Creating Urgency In Sales

In sales, time is everything. Most sales teams are driven by a sense of urgency, primarily because the world of sales revolves around the quarterly and yearly numbers.

When selling a complex solution, things can easily get stuck. In such cases maintaining the momentum is the key to keeping the ball moving forward. But how do you do it?  A lot of salespeople mistake consistent follow-ups as the driver to keeping the momentum going. While following up is a great way to keep the sales person’s momentum, it has absolutely no impact on your customers!

Every sales person would have wished that their clients had the same urgency, but it is unfortunate, they rarely do. The urgency is only limited to the sales world and has little to no impact on those whom salespeople try to sell to.

What if you could influence your clients to act in a predictable way with ‘some’ sense of urgency?

Almost all sales people can tell when they have a steady momentum, some of them know how to maintain it, but a very few, only the best, know how to build momentum into their sales process.

Also, once lost, regaining the momentum is more difficult than preventing the loss of it. So how do you prevent losing momentum and even possibly build it?  Here are a few things that you could do:

Your buyers are busy, I mean really busy. For salespeople, your only focus is to sell. But your buyer usually has a lot of things going on, and generally speaking ‘buying’ your product may not be the top agenda on his list. This, of course, is the major deterrent to getting the sales momentum going.

Being helpful pays its dividends. Everyone always has something urgent going on and usually you can help, even if it’s only peripheral at best. Once you take this approach, you will be seen as an ally and be able to build trust which is the key to success. To do this, you can send them stuff that adds value. It can be anything a thoughtful note, an update, relevant articles, eBooks, and referrals.

Another deterrent to the momentum is the ‘small and silly‘ obstacles that salespeople usually never expect. It can be just about anything. Imagine this, if you’re selling software application that offers loads of benefits and almost magically brings down the XYZ costs. The buyer loves what he sees and has almost decided to go forward, then suddenly from nowhere a team member comes up with a question which is outside the purview of your product (but important to them nevertheless). While you’ll be able to resolve and move on, it affects the momentum. So the key is to understand their perspective and put their success as the driver when navigating deals, this helps pre-empt any obstacles well in advance, so you can proactively educate and prevent any delays.

When you are on phone with the customer make it about them. Listen more and understand their problems and provide a solution, this ultimately will demonstrate the value much better than a sales pitch. Also, when you display the ‘it’s about you‘ attitude, it keeps the person on the other end of the phone (or email) more engaged. This creates urgency as the prospect often reaches the conclusion on their own.

Remember when I said, sales follow-ups do not create urgency, it is because sales follow-ups do not add value to your prospects. The goal is not to be pestering, but to communicate value with every follow up that help your prospect in the decision making. By proactively offering information that adds value to your prospects, you can maintain a consistent communication cadence to stay on their radar. As a bonus, this also helps build trust and rapport — and you will be surprised at the urgency you’ll be able to create.

So there you have it, these simple steps can create a stronger sense of urgency while being able to build trust and a better rapport. A good place to start can be the clogged deals in your pipeline!

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