Creating urgency is not easy and what people often miss is that the effectiveness of the stimulus depends on the context of the situation. In this Vlog, Grant explains that if you want to create real urgency that’s effective, you have to think in terms of context.
How many times in business have you tried to create urgency to get a decision from a prospect and failed?
Or alternatively, when have you been the victim of someone saying to you; ‘We have to have a decision by tomorrow?”
And of course, you ignore them and it’s fine.
Creating urgency is not easy and what people often miss is the effectiveness of the stimulus depends on the context of the situation and, therefore, if you want to create real urgency that’s effective, you have to think in terms of context.
There are normally two types of context.
One is something that already exists and you can leverage, and the other is something you can create.
So for example, often people will say to you, ‘I need it by Christmas’ and it becomes a deadline that you are absolutely fixated on sticking to, and people often don’t interrogate it.
What’s going to happen if I get it to you on the fifth of Jan?
And of course the answer would be nothing.
But Christmas is a deadline that seems real to people, contextually, because a lot of businesses shut for Christmas and take seven to 10 days off and, therefore, even though the deadline – in reality is artificial – it doesn’t feel artificial and then it’s effective.
So ‘We need a decision by Christmas’ will often work because the context works.
But of course the reality is, is often there isn’t a natural context and we have to create one.
But saying, ‘I just need a decision tomorrow’ isn’t going to be that effective.
Let me give you an example.
Estate agents often do this very, very well. When there’s high demand in a market, they’ll often arrange an open day for a home, and of course, what that means is, is you go and view a home with one or two other people, and often as you are coming out the home, there’s the next tranche of people going in.
It might be that they’ve only had eight people see the home, but if all eight people see the home in the same hour and a half and you see some of them going in and out, when the estate agent calls you up and says; ‘You need to make an offer or you are going to lose the house’, you automatically assume they’re correct.
Actually, they may not be, and they could have had steady views from Monday to Friday and nobody would’ve seen anybody, but by creating that context, they create a stimulus that’s effective…
People do feel pressured, and they will make the offer.
Too often people try and create false urgency and it’s ineffective. So remember, if you want to create urgency that works, think of it in terms of context. Leverage something that’s already there, if you’ve got something like Christmas coming up, and if you haven’t, be creative like the estate agents and create urgency and create a context that will be effective for your business.
There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English
