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Issue 10: Driving urgency EOY

Issue 10: Driving urgency EOY

Peter Ahn
December 05, 2024

December goes by fast in sales and everyone is trying to cram-in last minute projects + deals!

It’s why lately the most common question during my coaching sessions has been around driving urgency and ensuring 2024 ends successfully from a deal closing perspective.

So how do you drive urgency and what do you say to prospects who are stalling without sounding desperate?

Below are a few tips and thought starters as you send out more end of year proposals.

1. Remind your prospect of any offer expiration dates that you’ve conveyed:

When sending out pricing proposals, it’s important to clearly indicate when a discount expires if you’ve provided that as part of the deal structure. Without this, I’ve seen prospects come back months later expecting the same rate. As the offer expiration gets closer you can say things like:
“Given the discount expiration is end of next week I’d like to ensure we’re able to tie-up all loose ends. Can we get a final confirmation on moving forward? If priorities and timing has changed, happy to revisit the proposal at a later date but at that point pricing may have changed.”

2. Convey you need time to plan for implementation support or anything else that is critical to getting your customer off the ground on the right foot:

Beyond expiring a discount, you can also convey your very real needs to plan for implementation and onboarding support. Show that you’re a planner and say something like:
“As we wrap-up the year I’m starting to align my own internal resources for critical onboarding customers we want to prioritize. Given we’re starting to fill our calendar with kickoff calls and implementation plans could we get a sense for whether or not to include you in that planning? If the end of year formalizing of our partnership and the January kickoff is no longer the goal for you, let me know, but I’d love to get moving on this for you given the fast timelines we discussed a couple of weeks back.”

3. Be OK with punting the deal if you find the urgency you thought there was isn’t there:

Even after trying the approaches above, in some cases you can’t manufacture urgency. Either the prospect wants to prioritize you before end of year or they don’t and being too pushy around this can leave a bad taste. So my advice is to be upfront about the consequences for delaying, but don’t force the issue. You can say something like:

“Given I haven’t heard back from you on this, I’ll assume we likely can’t formalize things by end of year. Let me know if that’s not the case and we can move forward but also don’t want to bug you too much! I’ll check back early next year and we can re-discuss the commercials then.”

If you’d like more advice on how to navigate EOY sales deals join my free founder-led sales community, Zero to Hero, and I’d be happy to engage there if you post a thread within the discussion board! I’ve also launched the presale for my book, Unlocking Authentic Sales, and one of the presale packages includes a coaching offer from me. Happy EOY selling folks!

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Book presale live!

The presale for my book, Unlocking Authentic Sales, begins today and I’m excited to invite more of you on the journey as I prepare for a summer ‘25 launch. First 50 presale supporters get 20% off (code: "BEAUTHENTIC”)!