How to Create Urgency in your Sales Pitch for a Faster Close

When sales are slow and buyers are resistant to new purchases, salespeople often use a variety of tactics to get their prospects to purchase to buy now. The most important and successful is to create a sense of urgency to get people to buy. 

Yet, urgency isn’t something that you force upon your sales prospects.  Instead, it naturally occurs once you uncover your customers’ motivation.  So you have to discover it.

It is done by using the consultative sales approach – by asking the right questions; listening carefully, and your customer’s desires and motivation will appear.

Here are some tips on creating a sense of urgency that can be used depending on your prospects’ scenario:

Tell them it's a limited supply.

Whatever you're offering, if you only have a few left then it's going to mean the person you're talking to has to act fast. That holds true for widgets or shares in your company. The key is to be truthful. You don't want to tell a client you've only got a dozen items left when in truth you've got an entire warehouse. It's all about building up trust. Whenever you've seen an ad offering a special deal for the next hundred callers you know that every caller is going to get the same deal. Don't fall into that kind of exploitive ploy. On the other hand, you might often have a situation that arises which is about genuine limited supply. When that happens, spring into action and see if you can't capitalize on that.

Tell them it's for a limited time.

Deadlines work both for someone who has a project due and for someone who has to make up their mind about a sales pitch. By placing a time limit on a special deal you're letting your client know this is a special occasion. Just make sure you follow through and close out the deadline. This is another aspect of the trust issue. If you tell someone they only have until Friday to get this special price but then that price is offered on the following Monday then how will they ever trust what you have to say? Always remember the client you make happy today is one you can go back to tomorrow.

Tell them it's a better price.

This is probably the quickest way to create a sense of urgency: Just tell them it's going to save them money. The problem with this approach is that you might become stuck with the discount for future sales. If a client knows that can get something cheaper they might just wait until you make that offer. This is what you have to be careful with the discount. Either always have it or never have it.

Tell them they'll be getting added value.

The alternative to slashing the price on a product is to add value to that same product. Perhaps there is something you can bundle with what you're offering to make it more attractive to a potential buyer. This type of approach can be combined with the "limited time offer" for a solid one-two punch of urgency.