This month, our newsletter and blogs deal with the topic of “Creating urgency in a world that has slowed down.” When your buying public and your staff have been living in an environment that has, through the pandemic, slowed to a crawl, it can be tough to get them to move again. That’s what we’re about this month.
The New Normal
The real problem you’re up against is that business production—and even living itself—has sunk into a lower level that has become “the new normal.” At first, when you’re trying to press urgency, you’re going to be up against that lower level that people have now accepted as routine. If you take even a casual look around, you’ll see that this lower level has become a cultural phenomenon.
The answer is to create urgency with the public and your staff—consistently.
Don’t Cry Wolf
If you’re inconsistent with your urgency—meaning you’re urging your prospects, customers, and employees one moment, then laying back the next—it can create a kind of “crying wolf” scenario. If you remember the fable, villagers stopped believing the shepherd boy who cried wolf after the third or fourth time he did so, because he kept pranking them by crying “wolf!” when there was no wolf there. When the wolf finally did arrive and the boy called out for help, the villagers refused to come, and the wolf ate up all the sheep. Hence the saying, “Don’t cry wolf.”
Similarly, if you are calling for urgency one week, and the next you forget or don’t do it, the people you’re addressing will stop believing you and you’ll be right back where you were before you were trying to get everyone up and moving.
The Net Result
The consequence of this inconsistency of urgency is, at first, a rise in production or buying (or whatever you’re trying to achieve) and then a drop. Rises and drops may happen a few more times before everyone finally says, “Oh, stop! Either it’s a situation or it isn’t!” and everything kind of fizzles out.
Your prospects and customers won’t feel that urgency to buy, get into action, or whatever you’re trying to get them to do. Your staff won’t produce the way they really should because they’ll feel they can get away with it the way they have been for over a year.
Keep It Even
The way to move production, sales, and everything else back up out of lower levels is to apply urgency evenly. Keep it consistent—daily, weekly, monthly, and so on.
If you’ve got a marketing and sales campaign designed to get prospects buying, and customers to buy more, then keep regularly getting that message out. Do your planning so that there is no slowdown in that urgent message hitting its target public.
In getting your staff to be more productive, keep that urgency there with them, too. Ignite and keep sales or production games at a high level. Reward employees and salespeople for achieving quotas and keep setting those quotas slightly higher each time.
Avoid ups and downs by being consistent with urgency!
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