Must Act Now: On Creating Urgency

Has anyone else been in this meeting? The sales team may not be hitting targets, or maybe they are, but the targets keep on getting bigger. Everyone is coming together to think about what needs to be done. That’s when someone leans back, ponders the depths of their soul, gazes without focus at a random dashboard, and opines, “What we need to do… is create Urgency.”?

They aren’t wrong, but what the hell does that mean? Can one create Urgency? Okay, let’s say one could. How in the world do we go about it? Is it time to break out the expiring discounts? All valid questions, but I’d put forward another- are we even sure we should be focusing on Urgency at all?

So roll up your sleeves; we’re going to do a deep dive on Urgency to rethink what that means and read fast because there is a 15% discount that will expire if you don’t finish reading this within the next 10 minutes.

I’m sure there are many definitions of Urgency; here’s mine:??

Urgency is the measure of how quickly the prospect's business wants to solve a specific challenge.?

One can quickly see we have a few variables contributing to Urgency.?

The first variable is the prospects’ business, not yours. Your business will always want to sign a new agreement, so your business’s Urgency isn’t relevant. Businesses are just groups of people working together, so we’ll define them further as a “group of people you have access to.” The more “power”, i.e. the ability to effect change with the org this group of people has, the better the group.?

The second variable is the “specific challenge” the group of people wants to solve. You can substitute pain, gain, the desired outcome, whatever you wish for challenge, but as long as there is a gap between where they are and where they want to be, that’s what we mean.

The last variable is time. How quickly do they want to address the pain??

Put together; it looks like this U = (P*I) / T

Where:?

U = Urgency

P= Power of the group?

I= Intensity of the pain?

T = Time (lower the T the less time to close)?

I’ll refer to this moving forward as U=PIT

It’s essential to think of Urgency as a function of all three variables, which are all interconnected. Too often, I hear folks just using Time as a proxy for Urgency. This is flawed thinking if the goal is to win business as quickly as possible. The wrong group of people can have significant challenges they want to solve quickly. If that happens, you’re going to have one hell of a champion who takes you absolutely nowhere in a deal. It’s also possible to have the right group of people who do not face significant challenges (even on a short timeline). What happens here? Nothing. They will miss the timeline they gave you, guaranteed. You can try to “drive Urgency” all you want, but good luck.?

Time is not a substitute for Urgency. It's not enough to want to "get this done quickly."

Which brings us back to the question: “Can one create Urgency?”?

Maybe. It’s an indirect variable. Creating Urgency is like generating more pipeline in the month or creating outbound interest. There are variables in your control that will help, but you don’t have direct control.?

So should we be trying to create Urgency?

No. This is a mistake I see sales leadership make all the time. Focusing on indirect variables does not give you control (though indirect variables are useful for measuring progress over time). Trying to control indirect variables as inputs is dangerously close to the hope strategy. The good news is if we know from U=PIT that if we focus on PIT, Urgency will follow.?

So how do we focus on PIT?

Focus on getting to a mutual decision (and no is always an option) on three questions:

1: Is there meaningful pain we can solve?

2: Did we solve their pain?

3: Have we gotten into “the room where it happens?”?

We can unpack these three steps below:

Is there meaningful pain we can solve? The first step is for the AE to uncover or introduce meaningful pain. If AE skips this step, there is no way to control Urgency. We are just hoping it’s urgent. There are many strategies for being effective at this step. I’m not exploring how to do this well here, but I highly recommend Sandler and the Challenger Sale if you’re looking for a place to start. Once we have the pain, we have to ask ourselves, “can we solve it?” This is a mistake I see a lot of junior AE’s make. They work every deal that wants to talk to them. There is an opportunity cost to this as it’s impossible to work all deals well. If your solution doesn’t address their key pains, there is no way to drive Urgency. It’s impossible.

Did we solve their pain? It’s not enough for the prospect to feel pain; they also have to believe your offering can solve it. You aren’t uncovering or introducing pain for fun. We’re doing it to demonstrate how our offering uniquely solves that pain. As a seller, this was my favourite part of the sales process. It’s the chance to roll up your sleeves and artfully solution map your offering to their needs. Not going into detail here on how to go about this (though DM if interested), but at the end of the presentation, the goal is to get the prospect to agree with the sentiments that there is no world where they don’t make a change and your offering is best equipped to solve their challenges.?

Have we gotten into “the room where it happens?” I got the idea for “room where it happens” (RWIH moving forward) from Hamilton. Putting aside the historical context from the play, it’s a useful metaphor for the “power of the group” you are working with. RWIH is where decisions are made. By definition, if you make it in the RWIH,?the group of people you are working w/ have power. It’s crucial to note RWIH is metaphorical. It may not be one room or one conversation. Most of the time, it’s several. More often than not, an AE doesn’t start in the RWIH on their first call. That’s fine. They just have to get there before transitioning to a commercial conversation. This is a skill worth honing (and worthy of more exploration in a different essay)?

In Summary:?If there is meaningful pain and we can solve it, we have a high value for our I. If we got into the RWIH, we have a high value for P in our U=PIT formula. Do both, and you don’t need to focus on creating it. You have Urgency.?

If you create or uncover meaningful pain you can solve, for a group of people with power, you don't need to worry about creating Urgency...you have it!

“Wait... but what about the T in your equation, isn’t timing important?”?

Fair call out. I’ve been purposefully saving Time as a variable to explore last. Why? Because everyone always substitutes timing for Urgency, and that’s a mistake. What does a good T look like by itself? It sounds something like, “we need this done yesterday.” How often have you heard a timeline similar to that, and it turns out the initiative wasn’t a priority? Or maybe it was a priority to the person you were speaking to, but they could never seem to find the time to present their findings to leadership? If you’re in sales, the answer is all the time. You don’t get to a big U with a big T and little p and i. You get nowhere. That’s why it’s important to focus on PI before getting to T. If your deal has a strong PI - working on the T is useful. Providing some concession (doesn’t have to be a discount) that is timebound to constrict the T will drive more Urgency.

You don’t get to a big U with a big T and little p and i. You get nowhere.

When you have already focused on PI, and it’s time to focus on T, make it about the prospect. It’s always a mistake to artificially pick a deadline (like EOQ) and tell them they need to sign by this date. That’s your T, and your T is not part of U=PIT. Inevitably prospects will miss that deadline OR you risk feeling very “salesy” trying to push the deal through. Far better to ask, “when is the earliest you feel comfortable getting an agreement in place?” and “What happens if we miss that?” until you have a mutual timeline you both feel is realistic. Assuming you’ve gotten in the RWIH, and they have told you that your offering is best fitted to solve their pain, controlling for T with a concession and a mutually agreed-upon completion date is the final step to drive Urgency.???

Focus on finding, introducing, and solving pain. Focus on getting in the RWIH. The Urgency will take care of itself. God speed.