Download the preview chapter of Craig’s award-winning sales book – SHiFT! – and get free access to a Trigger Event Selling webinar that had 1,500 registrants.
In 2003, I (Craig Elias) launched a company called InnerSell to help people sell more by harnessing Trigger Events. This page is the story of how InnerSell came about and where it is today.
After leaving WorldCom in the summer of 2002, I decided to take my Trigger Event Selling knowledge and build a sales acceleration company that would help entrepreneurs, business leaders, sales and marketing professionals harness the ‘Trigger Events‘ that TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS.
The way I did that was by creating a company called InnerSell. InnerSell was built to let salespeople exchange information about the ‘Trigger Events‘ that happened to their customers. It was the original online lead exchange.
It was designed to help salespeople introduce their supplier of choice to prospects at EXACTLY the right time. In doing so, the salesperson could differentiate themselves from the competition become the buyers Emotional Favorite, and earn a finders fee that they could either keep, donate to charity or arrange to be given back to the customer as a discount.
The other intent was to find a way to monetize the 3 Trillion Dollars worth of information that is in the heads of salespeople that has limited value to the salespeople who have it but has significant value to vendors who would gladly pay for it.
The business entered and won Tim Drapers’ original Billion Dollar Idea Competition and won a $1,000,000 prize. I moved to San Francisco to collect the prize. Within a year, InnerSell was twice selected by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in all of North America and chosen as one of Silicon Valley’s 40 Hottest.
After only six months of being in San Francisco, my wife, Heather – who was still living in Calgary got pregnant. I met my wife at the age of 41, so we decided that even though I had to move to California, we should not wait to have children.
I had promised myself and my wife that I would not be a successful entrepreneur with ruined marriage and dysfunctional children so by the time Heather was six months pregnant I put in place a CEO and left to focus on being a great dad.
Upon my return to Calgary, I also decided that since no one else was teaching the world about Trigger Events that I would share with them the Trigger Event Selling method I had used for years. This was originally done under the InnerSell name but was moved to my current company Shift Selling, Inc. in April of 2006.
In its early days, the Trigger Event Selling method was known as Event-Based Selling and was then changed to Trigger Based Selling almost a year later, based on customer feedback.
The name was finally changed to Trigger Event Selling eight months later, based on the results of a LinkedIn question, and the full branding efforts of Trigger Event Selling began.
So while InnerSell is on hiatus, you can still benefit from Trigger Events by joining our groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, subscribing to our blog, and following us on Twitter.
If you have ANY questions about InnerSell, you can contact Craig Elias by phone or text (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias) or by using our contact form.
