Most founders instinctively try to "push" sales forward: creating urgency, sending non-stop follow-ups, and trying to convince prospects. The actual physics of sales is "pull." When a customer has genuine demand and lacks good options, they will do the work—scheduling meetings, bringing in stakeholders, and asking for information—to acquire your solution.

High-level company initiatives are not real demand. True demand only exists when a specific person has the project on their personal to-do list. Sales efforts are wasted if you cannot find and sell to that individual owner.

Don't just solve the problem a customer tells you about. Research their public strategic objectives for the year and identify where they are failing. Frame your solution as the critical tool to close that specific, high-level performance gap, creating urgency and executive buy-in.

Sales conversations often rush to demo a "better" product, assuming the buyer wants to improve. The crucial first step is to help the prospect recognize and quantify the hidden costs of their current "good enough" process, creating urgency to change before a solution is ever introduced.

Don't pitch features. The salesperson's role is to use questions to widen the gap between a prospect's current painful reality and their aspirational future. The tension created in this 'buying zone' is what motivates a purchase, not a list of your product's capabilities.

Discounts are effective for closing customers who are already trying to solve a problem. But applying these tactics to prospects without genuine pull manufactures a bad deal, leading to poor implementation and churn. It's a tool for execution, not demand creation.

A buyer might have an urgent need but lack the time or energy to complete the purchasing process. Salespeople can accelerate these deals by doing all the 'heavy lifting' and making it ridiculously easy to buy. If the process requires significant effort from a busy buyer, the deal will stall despite their interest.

Urgency isn't about deadlines or discounts. It's the critical point where a customer realizes that the risk of maintaining the status quo is greater than the risk of adopting your solution. A strong ROI case that highlights the cost of inaction is the key to creating this realization and closing the deal.

The fundamental force in a sale isn't a seller's persuasion. It's the buyer's pre-existing need to accomplish a task on their mental "to-do list." When your product (supply) fits that task better than alternatives, the buyer pulls it from you, requiring minimal convincing.