What are the best practices for using urgency and scarcity in your call to action?

Urgency and scarcity in your sales cycle can be beneficial when used appropriately. For my team, I'm not the biggest fan of creating internal urgency "Pricing offers, team bandwidth", or any other reason that is out of the client's control. I tend to think that clients see through it and at times it can make it seem like we're desperate for a closing. I prefer creating logical external urgency for clients based on their goals. Use all the information you've gathered in discovery/meetings and create a plan/timeline to reach that goal using your solution. The narrative should be about why THEY need you instead of why WE need them. Clients are more receptive to sales folks creating urgency based on their goals than their own company.

I agree that urgency and scarcity can make persuasion more compelling. That being said, being proactive to clients to avoid the need for them to make a quick decision because you held information or did not prioritize them appropriately is not an acceptable way of "creating" urgency.

Rather than a Call to Action (CTA), I think a Call to Value (CTV) works better. "Start now and in 3 months you'll have, you'll be... Put it off and you have to wait that much longer for...

Using scarcity & urgency tactics can backfire, hurt your credibility & lose a sale, since every company says the same thing! Instead, use implication questions. Rather than tell, questions help self-reflect, have them share the cost of not changing & create urgency & scarcity because what people hear they resist, but what they say, they believe. 1. How would this impact you, your customers & company? 2. What would it mean to you and to your company if you were able to start realizing these benefits now rather than wait another year? 3. (Conversely) If nothing changes, how would this impact your (sales, performance, culture, team, company, you, etc.)? What will this cost you? 4. What's it costing you by keeping things the same?

I would say using scarcity and urgency can be effective but it depends on what you are selling and who you are selling to. If you use those tactics with a Professional buyer, you will probably lose the business and you may even lose reputation in your industry if it is not genuine. Whereas if you are selling vehicles, which are almost all built differently, and you have multiple potential buyers who want one specific vehicle that only you have within a set proximity it will be far more effective to position scarcity and urgency, I would make sure it is genuine. Another example would be if you sell a program which will increase in price over time due to demand then you could position it there as well. Make sure it is genuine.