By John Barrows | April 18, 2026 | 5 min read
How to create urgency in sales is the most common question I get in training, and the answer surprises people: you can’t. You can only uncover urgency that already exists, by adding so much value that the cost of waiting becomes impossible to ignore. The reps who get this close deals most people write off as dead.
It’s the question I get asked the most when I do training: “How do you create urgency?”
My answer is: “You can’t.”
We, as sales reps, cannot create urgency. We can try to manufacture it with discounts, but that’s just sad. Proactive discounting, when the client doesn’t even ask, is one of the most frustrating things in sales.
What we can do is uncover and drive urgency. And the way you do that is by adding real value.
Why “Add Value” Is Useless Advice
I know what you’re thinking. “Add value” is the most overused phrase in sales. Every trainer says it. Every LinkedIn post tells you to do it. But nobody tells you how. Especially if you’re a 22-year-old SDR reaching out to a CISO. How exactly are you supposed to add value to someone with 25 years of experience who makes 10x your salary?
I’ll show you exactly how. This week gave me one of the best real-world examples I’ve ever had.
The Deal That Went Dead
I was working on a deal with a prospective client. I knew the CRO from his previous role, so he was already familiar with my work. He told me his team was behind: reps were doing the spray and pray thing, 300 calls a week, low engagement, no real process.
We had a few conversations, everything aligned, and then I got the email: “We recently lost a team member on the enablement side. We’d like to pause for 90 days.”
We all know what that means.
When somebody tells you they’ll reconnect in 90 days, you might as well close it as a loss and move on.
Unless you give them a reason to come back sooner.
What Most Reps Do (And Why It Fails)
Most reps do one of two things when they get an email like that:
Option 1: Accept defeat and then “touch base” and “check in” every few weeks. This is passive and adds zero value.
Option 2: Fire back with “But I thought we were aligned on this?” trying to guilt the prospect into moving forward. This is desperate and also adds zero value.
Neither works. Both leave the buyer exactly where they were.
The Play That Revived It
The problem didn’t go away because they lost a person. If anything, it got worse. Their reps were still spraying and praying. Their pipeline was still weak. And now they had less enablement support than before.
So instead of accepting the pause, I decided to show them what they were missing.
I sat down with my AI co-pilot and, in about five minutes, did the following:
- Analyzed their business, their industry, and what their CRO is likely measured on right now
- Identified the specific gaps that were getting worse, not better, while they waited
- Built a sample deliverable showing exactly what their reps could be doing right now using my methodology
- Put it all together into something tangible they could see, feel, and react to
No inside knowledge. No access to their internal systems. Just what AI could find publicly, combined with my expertise and frameworks.
I sent it to the CRO with a simple message: If your team is already doing stuff like this, no need to respond. But if they aren’t, we should keep talking. I can show them how to do this and fill the enablement gap while you hire.
Got an immediate response: “Love this. Let’s talk next week.”
Dead deal. Revived. One email.
The 3-Step Framework for How to Create Urgency in Sales
Here’s the process, broken down so anyone can run it, including a 22-year-old SDR reaching out to a CISO.
Step 1: Understand their world. Use AI to research their company, their industry, and the specific person you’re reaching out to. What are the trends hitting their space? What is someone in their role measured on? What keeps them up at night? You need to understand their world better than the other 200 reps in their inbox.
Step 2: Find your value-add. Ask AI to give you five specific ways you could add value to that person right now. Not a pitch. Not a feature list. A real insight about their business they didn’t have before you showed up: a competitive analysis, a trend report, a risk assessment. Pick the one that hits hardest and build it out.
Step 3: Send it with confidence. Lead with what you found and make the cost of waiting obvious. No “checking in.” No apologies. If they’re already on top of it, they’ll tell you. If they’re not, you gave them a reason to move.
The reps who run this process are going to eat. Because most of your competition is still in the “checking in” cycle, waiting for permission to re-engage.
You don’t need permission. You need proof.
I put together a prompt framework you can copy and paste into any AI tool to do exactly what I did. It walks you through the research, person analysis, value-add, and the send. Works regardless of what you sell.
Stop waiting for urgency to show up. Go find it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you create urgency in a sales deal?
No. Sales reps cannot manufacture genuine urgency. What you can do is uncover urgency that already exists, by helping the buyer clearly see the cost of inaction. When you make the problem impossible to ignore, they find their own urgency.
What does “adding value” actually mean in B2B sales?
Adding value means giving the buyer something they didn’t have before you showed up: a competitive insight, a risk assessment, a hypothesis about their business, or a concrete example of what better looks like. It is not a pitch. It is not features. It is information that changes how they think about their situation.
How can a junior sales rep add value to a senior executive?
Use AI to do what experience used to require: research the industry, understand the executive’s priorities, analyze the company, and surface insights specific to their situation. AI democratizes the research. Your job is to apply judgment and bring a point of view.
What should you do when a deal goes on pause?
Don’t check in passively. Build something tangible that shows them what they’re missing by waiting. Make the cost of the delay concrete and visible. The goal is to give them a reason to re-engage on their own terms, not because you pressured them.
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