Tag Archives: Motivation

You Can’t Create Urgency – But You Can Discover It

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“Troy, how do I get my prospect to move faster? My proposal’s been sitting on their desk for three weeks.” I hear some version of this question constantly. The deal looks good. The buyer likes you. Everything seems aligned. And then… nothing. Radio silence. The whole process stalls out.

So the salesperson tries to go back and “create urgency.” They start pushing. Offering discounts for quick decisions. Talking about how much money the prospect is losing every day they don’t act. Trying to manufacture pressure. The problem is that you can’t create urgency that doesn’t exist. And by the time you’re trying to, it’s already too late.

The Sale Was Lost in Investigation

Remember my principle: 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. That happens in the Investigation phase of the Buyer’s Journey – not at Decision, where you’re trying to create urgency.

If your proposal is sitting on someone’s desk gathering dust, the problem isn’t that you failed to create urgency at the end. The problem is that you failed to discover and understand their actual timeline and priorities during Investigation. The buyer has already made a decision, and that decision is: this doesn’t warrant action right now. Maybe it never will. And all the fancy objection-handling techniques in the world won’t change that. You can’t close your way out of a problem you questioned (or more appropriately, didn’t question) your way into.

Where Urgency Actually Comes From

Urgency exists – or it doesn’t – in the Motivation and Investigation phases.

At Motivation, something creates dissatisfaction with the status quo. A problem is costing money. A competitor is gaining ground. An opportunity is slipping away. Employees are complaining. Customers are threatening to leave. That dissatisfaction creates energy that drives the rest of the buying process. No dissatisfaction, no energy. No energy, no urgency.

At Investigation, the buyer is trying to understand the problem more clearly – what’s actually wrong, what’s causing it, what the implications are, what needs to change. This is where genuine urgency gets defined and prioritized – or where it dissipates because the problem isn’t as significant as initially thought.  Rushing through this step (which all too many salespeople do) is ignoring 80% of your ability to win the sale.

If you’re presenting solutions before you’ve thoroughly investigated the problem and its urgency, you’re gambling that urgency exists. And if it doesn’t, your proposal will sit there.

The Questions That Uncover Urgency

Here’s what you need to discover during Investigation – and notice, these are all questions for the customer to answer, not statements for you to make:

Does it genuinely benefit them to act sooner? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. We’re always in love with the benefits of our products, and we always think sooner is better. But does the prospect feel that way? Is there a genuine advantage to acting now versus later?  This is one of those moments where it helps immensely to think like the customer; would you act if you were the customer?

What’s the cost of inaction? Does your prospect have a goal to reach, and what you’re selling is essential to reaching it? Is something happening right now that’s costing money each day it continues? Is the problem creating regular complaints from employees or customers?

Are there barriers to implementation? Do departments need reorganization? Facilities renovated? New staff hired? If your prospect genuinely can’t use – or can’t maximize the use of – your solution yet, you serve them better by helping them plan the staged implementation rather than pushing for a premature decision.

What are the overall corporate priorities? Even if there’s urgency within a department, there might be other priorities the company wants to address first. Maybe they’re revamping their production plant to handle elevated sales, and your financial software – however valuable – isn’t the most urgent priority right now.

Understanding the overall context of the sale is one of the greatest weaknesses I see in salespeople. It’s hard to recognize that your solution lives within the scope of your customer’s entire business, not at the center of it.

The Customer Has to Articulate It

This is critical: The customer has to articulate the consequences of not acting and the benefits of acting sooner. Not you. If you’re telling them they need to act now, it won’t work. If they’re telling you why they need to act now, you have a shot. Contentions only become fact in the sales process when the customer either states them or agrees that your contentions are statements of fact.

A good friend refers to this as “their window being open.” The customer can have needs. You can have the perfect solution. But if their window – their timing – isn’t open, you’re throwing rocks at a closed window. Sure, sometimes you can break the window. But have you ever seen a window owner be delighted that you broke it?

The Tired Tactics Don’t Work Anymore

“If you buy today, it’s at this price, but if you buy next week, the price goes up.”

I tried this crap when I was a brand new car salesman – and customers shoved it down my throat.  “So, if I call back Monday and want to buy this car at that price, you won’t sell it to me for that?” they asked, knowing full well that I would.  It only took two instances of that happening for me to banish that technique from my repertoire forever.  And yet, I still see it being used.

Modern buyers see through this garbage. They know you’re manufacturing pressure. And it makes them uncomfortable. Remember: comfortable customers buy. Pressured customers delay, ghost, or buy from someone who doesn’t make them feel manipulated. What you can do is discover, channel, and accentuate urgency that already exists. You cannot create it from nothing.

The Equation for a Sale to Happen

Need (articulated by customer) + Solution (articulated by salesperson and agreed to by customer) + Timing = Sale

All three elements have to be present. Two out of three doesn’t close deals. If the timing isn’t right – if their window isn’t open – the sale won’t happen. Not because you failed at closing. Because you didn’t discover during Investigation that the timing wasn’t aligned.

When the Sale Still Doesn’t Happen

Even if you do everything right – conduct thorough Investigation, discover genuine urgency, align your solution with their timeline – the sale still sometimes won’t happen.

Because we sell to human beings. Priorities shift. Budgets get redirected. Decision makers leave. Unforeseen circumstances arise. But this approach gives you the best shot. It surfaces timing issues early, when you can still qualify out or adjust your approach. It prevents you from wasting weeks on proposals that were never going to move forward. And it positions you as a consultant who understands their business rather than a salesperson trying to manufacture pressure.

Navigating Urgency

Stop trying to create urgency at the Decision phase. Start discovering it at the Investigation phase.

Ask questions designed to understand their actual timeline and priorities. Surface the real consequences of inaction. Understand the barriers to implementation. Get clarity on where your solution fits within their overall business priorities. And let the customer articulate why acting matters – or doesn’t.

If urgency genuinely exists, your thorough Investigation will uncover it and your proposal will align with it. If urgency doesn’t exist, you’ll discover that too – and you can decide whether to invest more time or move on to opportunities where the window is actually open.

You can’t create urgency. But you can discover it, understand it, and build your entire sales approach around it.

That’s not manipulation. That’s professional selling.

Motivation: The Foundation of the Buyer’s Journey

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Last week, I did a one-on-one Zoom call with a guy who was trying to sell me a marketing system.  He opened by saying that he had sold life insurance for over 40 years and, “As we both know, all sales are 90% emotional.”  I stopped him right there.  I told him that I’d been in sales for 34 years, and that the emotion-to-intellect ratio in the sales had shifted significantly over my career.  In fact, I said, it had never been “90% emotion” in my career, and that salespeople who understood how their customers think have the edge over those who attempt to manipulate how they feel.  His response was, “You’re wrong.”  The call ended there.

I tell you that to tell you this:  Today, we’re going to talk about an element of sales that melds thought and emotion, and it’s the foundation of the Buyer’s Journey.  Your job is to help navigate the customer through the Buyer’s Journey.  Think of it like building a house.  A good house needs a foundation, it needs walls and a roof, it needs mechanical systems like plumbing and heating, and it needs furnishing.  But without a foundation, that house can’t be built.  Motivation is the foundation of the Buyer’s Journey – without it, you don’t have a sale, and yes, there is a combination of emotion and intellect that drives Motivation.  So let’s dive into what Motivation really is, shall we?

I define Motivation this way:  Motivation is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the Current Situation, and a desire for a better Future Situation.  In other words – “I feel like something’s wrong now, and I want something better.”  This feeling can be emotionally driven, it can be logically driven, or it can be a combination.

One thing I want to make clear:  Motivation is different than Prospecting.  Motivation is buyer-driven; i.e. it is something that the Buyer thinks, feels, or thinks and feels at the same time.  Prospecting is salesperson-driven; it’s that activity where we reach out to potential Buyers that we don’t know and attempt to engage them.  Here’s where they do come together.  Good Prospecting is designed to highlight or create Motivation in order to engage the Buyer.  That’s why your prospecting message is important.

The lamest prospecting messaging begins like this:

“Hi, Mr. Customer.  I’d like to talk to you about…” Who cares?  That’s “me” driven.  Good prospecting is “them” driven.

“Hi, Mr. Customer.  Can I quote on your next order of…” Yes, by all means, let’s reduce the entire sale to a price right out of the gate.

“Hi, Mr. Customer.  How are you today?”  That announces you as a pesky salesperson who can’t think of anything good to say.

Back to Motivation.  As I said, Motivation can be either discovered, highlighted, or created.  Here’s how:

  • Discovering Motivation: This is an “educated guess” approach, and it’s based on the idea that your targeted prospects are very likely to have a problem that you’ve solved for others like them.  The problem is just bubbling below the surface in your prospect’s mind, and that feeling of dissatisfaction has to be highlighted in order to move them into a Buyer’s Journey.  Let’s say that you know of a common problem in a given industry that you serve, and you’ve fixed it for others.  Your messaging needs to center around acknowledgement of the common problem, painting a picture with your words of what the prospect’s day will be like when it’s solved, and then asking a question about their experiences with the problem.  For example:  “Mr. Customer, I know that independent shops like yours replace a lot of exhaust gaskets on late model GM V-8s, and when they do, they break bolts – which takes up your shop time and money.  Our induction bolt heater has solved that problem for other shops like yours.  Would you like to see a demo of how this can save you hours on every one of those jobs?” (For the record – bolt induction heaters are awesome.)  A talk track like this highlights a dissatisfaction with the Current Situation that your prospect already has, and may bring Motivation to the surface – enabling you to get an audience and start them on a Buyer’s Journey.  Your Buyer probably is aware of both the problem and a potential solution – but you are bringing it to the surface.
  • Highlighting Motivation: This is possible if, in researching your Buyer, you discover something that would be a motivating factor for purchasing your stuff.  As an example, let’s say that you notice that your Buyer is getting ready to add three new locations, and they are in an area where the incumbent vendor for your stuff doesn’t go – but you do.  Or, they’re taking on a new product line and you sell a product that perfectly complements their new line.  You get the idea.  In this case, the Motivation probably exists on some level – you just have to bring it to the fore and suggest that you are the key to relieving their dissatisfaction.  This can get you an audience, if you do it right.
  • Creating Motivation: This approach works best when you have something new that your Buyer is probably unaware of.  The Buyer might not even be dissatisfied with the Current Situation as they understand it – but the awareness of something new could change that.  For example, once upon a time, the Lockheed Constellation was considered the luxury yacht of the skies and passengers loved flying on it.  Then came the jet – and all of a sudden, the Constellation was consigned to history because it was very loud and too slow.  Creating Motivation isn’t easy, and it requires a product that is genuinely new to the market and has such a high ability to change the customer’s perception that the mere awareness of it Motivates your prospect.

Whatever way Motivation happens, understand that you will not get a sale unless it’s present.  If your Buyer reaches out to you rather than vice versa, you need to understand what Motivated them to enter their Buyer’s Journey – and as you move through the Journey, you need to verify that it’s still present.

The bottom line is this:  When you approach a potential Buyer, you should understand that he doesn’t care, in the least, about what YOU want to talk about.  He only cares about his own dissatisfaction with his Current Situation – and the first words out of your mouth (or keyboard, as the case might be) need to speak directly to that.  If not, you probably won’t get the appointment.  Then, as you move through the Journey, you need to make sure that this dissatisfaction is still there.  Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and theirs. If Motivation goes away, so does your bouncing baby sale.