“Trust always outperforms pressure”.
How often are customers made to feel pressured into a purchase with phrases like “Limited time offer”, “Act now before it’s gone”, and “Only a few spots left”? Fairly often. These phrases exist because they work, especially when the ‘salesperson’ within a sale is seemingly non-existent like online clothing purchases. However, there exists a fine line between genuine urgency and manufactured pressure used to push people into a buying situation in which they don’t feel comfortable.
In high school, I played for my school’s baseball team. In the winters, each player would sell mulch to local residents to raise money for our program. At 15 years old, door-to-door sales were daunting, and I was urged by my coaches to make my offer “more enticing” by using phrases like: “this deal won’t last for long”, and “You won’t find a deal like this anywhere else”. However, I quickly realized that by using ‘urgency phrases’, many potential customers became defensive and suddenly unsure about the situation. I found that these phrases shifted the interaction from ‘the neighborhood kid trying to fund his favorite sport’ to ‘the neighborhood kid trying to sell me something or rip me off’.
The issue wasn’t necessarily the urgency itself, but the intent behind it. Are you actually attempting to help the customer make a timely purchase, or are you trying to pressure them into a purchase? Often, it’s the latter.
In the long run, you might not close as many ‘impulse sales’, but you will create more trust with customers, and that’s what keeps them coming back.