Creating Urgency With Clients | Ryan Dohrn - Sales Training Tips and Sales Advice

What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. And this month we're focusing in on urgency. And what do I mean? Like, hey, get our clients to actually make a decision. Is— am I the only one that's kind of feeling like it's taken them a long time to make a decision? I mean, I remember when people would say, oh, in October we'll commit for next year. And now it's like, well, we'll commit For next year, next year. So what are we gonna do to create some urgency out there? Hey, if you like these videos, you like the podcast or whatever, be sure to like us and subscribe down below to let Google know and YouTube know how we're doing. All right, there's 3 main things that I'd love for you to consider as we talk about urgency. All right, the first one, some of you might not like because it does involve incentives, which in some of your cases will involve discounting. Now recognize, friends, that I'm not a person that likes to go to the discount well very fast, okay? So the incentives for me are typically not discount-based incentives, but they could be. For example, if you're willing to sign before the end of the year, if you're willing to sign within this period of time, we'll give you a 15% discount. Now you could go that route. I personally don't like that, although I know that people love to save money. Rather, what I would like to do is give people bonuses based upon their commitment. Like, if you sign before the end of the year, you get these 3 extra things, whatever those things might potentially be. Hopefully, fingers crossed, those would be things that aren't actually going to cost you any money. Now, those of you that are like me selling digital and media marketing solutions, one of the things I like to do to incentivize people is do things like put their digital inventory on hold. So if someone said, hey, Ryan, I wanna be a podcast sponsor, a sponsor of your podcast, no problem. What I need to do though is set that digital inventory on hold for you 'cause we got a lot of people that are considering it. So because of that, I wanna set that inventory aside for you to make sure it'll be there when you need it. I might even say no obligation or something like that. Now, some other incentives though could be, especially for those of you watching in the media business, for example, if you buy 4 ads from me, we will double the impressions on that 4th campaign. Or if you buy 4 magazine ads from me, we will double the size of that 4th ad. I mean, you have to print the page anyway, right? So it's those type of incentives. People don't ever think they're gimmicky, friends. I mean, you can make them gimmicky, But it's not a gimmick, friends. What it is, is it's our opportunity to use normal psychology to move the needle and get people to be just a little more urgent. All right, the second thing is you really need to get buy-in fast. If you're a sales organization where it takes a while for you to get a proposal to somebody because you need all the intimate details, you need it to be exactly perfect, I'm just going to outsell you. My teams are going to outsell you. Because we're going to go to the meeting with some ideas ready to go. When I'm meeting with somebody, I'm going to sort of use that model of, I assume this is something you might like. We've observed this with other customers that are similar to you. Let's talk about pricing. I want you to consider this. If you are a buyer of a product and you meet with 2 separate salespeople, the first salesperson is like me that says, hey, here's what it's going to cost. In general, I might need to tweak on it a little bit, but in general, this is kind of what, you know, we're thinking. Or B, number 2, salesperson number 2, well, I need to go back to the office and create a proposal for you. I mean, who are you more attracted to in that circumstance? Well, you're almost always going to be more attracted to somebody that is ready to go, somebody that's ready to move that needle forward fast. See, a lot of times, friends, when you're thinking about selling, people, you're so worried about all the little details that you're the one that actually slows down the sale. Now, I respect, represent, and understand that a lot of times we do need to go back to the office and get really concrete information. But if you can meet with me and I can say, you know, in general, in the past, people we've worked with, you know, you're probably looking at $20,000, or Or alternative B, well, um, you know, it's— I, I don't know exactly what it's going to cost, so let me go back to the office and let me figure this out and talk to the people I need to talk to. Who are you more attracted to? From an urgency perspective, I want them to consider what I'm pitching in that very, very first meeting. I don't want to have to leave to create a proposal, if at all possible. Now, friends, I recognize some Some of you out there that are selling, you just, you can't do that. I get it. But if there's a little piece and part that you can grab of that, get people to consideration, deeply considering things on that very first meeting. Okay. All right. The third thing that I'd love for you to consider is agreeing on a follow-up plan. You don't know the number of sales calls that I've been a part of where the client will say, you know, hey, we'll get back in touch with you in a week. And the sales rep is like, phew, good, awesome, see you in a week. That is destiny for failure in the sales business, friends. What you need to do is always be in control of the follow-up. Don't you dare let that customer control the timeline for the follow-up. So there's a lot of big sales trainers out there, you know who you are, and you'll say things like, get in alignment with the buying cycle of your buyer. Okay, well, that sounds good as a book title or the title of a YouTube video, but let's just be real here, friends. When you let clients control the follow-up, guess what happens? They ghost you, or it takes too darn long, or you just basically just— you don't know what to do. So when I'm meeting with somebody and they say, hey, I'd love to meet with you next week, awesome, that sounds great. What would I need to do to get that on the calendar now to make sure we don't miss each other? Now, if somebody says, I'm going to follow up with you in 2 months, all right, a lot can happen in 2 months. You You've seen what's happened in the last few months just here in the world that we live in, right? So what I like to do is say things like, you know, 2 months, wow, a lot could transpire between now and then. So what I'd love to do is get an appointment on the calendar, brief, short, to the point, say 5 minutes or 10 minutes so that we can reconnect on this. Then I wanna get my phone out, get my computer out and get a date on the calendar. Then I want to ask the next question. So we're set to meet Thursday at 3 o'clock. Awesome. I'll send you a Zoom link, and I promise these meetings will be brief. But if we were to miss each other, what's the best way for me to re-engage with you? And if you say that, it's kind of psychologically saying, hey, if you stand me up for our date, here's what I'm going to do. Now, I'll make suggestions. May I send you a text message? Would a smoke signal be better? How about a carrier pigeon? You know, I kind of make it kind of a light conversation, recognizing, friends, that I need to do these things to control the follow-up because part of follow-up is in the urgency piece of the puzzle. So first thing we talked about, creating urgency incentives. Super, super important. The second thing is I would encourage you To try to get to a deeper point of consideration at the initial meeting rather than leaving to create something from scratch. And then the third thing to consider is you really do need to create and agree on a follow-up schedule. This is what our follow-up schedule will look like. This is how the timeline might lay out. Now, never forget, friends, every sales circumstance is different, but a lot of these rules are directly applicable No matter what it is out there that you are selling, never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. I'm going to stop saying that. We're— I mean, we're a little weird for doing this every day, right? But I love it. This is a great job, friends. It'll feed your family successfully for a lifetime. Love to train your sales team. Love to coach you up. Love to come to your sales meeting and get you motivated to sell more. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, hope that's helpful to you. We will see you on the next video and the next podcast.