Sean D’Souza has released the latest issue of PsychoTactics Newsletter. The featured article is titled “How To Create Urgency In A Non-Urgent Situation”. [PsychoTactics]


Sean D’Souza’s latest article:

How To Create Urgency In A Non-Urgent Situation

The 14th of Feb.
The 25th of Dec.
And other assorted dates.

You know these dates well, because inevitably these dates create a sense of urgency.

And if you’ve got an event that has a looming date, urgency is not hard to create.

So a workshop will have an early-bird or a cut-off date.

A software release will have queues of people lining up to be the first ones to pick up the software.

And a football or cricket match will cause tens of thousands of people to drop everything and gravitate towards that sporting moment.

But what if you don’t have an event?

Do you just rollover and play Rover?

Well, you could but how about creating an event out of nothing at all.

So here are three ways to create urgency

And while we’re there, let’s also see a few examples, and analyse why these systems work so well.

1) Impending price-increase.
2) Extra Bonus
3) Creating an ‘insurance’ situation.

1) Impending Price Increase:

So you don’t think your clients would be happy with a price increase. Well hang on a second. I didn’t suggest you increase the prices.

I suggested you tell your customers that the price is going up.

Now customers know what to expect. They’ve been given fair warning. This kicks in the urgency factor, and the impending price-increase will get many, if not most of your customers reasonably motivated to buy products/services from you.

Example: I go for a therapeutic massage every month. And the prices of each session were going up by just $5. If I wanted to avoid the price increase, I’d have to buy five sessions to get the existing price.

And I did. The pain of having to pay more in the future, causes us to fill up our tank of petrol, to buy reduced-priced clothing and do all sorts of such silly things.

And if you’ve felt urgency to buy products/services you weren’t considering, well so does your customer.

This takes us to Point 2. Namely Bonuses.

2) Bonuses:

Let’s suppose you have some bonuses. These bonuses are very valuable to the customer, but will either be sold in future, or will not be available to the customer.

Again, the temptation of getting ‘more for less’ is irresistible. The more yummy the bonus, the greater the chances that your customer will feel urgency, thus creating an ‘event’ of sorts with a specific deadline.

Example: Buy consulting services before (fill in the date), and you get three bonus consulting sessions on (fill in the topic) worth $ (fill in the amount).

And of course it doesn’t stop with the bonus. Because there’s a third way to create urgency where none exists.

3) Creating an ‘insurance’ situation.’:

No matter what you sell, you’re solving a problem. But often, there’s a problem bigger than the one you’re offering to solve. So if you’re selling consulting on ‘how to write white papers’ for instance, the client may not feel any urgency, though it’s more than established that white papers do increase sales.

But bring up the topic of the impending ‘recession’, and suddenly urgency slips in through the front door.

The client is aware of the big problem, and wants insurance against that problem. And a client who is alerted to the bigger problem is more than likely to act, even though the event may or may not occur in the future.

Example: It’s called ‘Insurance’ situation for a reason. You get insurance against medical problems, house and contents, life and all types of wacky insurance.

You’ll probably never see a storm, and have no one breaking in, and you may even live forever, but you take the insurance anyway.

Customers take ‘insurance’ against predictable situations, and the change in the state of the economy, or any such changes is what is more than likely to create urgency.

Urgency doesn’t need to be driven by pre-defined events

All you need is an impending price-increase, an extra bonus, or an ‘insurance’ situation.

And you get urgency.
On 3rd of April.
Or 18th of June
Or just about any day of your choosing.

By Sean D’Souza

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*IMNewswatch would like to thank Sean D’Souza for granting permission to reprint the latest article.