another hour leveling up your character in your favorite video game or do you spend that time going outside and hanging out with friends? (I took the video game route, most of the time.)
Have to wake up at school at 7:00 AM or risk getting in trouble with teachers and potentially suspended? The urgency here is to wake up on time or get in trouble with your school and your parents.
Were you ever told to finish your chores at a certain time, and maybe rewarded for it? The urgency here is to finish a task for a reward.
Choosing the right career path, because you’d most likely have to spend your early adult years undergoing years of training – very influential years that you’ll never get back. There’s tons of urgency here to choose carefully or regret your mistakes later on in life.
I think you get the point. There’s urgency in nearly everything we do, and every decision we make.
So what does this all mean? Because it’s so ingrained in us from a young age — urgency is pretty much a PREREQUISITE in order for some of us to make decisions.
7 Ways to create urgency in your next sales call
Like I said, there’s a wrong way and a right way to create urgency when pitching your products. We’re gonna cover some of my favorite strategies that I often use on my sales calls and teach to new sales reps. Keep in mind, if you plan on adding some of these to your calls – make sure it’s absolutely true for your business and situation. (For ex: If you start telling your customers there’s a deadline to commit to your service when there really isn’t one — please don’t do this. Your customers will find out.)
Here are 7 urgency creating strategies you can use in your sales calls:
1) Add a deadline
This is one of the best and most simple ways to apply urgency to most business situations. The urgency here is simple – they have X amount of time before the offer expires. No need for extra discounts or bonuses, just a simple deadline.
For example: “I’m gonna get you involved with the program today, and give you the next 2 days to send all the contacts back. Since space is limited, if we don’t get your paperwork back in 48 hours we’ll have to cancel your offer and give it to someone else.”
There’s the urgency to act fast or miss out. Commonly known as FOMO (Fear of missing out).
2) Throw in a temporary bonus
Sometimes you just need to sweeten the deal a little bit for urgency to play out. This is one of those strategies that need to be used sparingly or your customers will feel like you’re just trying too hard and it will have the opposite effect.
For example: “We’re running a special right now, if you sign up today we’ll give you a bonus gift valued at $100. But the offer ends in a few days, so act fast!”
If you use this strategy, also make sure it’s something of value. If you start throwing in some random junk that isn’t worth anything – the urgency will completely dissipate and your customers won’t take it seriously.
3) Explain the cost value of time
Let’s talk a little bit about the time value of money. We all know that money is going to be worth something different in 5 years, let alone 10 or 15 years from now. But what happens if we take that same concept and apply it to urgency? You can see urgency work its magic with this strategy just as well as many of the others.
For example: “You have to act fast because the cost of not listening to this program goes up every single day.”
OR you can go another route-
“If you don’t get started today, the cost of your current set-up is going to continue to pile up until, eventually, it’s going to be too late. “
This urgency strategy will work just as well if you tell your customers that it’s going to be worth more in the next month than it is at this moment. It all depends on which urgency tactics your customers respond best to, and the urgency situation you’re trying to create.
4) Let them know that you don’t have any special offers
Sometimes, you don’t have a special offer for them – and that’s fine. I don’t recommend giving special offers away all the time, anyway. So how does this actually work? This urgency tactic is best used when you’re not trying to create urgency at all. Instead, it’s focused on building trust with your customers so they don’t have to worry about being taken advantage of, or the urgency situation being created for no reason whatsoever.
For example: “You know what? I don’t have any special offers right now, but I can still get you a great price on this service.”
The tactic here is providing peace of mind so urgency doesn’t have to be applied as a strategy.
5) Frequent Call To Actions
One common problem with newer sales reps is that they just don’t ask for the order enough. Asking for the order or a Call-To-Action (CTA) should be done often and should be done early.
For example: “So, what I’m going to do now is get the paperwork started. If you want to be a part of this offer, all your need to do is sign on the dotted line.”
Responding early, getting them involved in the offer or program, and establishing yourself as someone that’s not pushy prepares them for urgency even if you’re not using any of the strategies above. As an added bonus – when you ask for the order more, it opens up communication between you and the prospect. Anytime you can get the prospect talking more, is always a good thing.
6) Make it about them, not you
When urgency is applied in sales, sometimes it’s easy for customers to feel like they’re being pressured into signing up for something they don’t actually want. A great urgency tactic to avoid this is by focusing on what it will do for your customers instead of yourself.
For example: “I really want you to get started today because I know that once you see how much time and effort this saves you, you’re going to thank me down the road.”
Making it about you and not focusing on the benefits to your prospect is the major culprit for doing urgency, the wrong way. We’ll speak more about this towards the end of the article.
7) Combine multiple urgency tactics
Sometimes, you just need to throw everything you can at the wall and see what sticks. You need to be careful doing this too many times, otherwise, it’ll start to lose tremendous value, and very quickly.
For example: “I want to make sure you can get involved today, so I’m going to give you a bonus gift valued at $100 if you sign up within the next 24 hours. In addition, if you sign up in the next hour, I’m going to drop my price by another 10%.”
You also need to be careful not to overload your customer with offers/information and confuse them with so much choice. As I said, this can work — but you need to have your offer down tight.
Don’t let the urgency die
This is probably one of the most important urgency strategies you can learn about. It’s pretty easy to create urgency at first because it’s exciting, and you also get to see how quickly things can happen when you apply urgency in your business. But the urgency you create doesn’t have to be short-lived – it can keep going and become a permanent part of your business — or at the very least until the deal is closed.
I’ve seen many sales reps who use legitimate urgency tactics to get a deal started, and then slowly drift away from applying urgency until they aren’t using any urgency at all. Then their deals start to fall apart.
If you have customers who respond to urgency, keep it going. Not only will you be sending mixed messages and showing inconsistency in your product and offerings, but these are probably customers, like I mentioned earlier, who just have it ingrained in them to respond positively to urgency.
How do you create urgency in sales without being pushy?
Urgency without a valid, beneficial reason for your customer becomes pushiness, rather than urgency.
Let me give you a quick example first, then we’ll break it down.
“Listen, prospect, just get involved already! I’m telling you, it’s the right thing to do, right now!”
So why does the above example suck so much? Again, without a valid reason, it looks like a desperate plea for you to make a sale.
You’re telling the prospect to get involved now, just because. In the mind of the prospect he’s probably thinking a couple of different thoughts: “He/She is probably getting a big commission off of me!” or “Why the hell are they so strung-out?” and finally “I don’t need to take this crap!”
When using urgency, it’s not about you and what you want – it’s about how much value you can provide for your customer if they took prompt action.
Urgency is not pushiness. There’s a big difference when done right.
Just remember: It’s not about you, it’s about them.
Or if it makes it easier to remember, just think about what my ex-girlfriend told me: It’s you, not me. 😜
Conclusion
These are just a few examples and ideas for creating urgency in your sales calls.
Remember, urgency is about getting attention and building trust fast. Keep that in mind as you’re crafting your own strategy or looking through these examples to see which ones work best for you.
Good luck!
