Every month, especially during the second half, I find myself trying to think of new ways to create urgency and boost sales.
For this month’s strategy, I encourage you to think about your current methods of creating urgency and how you could beef them up. Whether it’s for you personally or for your salespeople, you should be spending some time on this topic.
I know you have probably seen strategies on this before, but have you ever actually considered how much business you lose because you don’t create enough urgency?
What is the value in creating urgency?
Sales is really just emotion plus logic that leads to taking action (or not taking action). It’s important that you are in a relationship with buyers or sellers at the exact moment they are thinking of pulling the trigger, otherwise you risk losing the client to someone else.
When buyers and sellers even have the slightest clue that they are going to be buying or selling, they start telling everyone.
What happens from there?
You know the drill … “well, you should use my aunt.” Or “oh my gosh, my brother is the best. You should use him.” And don’t forget about the “neighborhood expert”!
Exactly! Once prospects declare their plans, it seems like everyone in the universe knows someone who sells real estate, and they’re all trying to push their person on your prospective client.
Thus the need for creating urgency when you have a “live” one. Plus, it really is usually in the prospect’s best interest to take action now rather than spending valuable time and resources while deciding what to do.
So, how do you create urgency without coming off as pushy?
A simple script to create urgency
Creating urgency is actually nothing more than mastering a few scripts and being able to visually show buyers or sellers the benefits of doing something now rather than waiting.
It’s important, however, that the prospects never feel for a second that you want or need the sale more than they do, and that’s why proper script practice, working on body language, mastering tonality, etc., is vital.
For the scripts to use, I recommend the following:
Sellers: “If you knew that by selling now, versus waiting, you may actually be able to put more money in your pocket, would you want to know how?”
Buyers: “If you knew that starting to shop for homes now meant getting into your new home in time for the summer and you could avoid some of the worst multiple-offer situations, would you entertain the idea of starting sooner?”
The above scripts will help you in creating the urgency you are looking for, but there is absolutely nothing more effective than breaking down the timing for prospects.
Most buyers and sellers have the idea that if they start looking for homes now, they’ll be moving in the middle of winter. The timing analysis really helps to show that is simply not the case.
In fact, if they started selling (or home-shopping, if you’re working with buyers) today and went under contract for purchase by the end of the month, they wouldn’t actually be getting keys in many cases until the end of April or early May. (That’s taking into consideration inspection and appraisal issues, mortgage approval time, occupancy and other factors).
So, it’s critical to set expectations and create that urgency with potential clients before they put it out there to everyone they know that they’re thinking about making a move. Because we all know what happens if you don’t get in the game first.
Jeff Glover is a Realtor with Jeff Glover & Associates in Michigan.
