Creating urgency is necessary to transition a buyer from uncertain and unsure, to serious and ready to close the deal. However, it can be difficult for salespeople to maintain a buyer’s initial urgency, and maintain that urgency until the sale is complete. Andy Gole, interviewed by John Golden, has some concrete tips for salespeople to master urgency based selling.
This expert sales interview explores urgency based selling with topics such as:
- Defining urgency based selling
- The Buyer’s Scam
- Two buckets buyers put salespeople in
- How to create urgency in your buyer
Urgency based selling
Urgency based selling is structured around the idea that potential buyers aren’t going to change their position unless they have a sense of urgency. The incumbency position is very strong. Sometimes, it’s not necessarily about trying to take business away from a competitor. Instead, it’s just about getting someone to create new behaviors. “It’s hard to get people to change or create new behaviors, so we need to create a sense of urgency,” said Gold. “So, we need to create a sense of urgency, or tap into their sense of urgency, to do that.”
Two Buckets:
Typically in the first 15 to 30 minutes of a meeting, a buyer will put a company into one of two buckets: safe, or serious. Safe means that their motives are essentially for price checking. Serious means they are willing to explore if your service or product is the right fit for them and intend on making a purchase.
The Buyer’s Scam:
Part of knowing how to utilize urgency based selling is to understand the urgency that a potential customer typically has. Often, a prospect will connect with a salesperson, and demonstrate this immediate need in the beginning, but the urgency dissipates as time goes on. Gole suggests that this is often caused by “The Buyers Scam.” To elaborate, “when the average prospect brings [a salesperson] in, the default situation is that we’re a price check,” said Gole. “So, the actual urgency that the prospect feels is that they want to see if they can buy what they currently have, but better.” This is when the buyer puts you in the safe bucket. It isn’t something the consumer tells the seller, because then you wouldn’t be motivated to spend 10 hours drafting a proposal and preparing an offer. In essence, there never was an urgency to change, but rather a necessity to get information.
The Remedy:
To counteract the Buyer’s Scam, you must convince the salesperson of the potential to change, and tap into their real sense of urgency. “We need to be seen as a serious potential for them. We have to identify for them a material difference. A difference we can make that’s so strong, it motivates a change in behavior,” said Gole. There are two solutions to help change buyers from seeing you as safe, to regarding you as serious. The first is to make a compelling case with a material difference, or a bold vision, as to why your product is the best option. It needs to be dynamic, and believable. Additionally, the salesperson needs to address the skepticism and risk aversion that sometimes prevents buyers from being more serious.
About Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
Pipeliner CRM empowers salespeople to create the right urgency with their prospects. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.
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