Published 30 October 2026 · Last updated 28 October 2026
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Urgency in Sales: The Difference Between Activity and Progress
Why salespeople, sales leaders and customers need a shared understanding of what progress really means.
Urgency is one of those qualities we frequently talk about in sales but rarely stop to define. Salespeople are encouraged to demonstrate more of it, managers become frustrated when they cannot see enough of it and customers are sometimes criticised for failing to respond with the urgency we believe an opportunity deserves. Yet having spent much of my career working across sales, sales leadership and customer relationships, I’ve come to believe that the problem is often less about how quickly people are acting and more about whether they share an understanding of what needs to happen next.
I’ve worked with salespeople who seem extraordinarily busy, attending meetings, responding to internal requests and managing substantial sales funnels, yet whose opportunities progress remarkably slowly. I’ve also encountered people who appear considerably less frantic but consistently understand their priorities, prepare thoroughly and know what is required to move an opportunity forward. The difference isn’t necessarily effort or commitment. It is the relationship between their activity and the progress that activity creates.
This distinction becomes more interesting when we look beyond the individual salesperson. A manager may demand greater urgency while introducing internal priorities that compete with customer-facing work. A customer may appear unresponsive because the salesperson never established an appropriate timetable for their decision. Each party can become frustrated with the pace of an opportunity without fully understanding the circumstances influencing the others.
For me, this suggests that urgency is not simply an individual behaviour. It is something that must be understood and aligned across the commercial relationship.
The salesperson: making activity count
Perhaps the most visible demonstration of urgency is responsiveness. When a customer makes an enquiry, raises a concern or requests information, the time taken to respond can influence both the opportunity and their perception of the supplier.
Research published in Harvard Business Review in 2011 examined 1.25 million online sales leads received by 42 US companies. Businesses attempting contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify those leads as businesses waiting at least another hour. While these findings relate to online enquiries rather than every form of complex industrial selling, they reinforce an important commercial principle: when a customer reaches out, there is usually a reason for doing so at that moment.
Responding promptly doesn’t necessarily mean providing an immediate solution. A technical enquiry may require investigation, specialist input or a more detailed understanding of the application. But acknowledging the request, taking responsibility and agreeing when a meaningful response can be expected demonstrates that the customer’s requirement matters.
Preparation is another important expression of urgency, although it receives considerably less attention. A salesperson who arrives at a manufacturing site having reviewed the customer’s equipment, operating conditions and previous discussions is better placed to ask relevant questions and identify what needs to be understood. That doesn’t remove the need for discovery; it makes the available time more productive. Poor preparation, by contrast, often creates additional meetings, repeated questions and avoidable delays.
The same principle applies to the conclusion of a customer conversation. A positive meeting is not necessarily evidence of progress if nobody understands what happens next. Sending information, maintaining contact or arranging another discussion may be useful activities, but their value depends on whether they support the customer’s decision-making process.
I remember two salespeople whose approaches to our weekly WILO reviews illustrated this particularly well. One consistently arrived with a very busy middle of the sales funnel. There were plenty of opportunities to discuss, but establishing which mattered most and what needed to happen next was considerably more difficult. Another arrived with a clearly defined Top 5 and Big 5, understood the position of each opportunity and knew precisely where support was required.
Both were active, but the quality of the conversations was noticeably different. One had plenty happening; the other could explain what needed to happen next.
That, to me, is an important distinction. Urgency isn’t demonstrated simply through the volume of work undertaken. It is demonstrated through the clarity of priorities, the ownership of commitments and the ability to prevent important opportunities from drifting through avoidable inaction.
The sales leader: creating urgency rather than demanding it
The salesperson’s behaviour, however, is only part of the picture. Sales leaders influence the priorities, expectations and working environment in which those behaviours develop.
I’ve often found it interesting how quickly a manager can become frustrated by the apparent lack of urgency within a team. Opportunities aren’t progressing, forecasts begin to slip and the response is to demand more activity, closer monitoring and faster results. Sometimes that challenge is entirely appropriate. But I wonder how often leaders examine the competing priorities they’ve established before questioning the pace at which their salespeople are working.
Sales organisations need reporting, CRM discipline, account planning and performance reviews. I’ve spent much of my career helping businesses develop these capabilities, and I wouldn’t underestimate their importance. The difficulty arises when the processes intended to support selling begin to compete with the customer-facing work they’re supposed to enable.
A salesperson may find themselves completing an urgent forecast update, preparing for an internal review or responding to a management request while a prospective customer waits for information. Each internal task may be reasonable in isolation, but collectively they can establish a pattern in which the organisation’s requirements receive greater attention than the customer’s.
If that happens, the sales leader may unintentionally create the very lack of responsiveness they later criticise.
There is also a distinction between urgency and impatience. A manager reviewing a delayed opportunity may encourage another call or email because the customer hasn’t responded to a proposal. But the customer may be undertaking an internal evaluation, consulting colleagues or simply managing other responsibilities. Perhaps the salesperson never established an agreed follow-up date in the first place.
Pressing for more contact without understanding those circumstances can generate activity that satisfies an internal expectation while contributing little to the customer’s decision.
Effective sales leadership requires a more considered approach. Managers need to help salespeople understand which opportunities deserve attention, what is preventing progress and where support is required. Sometimes the appropriate response is to challenge an assumption, sometimes to make a decision or remove an obstacle, and sometimes to recognise that a customer needs time to complete a legitimate evaluation.
This is where coaching becomes particularly valuable. A good sales review should do more than establish whether activities have been completed or forecast dates remain achievable. It should improve the salesperson’s understanding of their opportunities and their ability to determine the next logical step.
The manager’s responsibility is not simply to demand movement. It is to create the clarity, alignment and conditions in which purposeful progress becomes possible.
The customer: understanding their reason to act
The third perspective is perhaps the one most easily overlooked.
A salesperson submits a proposal, anticipates a decision and records an expected closing date. When the customer doesn’t respond within that period, the opportunity begins to appear stalled. The salesperson becomes frustrated, the manager asks for an update and additional follow-up activity is encouraged.
But whose timetable are we measuring?
The date on which a salesperson wants an order is not necessarily the date on which a customer has a reason to make a decision. Customers operate within their own commercial, technical and operational circumstances. A maintenance manager may be managing an equipment failure, production demands and a planned shutdown. Procurement may be considering multiple supplier arrangements and contract renewals. A technical recommendation may require internal validation before a change can be approved.
Our proposal may be one of the most important opportunities in our sales funnel, but it is rarely the only thing occupying the customer’s attention.
This doesn’t mean that salespeople should accept endless delays or avoid challenging customers about their intentions. It means that the customer’s reason to act, decision-making process and appropriate timing need to be understood rather than assumed.
Our Buyer Revolution research into lubricant buying behaviours has reinforced how much investigation customers can undertake before engaging with a salesperson. Buyers may already have researched products, considered alternatives and developed a provisional view about the solution they need. Their reason for speaking with a supplier may be to validate their understanding, explore application-specific concerns or gain confidence in the consequences of a decision.
The salesperson creates value by understanding that existing thinking and helping the customer determine what remains unresolved.
In industrial markets, this can involve considerable complexity. A proposed lubrication change may offer improvements in equipment reliability or maintenance efficiency, but implementation might depend on technical approval, operational planning or a suitable maintenance window. The customer may recognise the value of the recommendation while having perfectly legitimate reasons not to proceed immediately.
A salesperson who understands those circumstances can help establish an appropriate next step. One who doesn’t may simply continue asking whether the proposal has been reviewed.
I suspect many disappointing follow-up conversations originate in the absence of a clear agreement during the preceding discussion. The proposal was promised and delivered, but the parties never established who would evaluate it, what information was required or when a further conversation would be useful.
Follow-up then becomes an attempt to recover clarity that should have been established earlier.
An agreed next step isn’t valuable because it gives the salesperson permission to chase. It is valuable because it creates a shared understanding of what the customer intends to do and how the salesperson can contribute.
Where the three perspectives meet
What interests me most is how easily these three perspectives can become disconnected.
The salesperson believes they’re demonstrating urgency by following up regularly. The sales manager believes they’re creating urgency by demanding more activity. The customer, meanwhile, may be working through a decision process that neither fully understands.
Everyone can be acting with good intentions, yet the opportunity still fails to progress.
The same disconnect can occur internally. A manager may emphasise the importance of rapid customer response while simultaneously introducing reporting requirements that consume the salesperson’s attention. The salesperson may feel accountable for progressing an opportunity while waiting for a technical or commercial decision from colleagues elsewhere in the business. The customer may experience a lack of responsiveness from the supplier even though the salesperson is working hard to navigate those internal obstacles.
In each situation, the problem is not necessarily a lack of effort. It is a lack of alignment about what matters, who is responsible and what needs to happen next.
I believe this is why urgency needs to be understood as more than speed. It requires the salesperson to recognise the right actions, the leader to establish the right priorities and the customer to have an opportunity to explain their circumstances and decision-making requirements.
These responsibilities are different, but they are connected.
When the salesperson understands the customer’s reason to act, when the next logical step has been discussed and when leadership supports the resulting priorities, urgency becomes less about pressure and more about purposeful progress.
That doesn’t guarantee a successful sale. Customers change their minds, projects are postponed, budgets disappear and competitors may offer more appropriate solutions. But it creates a more constructive basis for managing opportunities than simply increasing activity whenever the expected decision fails to arrive.
It also helps distinguish between different causes of delay. An opportunity awaiting technical approval is not the same as one where the customer has lost interest. A salesperson waiting for an internal pricing decision faces a different obstacle from someone who never established what the customer intended to do next. And a customer working towards a planned maintenance window is not necessarily demonstrating insufficient urgency simply because the salesperson would prefer an earlier order.
Treating these situations as though they require the same response is unlikely to improve performance.
From activity to progress
I don’t believe sales organisations should abandon activity measures, performance expectations or commercial deadlines. Consistent effort remains essential, and sales leaders have a responsibility to challenge underperformance. But the relationship between activity and progress deserves greater attention.
A salesperson may complete numerous customer meetings without meaningfully advancing an opportunity. A manager may conduct frequent pipeline reviews without improving the quality of decisions being made. A customer may receive repeated follow-up messages without gaining any additional confidence in the proposed solution.
Activity has taken place, but what has actually changed?
For me, that is the question worth asking.
The most effective salespeople I’ve encountered are not necessarily those who appear to be moving fastest. They’re often those who understand their priorities, prepare accordingly and take responsibility for ensuring that opportunities don’t drift through avoidable inaction.
The most effective sales leaders recognise that urgency cannot simply be demanded. It must be supported through clear priorities, sound judgement, timely decisions and a willingness to remove obstacles.
And the strongest customer relationships are those in which the salesperson understands the customer’s circumstances sufficiently well to distinguish between a genuine reason to act and a timetable that exists primarily within the seller’s forecast.
Perhaps that is the broader lesson from considering urgency through these three perspectives.
Being busy tells us something about how time is being spent. Demonstrating urgency tells us something about how effectively that time is being used to create progress.
And in B2B sales, meaningful progress is rarely achieved by one party acting faster in isolation. It is achieved when the people involved understand what matters, why it matters and what needs to happen next.
Research and further reading
Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K. and Elkington, D. (2011). The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. Harvard Business Review.
Plan.Grow.Do. — Buyer Revolution, research into B2B lubricant buying behaviours.
