3 Sales Urgency Mistakes That Are Costing You Customers
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Brooke Greening: When salespeople hear the word create urgency, they usually go in three different directions. The first direction is they manufacture the urgency. They create a fake deadline. The second is they use questions to trap their customers, so they have to demand a yes or an agreement. Or the third is they just avoid urgency altogether because they don't want to sound pushy.
None of these are actually very effective, and none of these are what I mean when I teach how to be able to create urgency
A real deadline gives someone useful information and gives that direction for them. A fake deadline is designed to make someone afraid of missing out, and those are not the same thing
Healthy urgency reveals what is already true.
Fake urgency invents a reason to panic, and that is what we are avoiding. That is not going to be a good relationship moving forward.
That's not curiosity. That's more of like a courtroom cross-examination. The salesperson is like stacking agreements so that the customer feels foolish or inconsistent if they say no, and that is a problem
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Sippin' Matcha and Helping You Make More Sales, where in about the time that it takes for you to enjoy your matcha or coffee break, Brooke Greening gives us some great advice on our sales conversations. Because how well we lead those conversations, if you're having to talk to people to make sales, will make or break your revenue.
Scott Greening: And Brooke,
Brooke Greening: what we're doing today is actually what they did on the first night of Shark Week last night. We're rebranding urgency. They were rebranding sharks. They're trying to convince us that they don't eat people- ... that they're just lovely creatures and all of that.
Yes, and that they only mistake you for food.
But I kept saying, "Yeah, but that mistake hurts." Like this- Yeah ... is a problem. We were just at Pawleys Island in South Carolina and, like, there are sharks, there are dolphins, and I'm like, "I don't want to go in there." So yeah. Yeah. So yes, we are talking about rebranding creating urgency because it is very necessary in our sales conversations, but a lot of times people take it a completely different way, and so they just kind of avoid it altogether.
Scott Greening: Yeah. In our first episode on this topic, we talked, or last week we talked about sort of some reasons why creating urgency is actually im- an important thing to do and necessary and is not icky, but actually serves people by motivating with direction and hope. I know you've kind of teased it already, but we're headed towards some, some bad ways to think about urgency, and this is two of these at least are sort of where the ick in sales comes from a lot of times for people.
Brooke Greening: Oh, 100%. Yeah. And a lot of times when people are trying to figure this piece out, when they're like, "Okay, I, maybe I do need to create some urgency," it can go wrong pretty quickly because it can either start to get uncomfortable or it really starts to want to serve the actual salesperson instead of the client because they need the sale.
They don't want to lose the opportunity. They need to have all of these answers figured out before the call ends. And so sometimes they end up getting aggressive, or sometimes they end up being polished, but it's not very helpful, or they just avoid it altogether. And so those are things we're going to be talking about today, like these are the ways you don't want to create urgency and the reasons why, and then what we can do instead.
Scott Greening: All right. I think your first way that people do this poorly is probably the most obvious but what is it?
Brooke Greening: They manufacture it. We call that creating a fake sense of urgency. So literally it's like, "This price is only available today," when it's not. "This is the only spot we have left," when you have more.
"This is, you have to make this decision before the call ends," that's not entirely true. "The offer disappears at midnight." Nope, we all know it's going to go on for another four or five days. Those are ways that you create this fake sense of urgency, but two things are happening. One, the trust is eroding really quickly, like people know what you're doing.
But then two, if you're doing that and if you're the one that are leading these sales conversations, you have to constantly re- be remembering what web did I create for this potential client or customer? Like, you have to remember all of the things that you said. There's this stop... It's like the start, stop, start, stop, start, stop because it's not consistent in the conversations that you're having.
So not only is it dishonest, it creates a ton of work for you 'cause you have to try to remember, what did I tell them?
Scott Greening: Yeah, and that, that sounds exhausting. You're trying to, to keep up with sort of the, to say it most bluntly, like you're trying to keep up with the lies that you've told and that, that- Yeah
that doesn't work out super well. The, the thing to keep in mind though is like you're not saying like never use deadlines.
Brooke Greening: No, no. A real deadline gives someone useful information and gives that direction for them. A fake deadline is designed to make someone afraid of missing out, and those are not the same thing
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I, I think what if what you were saying before and, and that is the damaging the relationships.
The, the reality is- Mm-hmm ... is like you, it can work, but it causes distrust in the relationship, like, beyond. So if you're delivering a product or service, if you're having continued engagement with this customer, th- they may have like begrudgingly or made a purchase and then they didn't feel great about it, and then that- Right
they're going to be skeptical about working with you. They're going to have more questions. They're, 'cause they don't believe you have their best interest in, at heart.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. Pressure may create a fast decision, but a fast decision is not always a confident decision. And because of that, also if customers later discover that that deadline was made up or that wasn't the last available spot, okay, now trust is beginning to disappear.
So that's not good. Healthy urgency reveals what is already true. We're telling them the truth. We're telling them what's going on. We're telling them what the deadlines are. We're telling them that, "Hey, if you want to be able to fix this problem, it takes like six to eight weeks to get onboarded and to move things forward."
That is not lying or manipulating them. That is giving them clear direction in what they need to do. Fake urgency invents a reason to panic, and that is what we are avoiding. That is not going to be a good relationship moving forward.
Scott Greening: All right. Most of the people that we interact with are good humans, and they're all on board.
They don't need convincing that this is the, a bad way to, to create urgency, but we've all experienced it, and so we all can nod our heads and say, "Yeah, I've, I've been on those calls. I've been in, uh, with those people." What's, what's another way that people create urgency that's not great?
Brooke Greening: Yes. So this is where you trap them with questions, and just as a fun side note, Scott absolutely hates this in any conversation.
Scott Greening: Yes. This is a personal pet peeve. And not to get into all of our marriage issues, but- ... when it occasionally creeps in, it really, it's pretty hard for me to handle in, in any situation.
Brooke Greening: In any situation. Yeah. So what I mean is that you're asking a question, and you might even have good intentions behind it, but the only answer that they can say is yes, or the only thing that they can do is agree with you.
That is not a good way to be able to create urgency. And so it sounds like very consultive. It sounds like we care, but again, we are actually doing it for our advantage because we just want them to say yes. So it could be something like "Hey, would you agree this problem is costing you money?" And they say, "Yes."
And then, "And would you agree that waiting only makes it worse?" Then, "Yes." So, so then you know if it's costing you money, why wouldn't you move forward today? That's not curiosity. That's more of like a courtroom cross-examination. The salesperson is like stacking agreements so that the customer feels foolish or inconsistent if they say no, and that is a problem
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I know for me, just because it's, like, such a personal pet peeve, like, as soon as somebody starts doing that I'm pretty much, I'm pretty much out.
But the, the problem is not asking about consequences. it's important to have hard conversations. it's important to, I facilitate strategic planning, like perspective and, all of that. we're big fans. The problem is, when you already have the answer decided- Yes ... and there's only one right answer, and they're just making you say it because either right then or at the future, at the end of the sales conversation, they're going to bring it back and they're going to be like, "Well, I guess you..."
Brooke Greening: Yeah. And people are not dumb. They know you're doing this, or they know that something just feels off. And when that happens, when they start feeling like, "This is off," or, "You're trying to trap me," the trust erodes, and then you're going to start even further back than where you started. That's either where they dig their heels in like Scott, and they're like, "There's no way this, any of this is going to happen," or they may decide to move forward, but now they don't really feel like you have their best interest at heart because they know you're a little tricky.
You're, like, you try to do things that only benefit you. So I hear this all the time. People are like, "They give great questions." And I'm like, "Yeah, but that is just to benefit you." That is the exact opposite of what we are doing in a sales conversation. If you truly want to be able to build trust, understand what those big problems are, and have them trust you and invest in you a lot to be able to help them, this is not a good direction, but a lot of people are taught it, and they feel better about it 'cause it sounds a little bit more, consulting.
But if you are making them defensive, we're going in the wrong direction.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and people ask those types of questions like, "You want your company to grow, don't you?" Or like- Yeah ... "Are you willing to stay stuck?" Or how serious you are about fixing this and just, they can stack them up and you can ask the, the questions- Mm-hmm
and it just, it gets pretty yeah, like a courtroom. Like you're-
Brooke Greening: Yeah ...
Scott Greening: like they're going to feel like the judge is going to come out and, "Guilty." Right. Like, you have to do... Oh, okay.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. You're, you can ask questions, and you can ask those types of questions, but the whole point is that good questions are creating room for an honest answer.
Manipulative questions are only having one acceptable answer. That's the biggest difference.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I think as a salesperson, as someone that believes in their product, as people that are confident that they can genuinely help people, like, I think you're okay with people thinking about what are the costs of waiting.
Like- Yeah ... What are the, the, the difficulties if they put this off, right?
Brooke Greening: Yes. I want customers to think about what waiting might cost them. I want them to know what's happening in their company and to think about the decisions that they're making. But I don't want to shame them into agreeing with me.
I want to ask real questions and remain open about the answers. So what that means is, as an example, maybe waiting is really costly for them. Maybe waiting is the wisest choice for them right now. You have to leave room for both possibilities. That's how you know you're not manipulating them. So a helpful question invites reflection from them.
A trap question demands agreement
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I think I can see your, your counseling hat coming through in, in some of that, and that's just good practice, uh, with people in general. But the, the thing that I'm kind of realizing as we're talking about this is, yes, people do these, and these sort of two very manipulative approaches to creating urgency.
But if people are following your SERVICE sales framework, and if you're just- Mm-hmm ... jumping into the podcast, welcome to the party. You can go back. We're working through each of the different letters of the SERVICE sales framework and that. But it's really hard to do these first two mistakes, because- Yeah
if they're following your framework, like this idea of creating urgency they've actually already said yes. Yeah ... right? We're, we're- Yeah ... it's not so much trying to, like, manipulate them into a, a buy. We're just kind of trying to talk about when this purchase is going to happen.
Brooke Greening: Yeah, and that is what happens.
So sometimes people are trying, like, "I have to create urgency to, to like convince them to buy." Y- you're doing it wrong. No, that is not helpful because if they're not even ready to move forward, creating some fake sense of urgency or trying to get them to realize all the pro- like, no we've messed up the whole order of it and it is going to cost you sales.
We talk about creating urgency when they've said, "Okay, yeah, I would like to be able to move forward." Now we're talking about, okay, great, what is that going to be looking like and what is our timeframe of that? That is what we mean by creating urgency, and I am amazed at how many times people are wanting to be able to move forward and nobody is actually giving them any type of direction and hope of what to do next.
They're just excited and they're like, "Great, I'll send you a proposal and we can talk about it next week." Like, there's no clear direction of being able to move things forward. So Scott's absolutely correct. When you work through our SERVICE framework, we can't fall into those first two categories, 'cause that's just not, it's not what the SERVICE allows us to be able to do.
I don't create any type of urgency until I know that they want to be able to move forward. I don't use urgency to convince someone to buy from me. I never do that. That's a very bad that's not a good thing to do because that's not even where they want to be, and I don't want them to create a panic decision.
I only create urgency when they're saying, "Yeah I would actually like to be able to move forward, and what does that look like?" That is the biggest difference.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I think people are so, they've had such bad experiences themselves and they're, they so don't want to be those people, and we're all on board with that desire.
Mm-hmm. The problem is then the third way that people mess up- Yeah. urgency is they, they swing too far on the pendulum. So what's the, the third- Yeah ... the third issue?
Brooke Greening: Then they just avoid it altogether, 'cause they've just continued to r- tell themselves urgency is the villain, urgency is the villain, urgency is the villain, and that's not true.
So they just completely avoid it. And so they don't want to manipulate anyone, they don't want the customer to feel uncomfortable, and so they explain the offer, they send the proposal, and then they're just hoping that the customer is going to figure out when they need to act, what they need to do. And that's where it happens.
So like, "Take all the time you need. No pressure at all. Just let me know whenever. I'll send the proposal. You can think about it. Reach out when you're ready." All of those are avoiding urgency and actually just encouraging them to stall and not take any type of action forward
Scott Greening: Yeah, but it, it does sound kind Right?
Like, it, it sounds like the nice thing to say.
Brooke Greening: It sounds kind, but it's incredibly unhelpful. It's unhelpful to your potential clients, and it's unhelpful to you because now there's nothing to be able to help give them direction so they can make that next step. Avoiding urgency can feel safe. You might feel protected, but a lot of times we're just doing it because we don't want to have, like, an uncomfortable moment because we're just not entirely sure what we're supposed to say or how to be able to move it forward.
But it's, it's not serving them. If they've told you, "This is my problem. I'd like to be able to move forward," and then we kind of just leave it up for when they're going to make that decision.
Scott Greening: Yeah, like, if our kids come to us, and they're- they've gotten in an accident on their bike or whatever, and they're bleeding out.
We've diagnosed the problem. Everybody agrees that there's an issue. Yeah. To just be like, "Well, when you're ready, I'll be here." Like, uh- It- ... we just got here, like.
Brooke Greening: And I do, I do want to say this because I know some people may be listening, and they might be like, "I don't do that, Brooke. I don't do that." But I see this all the time.
They've had a great sales conversation. They're moving f- Like, they want to be able to move forward, and then they just say, "Okay, well, I'll send you an email about what we've covered today, and then we can talk about what those next steps look like." That is where you are stopping, and you're not actually creating urgency that's giving them direction and hope.
An email, a proposal, like, those can be steps, but that is not clear direction and what needs to happen. And so that's what I mean when I say you're avoiding it. 'Cause when I say you're avoiding it, sometimes people are like, "Oh, no, no. I, I tell them what to do. I tell them what to do next. I, I have a follow-up."
No, not a clear one that is giving them direction and hope. It's just some vague type of answer, so everybody kind of, uh, there's, like, this silence, and nobody knows what to do to fill it. And so it's like, "Okay, well, then, hey, I'll, I'll send this to you this week, and then we can, we can move forward."
And then the salesperson's really excited 'cause they think, "Yes, this is it. They said they want to do it. They're going to move forward." But the, the potential client is like, "Oh, oh, okay And that doesn't usually work. They don't buy it, and then they get upset, and then they think that their competitor was less expensive.
This is literally what I hear every single day. And I listen to the calls and I'm like, boop, there it is. There is where you avoided being able to create any type of urgency for them to move forward with you.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and so-
Brooke Greening: And then they're like, "Oh, okay"
Scott Greening: Yeah. When your top level people are, are working with you as clients and that, you're listening to their calls- Yeah
and this is, this is the type of stuff that, that you're hearing. I think, like, one of my takeaways is, like, you can be direct with people without being- Mm-hmm ... pushy.
Brooke Greening: Yes.
Scott Greening: And so-
Brooke Greening: Very much so ...
Scott Greening: These three conversat- these three things sort of look different, right? So one creates fake pressure, one is kind of cornering people with questions, and then one avoids pressure completely.
What's the thread, though, that is going through them? What connects them?
Brooke Greening: All of them are driven by the salesperson's discomfort. So manufacturing that fake urgency is saying, "I need you to decide." The trap questions are like, "I need you to agree with me." And the avoidance is, "I just want this conversation to stay comfortable and not get awkward."
Healthy urgency is asking, "Okay, what would help you make a wise decision?" That keeps the focus where it needs to be, on the customer, not on us and not what we need.
Scott Greening: All right. So how would people move forward? Like, what if they, they're on the fence. They're like, "I think I get it, but I'm still... I, I d- I really don't want to be pushy." Like, why should they want to do this?
Brooke Greening: Yeah. It's just instead of s- saying, "Okay, I'm being pushy," you're just having an honest conversation about timing, possibly the consequences, without feeling like you're manipulating anyone.
You don't need, like, fake scarcity. You don't need clever questions that corner someone. And you don't have to really, like, tiptoe around the conversation. It's just having an honest conversation about what's going on. And if we were working through that whole service framework and we're doing that correctly, we know the problems and frustrations they're facing and how we can be able to start helping those.
If someone has a deadline, then we can talk about that and how we need to be able to start at a certain time to be able to meet the deadline that they have. If someone is having this thing that's beginning to implode, we talk about how being able to start sooner rather than later can start to help those things.
We're not doing it in a manipulative way. We're just having an honest conversation about, "Okay, this sounds like this is what we want to do. We're wanting to move forward. Now let's actually talk about the timeframe and how we're going to start moving this forward." It doesn't have to be manipulative. It doesn't have to be sketchy or any of those things.
Like, you're, you're continuing to serve them. And then at some point, if they're saying, "No, I don't actually want to do that," okay. Now we know, and then we have a different conversation.
Scott Greening: Yeah.
Brooke Greening: But people just avoid it.
Scott Greening: Most people probably are sitting there and like, "Oh, like I, I know which one I do." Some people are just nervous or unco- like they, they know their sales conversations aren't going well, so they're like, "I'm pretty sure I don't do it.
I don't know which one, like how I'm messing up." What, what are some questions that they could think about,
Brooke Greening: Yeah ...
Scott Greening: for them?
Brooke Greening: And I am not saying by any means, like that you can't have an incentive. That, I do want to be very clear on that. I am not say- like, but know these things before so you're not just like trying to like wing them when you're having this conversation 'cause you're trying to get them to buy.
Like, you can have incentives. You can say, "Hey, I really appreciate you just taking the time to talk with me today. If you decide to make a decision within the next three days, this is something that we share with all of our clients." you can share that investment or that add-on or whatever it is.
There's nothing wrong with those types of things. But just trying to create them, invent them, 'cause you're just trying to create some sort of action, that's where things are going to get uncomfortable and they're going to know you're trying to manipulate them. So these are the questions that you can ask yourself: Did I invent a reason for the customer to act?
Did I ask questions that only had one acceptable answer? Or did I avoid talking about timing or consequences altogether? That's how you know, okay, these are where we've fallen into the trap or that it could be, we could be circling it or something along that line.
All right, if you're sitting there thinking, "Man, my sales conversations are probably feeling a lot harder than they need to be," Brooke's sales conversation assessment will help you know which part of the conversations maybe are opportunities for you to, to improve and to feel better about.
Scott Greening: You can always take that assessment at buildingmomentum.info/assessment, and I encourage you to do that today. It'll take about five minutes, and you'll get some great insights into your sales conversations. All right, Brooke, we've talked about why we should create urgency. We've talked about some bad ways to do it.
Where are we going next week in an actual conversation?
Brooke Greening: Yes, we are actually going to talk about, what does healthy urgency look like in an actual conversation? So you don't have to scare people. You don't have to trap people. You don't have to avoid it. We can ask honest questions. We can make room for honest answers, and we can help people understand why their timing is going to matter.
That's what we're talking about next week.
Scott Greening: All right, as always, we encourage you to not miss that episode, and a great way to make sure you don't miss the episode is to subscribe, to like, to follow, to turn the notifications on YouTube. And then we'd love to hear from you. Leave a review comment on the, the video Or if you'd like to have a question that we would consider as part of a future episode, you can always do that at buildingmomentum.info/matcha, and that's where the archive of all the past episodes and all the good things live, too. So you can find that there. Until next time, we hope you make some great sales.
Brooke Greening: Bye-bye.
