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The research is clear: Creating urgency when you sell can help dramatically increase the number of sales you close. When prospects don’t feel any sense of urgency to buy your product or service, they’re much more likely to drag their feet. They might even give you the dreaded “I need to think it over” response.
But when there’s a tangible sense of urgency during a selling situation, it can help move things along at a brisker pace. That’s why it’s important to have a clear strategy in place for creating urgency when you sell.
Implement these 4 powerful strategies to add urgency to any selling situation—so you can crush your sales goals:
It might sound counterintuitive, but the most powerful way to create urgency is to stop persuading your prospects to do business with you. Instead, it’s time to start every selling situation by disqualifying prospects. The process of disqualifying prospects entails determining whether the prospect is a good fit for what you’re selling. If you begin every sales meeting by trying to answer this question, you’ll immediately create a sense of urgency.
Why? Because no prospects like to be disqualified. When your prospects sense that you’re trying to determine if they’re a good fit for what you sell, they’ll be much more willing to open up and explain why they need your product or service. And since you’re not pressuring them to buy from you up front, they’ll be much more likely to say “yes” in the end—on their own terms.
Check out this video for more tips on creating urgency when you sell:
It’s nearly impossible to add urgency to a sale when you don’t understand the prospect’s decision-making process. If you make it all the way through a sales meeting without knowing who the key decision maker is, you’re in big trouble. This is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make. At the beginning of every sales meeting, make it your priority to find out exactly who is involved in the decision-making process.
Once you have a clear understanding of the decision-making process, you can be strategic about where to apply pressure and create urgency throughout the sale. When your prospect sees that you took the time to understand how decisions are made at their organization, they’ll take you more seriously and won’t play any games.
This strategy is as simple as it sounds. If you ask insightful questions to uncover your prospects’ toughest challenges and biggest goals, then you’ll naturally create urgency within the sale. Refrain from talking too much, instead focusing on listening to your prospects’ answers and carefully crafting a solution that will directly address the needs they share with you.
After you’ve determined that your prospect needs your product or service—and they’ve shared their challenges with you—the next step is to secure a commitment. Many salespeople lose sales because they never demand an actual commitment from prospects, thus depleting any real sense of urgency. To implement this strategy, ask a question such as: “Are you committed to solving your challenge today?” Don’t get a commitment from them to buy or “move forward”—just get an actual commitment that they’re invested in solving their biggest challenge, right now
Which of these 4 strategies will you use to create urgency in your next sale? Share your experiences in the comments below. For even more sales strategies, check out this free Special Report on 3 Closing Questions You MUST Ask.
Marc Wayshak is the founder of Sales Strategy Academy, best-selling author of Game Plan Selling, and a regular contributor for Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine and the Huffington Post Business section. He holds an MBA from the University of Oxford and a BA from Harvard University.
