Time Kills All Deals

Over this past week I was reminded of and/or quoted the old sales axiom that “Time kills all deals” in different situations both in my personal and professional lives.  It was too prominent of a thread throughout the week for me to ignore, so there is going to be deal talk in this space once again.

You see, time is a resource. It is something that can be borrowed, spent well, or easily wasted.  When you are trying to get something done on a deadline, there never seems to be enough of it.  When you are having fun you can say time flies by. When you are bored, it elapses in slow motion. And when you are raising kids, time always seems to go by so much faster than you ever imagined it would ($50 to anyone who looks at their Facebook Memories and doesn’t think this).

When it comes to any negotiation, deal or sale, make no mistake:  time is the enemy.  Time allows people to second guess. It allows people to consider other offers or candidates.  It allows people to get inside their own heads or be influenced by outside forces. Time allows people to take what was once a logical course of action and convince themselves it was illogical.  Budgets can change. Circumstances can change.  People can change.  So the longer time goes by from initial handshake to ultimate consummation, the chances of a deal getting done that is acceptable to you will decrease significantly.

This is why urgency can be your best weapon when it comes to closing any deal. Urgency provides you a measure of control.  It allows you to maximize the resource of time by compressing decision making and objections into a shorter window while minimizing the chance that outside factors could cause a logical deal to go off the rails. By introducing urgency into a negotiation (particularly one that has a limited number of involved parties), it doesn’t guarantee it will end favorably – but it does mitigate the risk that outside influences, introduced by the passage of time, will kill the deal.  It also ensures you will get to the final result as soon as possible.

So whenever someone insists on more time to make a decision or tries to create more time to make a decision, be aware that the end result will less likely be in your favor than if they decide today.  In these cases, forget what Mick Jagger says.  Time is not on your side – it’s out to kill your deal.

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