This blog post is about three things:

The 3 Best Trigger Events

In my last blog post I asked the question what are the best Trigger Events to be notified of and why.

Below is my answer to that question…

The three best Trigger Events to be notified of are:

  1. Changes in decision makers
  2. New funding
  3. Product launches

Changes in decision makers
If you’ve been in sales long enough you probably have a success story of how new business was won, or a horror story of how existing business was lost, when a decision maker changed.

When a new decision maker is put in place there are several factors that make this the best time to reach out.

  • They have been brought in to make change happen
  • They want to make change happen fast
  • They have little or no attachment to current solutions or vendors

There are two dynamics that make these the single best events to be notified of:

  1. A decision maker has money (aka budget), the authority to spend it, and influence. As a result they seldom need to experience all three trigger events (want, afford, justify) before making a purchase
  2. What I call the Domino Effect – A change in one decision maker leads to multiple opportunities:
    • The person who left – where did they go
    • The person who left – who took their place
    • The person who took their place – where did they come from

New Funding
Research shows that those with new funding are up to 8 times more likely to buy. When a decision maker experiences the first Trigger Event (a want Trigger Event) sometimes they don’t have the budget to buy what they want so they have to wait until they can afford to make the purchase.

I’m sure most readers of this blog have experienced something similar. You want to buy something but it’s not until you get a raise, promotion, or a new job that you have the funds to make the purchase.

For businesses these funding increases that help someone afford to buy can come in several forms:

  • Direct investment by an institutional investor or selling shares on the stock market
  • A new fiscal year which brings with it new funding
  • A project that had budget assigned to it is late and the funds need to be spent before the end of the fiscal year

Product Launches
When a new product is launched funding is assigned to make sure that product launch is successful. That funding if often assigned to numerous solutions which means an investment in new processes, new infrastructure, and new training.

Just like executive changes, product launches can also have a domino effect. When one company launches a product it often leads to numerous competitors releasing something similar which results in even more investment in processes, infrastructure, and training.

Just like I do every month, I offered $1,500 of my time for the answer with the most votes but no one found the time to answer the question.

Golden Sales Strategies of Top Performers

In this ‘real time selling’ event Art Sobczak (the Gold medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 ), Steve Connolly (Senior Product Manager for OneSource – the Gold medal winner of the Top Sales 2.0 Solutions of 2010) and myself (Bronze medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010) join forces to share the golden strategies of top performers.

This is a real-time selling event in which we will look at three recent Trigger Events and share how you can use them to sell a number of different solutions.

We have posted a poll to get input into the three products you want us to pretend we are selling and the three choices that get the most votes will be the ones we apply the ‘real-time’ Trigger Events to. So vote for your choice and tell your friends to vote so you can learn strategies that are specific to what you sell.

Date: Tuesday May 17th @ 9:00AM PST | 12:00PM EST

Speakers: Art Sobczak, Steve Connolly & Craig Elias

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants will receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!


http://bit.ly/triggerwebinar

Selling to the C-Suite

Ivan Taylor recently introduced me to Steve Bistritz – the author of Selling to the C-Suite -and based upon our initial conversation I decided to do my first ever podcast.

This first one talks about the importance of getting involved early in the buyer’s buying process so you can shape a decision maker’s perspective of the problem and the solution.

There are certain times in the buying cycle where decision makers are more involved and other times when you can’t get their attention because the next steps of the buying decision have been moved down the organization.

Below is the first of two podcasts with Steve.