Sun Tzu on Sales: The Quick Win the Battle

Creating a sense of urgency.

“Quickness is the essence of the war.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I like to get things done quickly. Patience is not one of my core strengths, but I have learned overtime and through experience, it is required in certain realms of business. I can tell you one thing about time: it is one of the most critical aspects of the business and sales cycle, and as they say, “Timing is everything.” (not sure who “they” is here, but you get my drift). Sales organizations that are quick and nimble win every time, and those that have a culture of urgency, a true sense of urgency, are more successful than their peers.

That culture of urgency starts with sellers. It is shown over and over through sales statistics and reports that first responders win. Here are some stats below:

• The odds of making contact with a lead increased 100 fold if contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes (MIT/InsideSales Lead Response Study)
• The chances of qualifying a lead are 21x higher when called within 5 minutes (MIT/InsideSales Lead Response Study).
• With web leads, 78% of sales go to the first responder (Harvard Business School Study).
• 71% of customers say they have made purchases based on experience quality (Salesforce)

As a sales leader, you can create this sense of urgency with your teams, and most good sales people know this mantra. Having the right technology in place and notifications for your inside teams can help to ensure quick notifications and assignment of inbound leads. Metrics and reports can make sure you are hitting target response and call times.

But, as we all know, that same culture of urgency might be lacking in legal, accounting, support and product. Nothing is worse than getting an opportunity with a large target account and having an NDA or terms approval stuck in legal. Or special pricing tied up in approvals. Or that documentation from product/eng for the prospects security review team.

So how do you expand that culture of urgency throughout your organization? I’ll save that for another post. Would love your comments, and subscribe for future updates.