Sales are becoming increasingly tough in today’s climate, as buyers are growing more time-strapped and saturated with other information. As a sales representative, being able to talk to the appropriate context and timing is critical. Trigger events can assist your sales prospecting process by placing you in front of the appropriate buyers with the correct context for beginning a discussion.
What is a Trigger Event?
A trigger event is a signal that results in buyer awareness of an opportunity for change or the need for what we offer. A trigger event is an occurrence that raises consumer consciousness about the prospect of change or the necessity for what we provide. Trigger events can occur in a variety of situations, including at the corporate, departmental, or even personal level of a business’s industry. Market fluctuations, environmental or economic adversity, and reputation worries are all conceivable trigger events.
Triggers provide a valuable insight into how a company is evolving, allowing you to anticipate potential opportunities. For example, when a business undergoes strategic transformations such as mergers and acquisitions, it may be more open to adopting new technologies or collaborating with different firms.
“Sixty-three percent (63%) of Best-in-Class firms currently deploy formal trigger event tools – notifications, RSS feeds, alerts, posting / tagging updates and the like – among their front-line sellers.”
Sales leaders can use trigger events to their advantage if they fully comprehend the qualities of their ideal buyer profile (ICP). Sales leaders should holistically comprehend the features of an ideal customer, which range from normal details such as company size, industry and location to technological adoption, revenue and growth patterns. It’s crucial to note that these characteristics are not the same as triggers. Attributes represent a business’s fundamental quantifiable or qualitative aspects. It’s not enough to comprehend a company by its features. We must also understand who within our target customers will be making purchasing decisions regarding our product or service, as well as what motivates those decisions. This implies that Trigger events are not created equal; therefore, an in-depth comprehension of your ideal customer profile, buyer personas, and buying behaviors is essential for crafting a successful B2B trigger event selling approach.
Examples of Useful Trigger Events
Events that are triggered can be categorized into the following six categories: growth, location, financial, recruiting, and legislative. Below are some examples of Trigger events that B2B sales professionals should monitor for:
- Appointment of C-Suite executives – The oral steroids vs injectable new C-Suite executives are often put in place to create change and achieve results in a short amount of time. As a result, their power to make decisions and desire for improvement means they are more inclined to utilize cutting-edge technologies and approaches. As a result, this opens up the market for you.
- Hiring Surge – Hiring sprees may represent company-wide change, which suggests that they may be more open to novel ideas. Alternatively, it might reflect outstanding internal performance. All of which makes for compelling arguments for selling.
- Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Activity – Any M&A activity is a sign of a company’s transformation. Changes in hiring, financing, and operations are expected throughout the organization, meaning new chances to use innovative technologies and methods.
- New Technology Installs – Identifying who is purchasing into technologies that you have partnerships/integrations with is one of the most efficient methods to take advantage of the signal of new technology installations. If your product works with Hubspot, look for companies that have recently started using it in your ICP. They will be able to make the most of your product or service, making them more likely to buy.
- Company Result Announcement – A company’s announcement of financial progress might be a signal that change is required. A fourth of poor results, for example, may be a indication that management is seeking to embrace innovation, which you may utilize to advertise your product or service.
Other examples of trigger events that are important to track are:
- New Job Post
- Hiring Surges
- News Mentions
- Office Location Changes
- Fundraises
- Website Updates
- Customer Role Changes
- Buyer Persona Role Changes
Why is having a strategy important when using Trigger events?
It’s critical to recognize that not all Trigger events are relevant to every business, which is why having a customized B2B trigger selling approach is so essential. It’s crucial to figure out who you want as your ideal consumer profile (ICP) before developing a B2B Trigger Event selling plan. Knowing this will assist you in developing a strategy and targeting the right people with your events. The following example explains why having a personalized Trigger event is so significant.
Let’s say you work as a sales development representative for a firm that sells an HR solution that links to human resources systems like Workday or SuccessFactors and serves more than 1,000 employees in the financial services sector. Every time a company starts using Workday or SuccessFactors, it represents a chance for you to engage with the contextual context around the Trigger event. This is not very beneficial for a salesperson attempting to market marketing automation software to the head of marketing at small businesses.
Thus, each individual company or sales person will need to have their own correctly identified ICP and buyer personas. Within your ICP, you’ll find the characteristics of businesses that are a good fit for what you’re selling. This is where you figure out what changes suggest an opportunity and how to most efficiently track them in order to reach out at the appropriate time with the correct context. For example, if you find that characteristics you’re looking for in your ICP are present in your country and are a fast-growing business, the triggers you’d be monitoring are company growth into your nation and strong financial performance.
B2B sales triggers can help you customize and personalize your sales pitch after you’ve identified when you want to reach future prospects. Triggers are beneficial in both timing and context, as they “warm up” the conversation we’re about to have. They demonstrate the research and relevance behind your cold outreach by “warming up” the discussion before it begins. When you have a reason for contacting your prospects, they will be able on hand to figure out what you’re saying.
Trigger events may be used in a variety of ways after you’ve started a contact with a cold call. Adapting the style of your sales team’s outreach, sending automated marketing emails based on a trigger, creating relevant gated content around it, and sharing other related material are just a few examples of how you might use it. Marketers found that by acting on trigger events, they could save 80% on direct mailing expenses. All of this will help to improve your ability to sell in the future.
How do you find trigger events?
There are a variety of ways to monitor trigger events effectively. You must be in front of prospects as soon as possible, therefore you must act quickly when you receive alerts from these systems.
- Setting up Google Alerts – Create a Google Alert for the name of your choice and set it up. New product announcements, company expansion, and senior executive employment changes are all examples of trigger events that this might assist you with monitoring.
- Monitoring LinkedIn feed – Following certain corporations or individuals that you are interested in on LinkedIn will provide you a live newsfeed of business announcements and job changes. Given the need for constant monitoring, this is more difficult to keep track of, and it might prevent your team from functioning in real time.
- Monitor Social Media – A lot of corporate news will be published on social media. Following these websites will help you get ahead of the curve when it comes to these announcements.
- Sales Intelligence Tools – Sales intelligence tools are the most useful out of the several methods. They can collate all the above information to feed you real-time alerts and data. One example of a sales intelligence tool is Triggr.
Overall, trigger events are a very potent weapon for salespeople to utilize. They will aid in shortening your sales cycle and increasing the efficiency of your team by providing background and motivation for the sales discussion. In all out of 206, 20% more of those who utilized Sales Triggers met their sales target. As a result, it’s critical to keep using them and improving your selling approach from there.
Author bio:
Thomas Rielly, founder of sales intelligence SaaS tool, Triggr. Triggr helps to empower your sales reps with sales intelligence data and real-time alerts of web based events that turn prospects into highly motivated buyers. Create precise prospecting lists, find lookalike customers and get real time notifications to sell first.