What is a Sales Trigger?
An occurrence at a potential customer’s business which gives rise to a sales opportunity for you is essentially what is meant by a sales trigger event. Assuming you are in the business of selling office equipment, it stands to reason that when a new office opens, you should make contact with the company running it in order to maximize sales opportunities.
Trigger events serve as the groundwork for the establishment of sales triggers. A trigger event is a major event that could have a positive or negative impact on the company. For instance, a company may undertake international expansion, which could be seen as a beneficial trigger event, or if the company was experiencing reduced sales, it may decide to lay off staff, creating a negative trigger event. Sales triggers refer to using an event as an opportunity to reach out to a potential customer. It is understood from its title what kind of concept it is.
On the other hand, sales triggers offer an opportunity for you to access entirely different individuals or businesses. Conversely, sales triggers may also be utilized as a prompt to develop your current customer connections more thoroughly and, for instance, extend congratulations to a current customer on their anniversary or the opening of a new location.
What is a Trigger Event?
Any occurrence that offers a chance for marketing or sales to take place is referred to as a trigger event. Automated processes for sales and marketing utilize trigger events in order to allow small firms to grow their interactions with customers.
Timing is everything. If you reach out to a potential customer directly after they make a costly purchase of a product from a rival, it is unlikely they will want to speak with you.
If your potential client is shopping around for a new supplier, take the initiative and contact them before they start looking into other options. Doing this puts your offering in an advantageous position, causing it to be more noticed.
So what do sales trigger events look like? This is a list of 30 beneficial situations and the places you can find them.
Sales Trigger Events
1. New Executives
A newly recruited executive of the C-suite has great power and is eager to make dramatic changes. Since the company doesn’t have built-in custom and the workers need to prove their significance quickly, the administrators are more amenable to inventive thoughts than the larger part of business executives. It’s a perfect time for your pitch.
Set up a Google alert for the associated enterprise, investigate the business’s official press releases web page, and stay up to date on happenings with LinkedIn for this special occasion.
2. New Job/Role for Current Contact
Reach out to a customer who has been pleased with your product or services and inquire if they would like to maintain their patronage even if they change job roles or move to a new company. If your product served them well in their prior job, they will be enthusiastic to promote it in their new one.
Track this event with: LinkedIn
3. Large Customer Announcement
If the customer has recently gained a large contract, they will have a larger amount of money coming in. Propose using a portion of the money to create an advantage for them.
Use Google alerts, review press releases, and stay up to date with industry news to monitor this event.
4. Company Expansion
A relocation to a new office means that a wide variety of new supplies and services will be needed. It depends on what your item or service is, but this could be a chance to either offer an upsell or present something new.
Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page
5. Company Relocation
A relocated office is essentially a new office. See above.
Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page
6. New Product/Service Announcement
A company is taking a risk by introducing a new product or service to an unknown market. Exploring new frontiers necessitates a different variety of assistance and possibly the use of novel suppliers.
Follow this event using: Google notifications, a page with press releases, recent industry news, and social media posts.
7. Competitive Product/Service Announcement
A rival may have already announced something new before your prospect had the chance to, or even completely overshadowed them. You can be certain that if a competitor took a daring step, your potential customer will want to answer back with a daring move. If you are able to assist towards achieving this goal, your contribution would be appreciated.
Keep an eye on this occurrence using Google alerts, a press releases page, sector news, and social media.
8. Major Competitive Move
This encompasses any significant work that goes beyond the initiation of a product, such as a promotion, piece of promotion, successful client acquisition, or executive modification. When one player moves, competitors won’t be far behind.
Keep apprised of this occurrence by tracking Google notifications, examining press releases, monitoring industry updates, and staying connected on social media.
9. Dissatisfaction with Current Vendor
If your prospect indicates that they are not content with their current provider, take advantage of the situation. Keep in mind that this could be indicated in a variety of ways rather than just a simple social media post; search for reports or legal proceedings that reflect a deteriorating connection.
Track this event with: Industry news, social media
10. Bad Quarter
Is the company losing money fast? Are you offering anything that could stop the trend from happening? Introduce yourself.
Monitor this event with: financial filings, investor conferences, field reports.
11. Good Quarter
Is the company raking in money like crazy? After that, they will be more open to endeavors that could aid them in continuing to make progress or hasten their development. Introduce yourself.
Monitor this event by researching: SEC filings, earnings calls, and industry news.
12. Mergers and Acquisitions
The merging of two entities presents a terrific opportunity to boost income. Promote your product or service to those who aren’t already customers, or get started on the right foot when starting fresh.
Monitor this occurrence with: Google notifications, press releases page, market reports.
13. Legal Problems
If a corporation incurs a penalty for their lack of adherence to regulations, they will likely be seeking some means of ensuring such problems do not arise again in the future. The salesperson who can intervene during a crisis by providing assistance will appear to be heroic.
Track this event with: Industry news
14. Significant Changes in Hiring Velocity
Whether a business is bringing on a lot of new personnel or releasing a big group of workers, any huge change in recruitment can be a noteworthy occasion – as long as it is associated with what you’re selling.
Follow this event with Google notifications, industry updates, and a page for press releases.
15. Major Industry Development
A huge change in the sector will necessitate everyone involved to take steps to benefit from a chance or stay away from a danger. If you are able to support either objective, contact us immediately.
Track this event with: Industry news
16. New Organizational Strategy/Initiatives
It is difficult to gain an insight into a company to determine which projects are being financially supported and which ones are getting postponed or altogether abandoned. But if you can consider the information given in a post or the alterations in behavior on social media and use that data to present what you have to offer, potential customers will be amazed at your seemingly supernatural abilities.
Track this event with: Social media, insider correspondence
17. Buyer Opens Your Email
You know when you’re most top of mind? When someone is accessing your email via their mobile device or computer. Although this situation is not as impactful for them as it is for you, it is still an optimal opportunity to seize their focus when you currently have it.
Track this event with: HubSpot Sales
18. New Legislation
The Affordable Care Act stipulated that companies which had not provided healthcare benefits to their workers were suddenly required to do so. To figure out which personnel could qualify and which could not, these businesses had to analyze the amount of time staff members worked with very precise regulations. What would happen if the organization did not have an intricate system of tracking time? Ouch.
Vendors of technology related to Human Resources realized the opportunity to aid companies that have difficulty in following the Obamacare laws and have made a large number of new sales in doing so. It pays off to monitor legal codes and rules in whatever sector you serve, as you may be able to provide assistance when your clients are in a difficult position.
Track this event with: Industry news
How Sales Triggers Boost Your Sales Strategy in B2B
No doubt, the success of your B2B sales is always contingent upon numerous elements. Aside from the capabilities of the members of your salesforce in interfacing with consumers, a sound sales strategy is likewise critical. No matter how great the product is, how great the marketing and advertising strategies are, there is no point if there’s no demand from the target audience. Business customers are more likely to think logically and respond better to well thought-out advertisements rather than the ones which arouse strong emotions—even though in all types of advertising, we are always targeting people rather than companies. Timing is extremely critical in the B2B sales arena. This is relevant for both specialized offerings that are only bought under specific conditions and typically require large financial outlay, as well as for regular necessities. A great deal of rivals are available who can provide a product that is similar in quality and at comparable prices. To sum it up: If you, as the provider, present your offer to a possible client at an appropriate occasion, with a persuasive pitch and the suitable sales arguments, you will have the most promising chance of finalizing a transaction. Guess what: Sales triggers give you exactly the right conversation starters and opportunities to sell your solution!
Big Advantages of Sales Triggers
We have already gone over the benefits of utilizing sales triggers. In spite of this, we would like to give you a short summary of all of them.
Personalized Conversation Openers
One of the best aspects of using B2B sales triggers is that they enable you to craft a personalized pitch as well as create a conversation opener. You work in a recruiting agency, and you have identified (through a sales trigger) that a company needs to fill multiple roles, or that some roles have been vacant for an extended period. Using the phrase “job posting” as an impetus, you can uncover the necessary companies and alert them of your service. In the discussion opener, you can then talk about precisely these new roles. Your counterpart will be astonished by the swiftness and extent of your investigation!
The Perfect Time for an Approach
It is essential to timeliness in order to be successful in the same instance. If you approach a company that has no available positions and is likely not recruiting new staff, what result would that have? At the most unfavorable outcome, your desired company might perceive your offer as unwanted and unsuitable. That would be precisely the result you are trying to avoid, correct? By employing sales triggers, you can ensure confidence that a trigger event has recently occurred in an organization, allowing you to contact them. If a corporation is growing and needs to acquire office supplies and experienced personnel, and you can provide both, make contact with them when they make an announcement about their growth!
Up- and Cross-selling Potentials
The usage of sales triggers can be beneficial in boosting cross-selling and upselling. How? Conceive of the possibility that one of your current clients gets honored with an award. Now is the ideal moment to reconnect and initiate a dialogue surrounding the honor. Perhaps you have heard about a customer joining forces with another company or that the year ended on a positive note for a business. You can utilize all of the incentives for sales for an existing customer to re-establish contact with them. If the sales report reveals that your customer’s finances are in good shape – for example, demonstrating increased employment opportunities, more customers and a successful business year – then it’s the perfect situation for upselling and cross-selling!
Faster Than Your Competitors
Do you genuinely believe that your proposal is so delectable that you won’t need to work quicker than your competitors? If you take the initiative to be the very first to contact a company after being made aware of an opportune sales signal, your politeness will make an lasting impression upon your recipient.
If they require something that is somewhat akin to your proposal, you will be remembered.
Often companies don’t have the time or energy to compare many providers, so it pays off twice for you if you are fast thanks to the right sales trigger and
place your offer right at the beginning.
This way, your counterpart doesn’t even have to search and may accept your offer very gladly.
Sales Trigger Based Selling is Worth it!
Occurrences that start the selling process can significantly enhance success in B2B sales. Talking to your target market at the appropriate moment, with the appropriate messaging and a relevant proposal, greatly reduces haphazard expenses compared to more “conventional” techniques.
