Trigger Events 101: How to Boost Your Sales Lead Generation Success with Insightful and Actionable Trigger Events.

First of all, what’s a trigger event? A trigger event is an instance that disrupted the steady flow, changed the status quo. On a person level this event could be birth of a child (need diapers), marriage (don’t need night clubs) or as simple as a headache (need aspirin).rnOn a business level such trigger events could be: - Appointment or promotion of a key executivern- Acquisition of another companyrn- Opening of a branch officern- Raising capitalrn- Mergerrn- Going publicrn- Disposal of a business linern- Etc., etc., etc.rnWhy such trigger events are important? They are important for several reasons: - Change the status quo. They disrupt the status quo – the move the existing system of vendors, buyers, executives out of equilibrium, thus creating a perfect entry point for a new vendor – YOU! – to jump it. - Urge to buy. They create an authoritative, funded, unequivocal, and irresistible urge to buy. For example, if your company is going public, you, as a CFO, cannot NOT have auditors. Or if you opened a new office, you cannot NOT get it cleaned, etc. - Actionable Insight. They are immediate, time bound, actionable insight. They may not have existed yesterday, but they are here now, so that the nimblest vendor out there can capture this opportunity and gain an edge over the competition. Needless to say, trigger events are perishable – the more you wait to act on them, the less impactful they become as your competitors pile in, and the target company address the business need elsewhere.rnSo as a salesperson or sales executive, how could you use sales triggers to grow your sales pipeline, generate strong opportunities, and ultimately – sell more? Step 1. Identify Your Trigger EventrnIf you are sell bricks then issuance of a new building permit could be your trigger event. If you are a bankruptcy lawyer than a default on a credit line could be your trigger event. Think what circumstances generate the business need for your product or service. Step 2. Build Your Gathering SystemrnThis process could be as automatic as signing up for Google Alerts or as manual as calling experts “in the know” once a week. In reality it is probably a combination of RSS feeds, newletters, human curators and such. In the end, you’d want a process that generates a large enough number of insights per week to make it worthwhile. Step 3. Act on Trigger EventsrnYes. The most important part – act on these insights NOW. Not tomorrow, not after the holidays. Now. Acting could mean picking up a phone a congratulating the newly appointed executive. Or sending a highly personalized email. Step 4. Track Your Success and Optimize.rnOver time you will have enough data points to analyze what works and what doesn’t. What sources of insights tend to be more reliable/productive. What actions of your produce the most results. Armed with this information you can tweak your trigger event gathering and acting on to achieve even better results.rnYou can find more information at CTOsOnTheMove.com