Creating Momentum from Urgency

A few years ago, a woman in our small town was facing financial devastation. She had been diagnosed with cancer seven months before and was having trouble keeping up with medical bills and general living expenses.

A friend of mine is a well-known musician in the area, so we decided to put together a benefit concert at a local watering hole to raise money for her. The immediate problem we had to hurdle was scheduling. We only had a few good prospects for a venue and both were booked up for the next 90 days.

The only real option we had was the upcoming Friday night, which gave us only 3 days to find musicians, get organized and promote the event. Since our local newspaper only comes out once per week, on Friday, we certainly could not rely on that to get the word out.

We went to work. We put together flyers, posted on social media, assembled email blasts and talked to everyone we saw for the next three days; encouraging them to come to the concert and bring a donation. By the time Friday night arrived, we were cautiously optimistic. We were also mentally prepared for the possibility of a bust. Three days is not much time to organize, promote and hold an event.

By the time the concert began, the room was three quarters full and within the next half hour we reached standing room only. We ended up passing the hat several times and collected a few thousand dollars. Even more money came in during the next week from people who could not attend the concert but wanted to help.

At the end of the day, I believe our success came from the fact that we had a lot to accomplish in a very short period of time. The circumstances we faced forced us to get highly focused and work at a fever pitch to pull this off. This created rapidly expanding momentum that caught everyone’s attention and exploded the day of the event.

Here’s my point: if this principle works for a benefit concert, it will work for your business. Are your sales down? Set an enormous goal for “this week” and funnel every ounce of your energy into accomplishing that expectation.

My clients in the automobile industry always ramp up their sales efforts in the last week of the month. The big push to make their quotas. My favorite question to ask them is: "If you can focus enough to make your sales numbers the last week of the month, why can't you do that every week?" No one has been able to give me a good answer to that yet.