There is no sales tactic that can even hold a candle to the power of "Urgency." I can honestly say that I would not be where I am today if I hadn't mastered "sense of urgency" in my sales pitch! You just can't deny it's effectiveness. It is basic human psychology and you must learn to use it if you really want to compete with the 'big boys' in sales.



Always be in a hurry! "Now" is the time to buy the product not later. No you can't sit down and discuss this for an hour with your prospect over a cup of tea. You have places to go and buyers to see.

"You're going to miss out on this bargain if you don't take advantage of this offer right now!"

"I have 35 people to get back to in the next few minutes."

"I'd love to stay and chat but I've got some buyers to get back to right now and I don't want to be late."

Much like indifference, sense of urgency is not so much something you have to say as it is something that you have to portray. You need to make them "feel" like now is the only time because you've got to go.

For face to face selling: USE A LOT OF BODY LANGUAGE TO PORTRAY URGENCY! I glance down at my watch a lot when I'm talking to a prospect. It's my favorite way to portray urgency. I also like to keep my car keys in hand and wiggle them from time to time as I'm pitching the customer.

Notice how you get coupons in the mail and they have an expiration date? That's because they want to make you buy it right now.

I can't even tell you how many times my wife tries to convince me of why she needs to run to the store to spend our money "right now". She always says, "Honey it's the last day." Yeah suuuure it is!

Info-infomercials and home shopping channels use the sense of urgency by displaying a count down clock on the screen. This clock is counting down the seconds till the end of the program or the begining of the next promotion.

"We only have 3 minutes left folks, operators are standing by to take your orders .... "

This is impulse building through the sense of urgency, they're telling you straight out that this product disappears from your television screen in exactly 3 minutes. Order now or suffer forever!

On an internet sales page there are many ways to portray urgency. Some marketers even use it in the pre-headline with something like "DO NOT HIT YOUR BACK BUTTON! This is the ONLY time you will see this page." That statement uses urgency AND fear of loss to captivate the visitor.

I've used the product countdown method on my sales pages as well. That is when you tell everyone that you only intend to sell 250 copies of this product and they only have 11:00 minutes to click the buy it now button. I then display a "countdown" timer that disables my purchase links when it reaches zero.

Many people are afraid of using this sort of sales tactic because it will cost them sales. Your fear will keep holding you back from making the big money. Simply put... Sense of urgency and the other 3 factors of impulse are what separates the men from the boys in sales. If you're afraid to use them well, I'm sorry to say that you just can't hang with the big boys and your income will continue to reflect that basic truth.