How to Drive Urgency

I was talking to a shop this morning about how they can drive urgency and get "open quotes" over the finish line. For me personally "no answer" is worse than losing a deal. Below are a few strategies that we talked through:

1. The obvious one here is to lean on their in-hands date. You can push, show urgency and get aggressive if the deadline for getting their merch in hand is looming.

2. We talked about communicating value on their end instead of "just following up" or "just checking in "using language more like, "I want to get this off your plate."

3. Availability. This could be availability of stock and garments, or it could be availability of production capacity. I'm not a fan of misleading or lying to them, but communicating urgency around getting exactly what you quoted, at that price, with the agreed upon deadline can help. "Let's get this booked before our rush time" or "let's get this done for you before supply and stock runs short."

4. Second voice. If a salesperson is having a tough time getting them live, have the owner step in and communicate directly with the customer. Ex. "I'm the owner of the shop. My salesperson filled me in on the situation, and it seems like you all have lost touch a bit. Could you please let us know if there's still a need, and I'll do whatever I can to make sure that we support you?"

5. Simply communicating back the value that you uncovered earlier in the sales process, IF we did a good discovery. As an example, you could say, "I was looking back at your file, and I noticed X was really important to you. If that's still the case, I'd love to get this over the finish line for you."

6. Get aggressive. At this point in the process, you've kind of earned the right to get aggressive in your outreach. You did a discovery. You put a quote together. You followed up with them. They have a need, and you're there to support them, so I am A-OK with getting aggressive on outreach. Double dial them (call once, when they don't pick up, call them right back). Call, text, email in the same 2-minute span. It's OK to push at this point. If they are upset at you reaching out and following up on an order, you were never going to get the business anyways. I found that this usually drives an answer, good or bad.

At Sales Ink, we teach print shops how to build urgency into their sales process naturally, so deals move forward without awkward pressure. Let us know if we can help!