sales intelligence

Whether you are looking for a new deal or figuring out how to move existing deals forward quickly, tracking sales triggers adds momentum to your efforts.

What are sales triggers?

Sales triggers are events that signal an opportunity for cross-selling, upselling or new customer acquisition. 

In sales, timing is everything, as per Craig Elias, author of Shift Selling, your odds of closing a sale improve by 74% if you reach out to the decision-makers at the right time

Tracking sales triggers provide sales reps with unique business context to initiate highly personalized conversations at the right time. 

Sales triggers help you uncover actionable insights both at the account and prospect level.

Getting the information about an event is only half the job done as your competitors might also be receiving similar information. How you use the insights to make a conversation relevant to your prospect gives you the real edge. 

Here are 5 sales triggers you can track easily. We will also cover how to track and effectively use them.

1. New Funding round or Additional Funding.

2. Geographical Expansion/New Market Entry.

3. New Product/Service launch.

4. New Hirings.

5. Management changes

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1. New Funding or Additional Funding round  

Any company raising funds is an indication of an increased budget for spending across functions. Companies’ focus areas of investing fresh money may vary depending on the stage at which they have raised new or additional funding.

An early-stage company might plan to spend more on product and services that help accelerate growth from a marketing and sales perspective, whereas, a late-stage company may look to expand to a new market or geography or build a new product line.

Based on the stage identify which companies can benefit most out of your product/services. 

How to track – 

Globally on an average 1000-1200 companies raise new rounds of funding and there are multiple sources you can use to stay fully updated – 

1. Using Google Alerts, you can set daily funding alerts globally or any specific geography.

2. Use Easyleadz to access recently funded startups and contacts, list is updated on a regular basis and download needs a small share and love from you.

3. You can use Crunchbase Pro to set alerts for receiving regular updates about funding.

How to personalize messaging

Your prospects would be getting Congratulatory messages left, right and center. Congratulate them but go beyond just congratulating and immediately making your ask. 

Use insights from funding information to share how exactly they stand to benefit from your product/services at this point in time. Create urgency without being pushy.

For e.g.

It takes persistence to build a thriving and growing business, on top of it getting the validation from the investment community is commendable. I wanted to congratulate you for the recent funding round.

At this phase of the growth, businesses start adopting processes to build a scalable customer services team, with it comes to the need for implementing a scalable customer service software.

We at X  helped companies like {similar customers to the one you are approaching} at the same stage {benefits}.

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2. Geographical Expansion/New Market Entry

An existing customer of yours might be having plans to start pitching their product to a new market or a foreign entity may be planning to move into the geography you already serve.

In such events budgets are already lined up for expansion and the time is right to make a move and engage the decision-makers early. 

This is also the time when companies start making new hires. 

How to track –

1. Business expansion news via Google Alerts. 

2. LinkedIn sends Daily Rundown every morning and covers majors Industry and Company events. Follow target company pages and any company related mentions or news will appear in your feed.

3. Twitter is another free source where companies send out such announce via their official handles or you can use Twitter’s advanced search functionality to search for specific keywords.

How to personalize messaging

Expansion to any geography or market brings its own set of challenges like identifying new vendors, hiring locally, looking for new office space, etc. 

Identify the pain points your product/service stands best to address. Be specific with how you have helped other companies post-expansion. 

If you have helped a competitor and it has been a success even better.

For e.g.

I came across the news of your companies plans of expanding to X {location/geography/market} and having an immediate conversation would be valuable.

We at {company name} have helped companies like A, B, and C in building a talented team of software developers by connecting them with top-notch talent in X {location}

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3. New Product/Service Launch

Whenever new product or services are launched or about to be launched, there are budgets and resources already allocated. 

For e.g. An e-commerce company moving to an omnichannel retail strategy by opening up a line of stores.

Generally, there are two types of opportunities that open up – 

• When there is an announcement of an upcoming launch.
• When a company has recently launched.

Depending, in which scenario your product/service could benefit you can track either or both.

How to track

1. Use Twitter to get information about upcoming and recent launches using keywords like “recently launched” and “launching soon”.

2. Google alerts

3. Follow company pages on LinkedIn for updates.

How to personalize messaging

Product/service launches present a short window of opportunity. It’s important to do your homework before reaching out to your prospects as to how exactly your product/service can make the launch successful.

For e.g.

With the launch of your new upcoming stores across 5 major cities, I thought to drop by and ask if we can connect and discuss, how we can help furnish your stores.

We at {company name} have helped companies like A, B, and C during their pre-launch phase of expanding their stores across the country.

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4. New Hirings

Information about hiring patterns of a company can uncover a lot of insights which would otherwise be hard to find. All you need to do is access job boards regularly mostly free of cost.

Tracking hiring can help you identify – 

• Fast-growing companies. If any company in small-mid size range has a lot of job openings across different functions that is your cue.

• Technologies used by companies. Not all technologies used by a company can be uncovered from the outside, either you ask someone or look at which roles they are hiring for and indirectly identify. For e.g., If a company is hiring for Salesforce admin (given the company is not a hiring agency or technology services provider) they ought to be using Salesforce.

• Product/Services they may need. Depending on the role a company is hiring for and growth in a particular function will help you identify if there could be an arising need for the product/service you are selling. 

We at Easyleadz have used New job hiring for prospecting and sending cold emails to companies hiring for B2B sales, Inside Sales and similar roles. Using this approach our response rates increased by 30-40% across all our campaigns as compared to targeting companies who are not currently hiring.

For one of the campaigns, we targeted startups hiring for Inside sales roles via Angel.co and got a 28% response rate primarily because we reached out at the right time while they are expanding their sales team and trying to drive more revenue.

How to Track – 

1. Set up customized job-alerts via Angel List For e.g., If you help companies in providing talent for Data analytics, set up job alerts for the hiring of Data analytics, Big data analytics, data science, and other similar roles.

2. Use LinkedIn Job search to track the number of open vacancies for particular accounts you are looking to target and more filters to create a targeted search.

How to personalize messaging

You can use new hiring as a conversation starter, it also shows your prospect you are making efforts to know more about their company than just being generic.

For e.g.

My army of robots told me that you are hiring for Inside sales at @companyname. 

I thought of dropping a quick note about how we can help your expanding sales team by providing contact details of right decision makers for lead generation campaigns.

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5. Management Changes

Whenever senior management changes take places, it leads to changes in how decision making is done at any organization. Creating an immediate impact at a new job is a top priority on every new hire’s agenda and more so at the C-level. 

If you can make a new VP make a positive impact at the start of their stint through your product/service, you not only have a loyal customer but also an advocate.

Track these changes – 

• When a new senior-level management shift happens at your existing customer.

• Senior-level management shift happens at an account you had been targeting. 

• A senior-level manager at an existing customer moves to a C-level position at a new firm.

• Promotions, a bit underused but you can use it to great effect with someone in your existing network or when you come to know of a new prospect moves from managerial to executive level.

Initially build a relationship and start pitching about your product/services down a few months into their tenure. Don’t pitch just when they have joined/moved as initially mostly it is about settling down and getting familiar with the new workplace. 

Decisions worth making generally start to take priority 2-3 months down the line. It is the most opportune time to close the sale.

How to Track – 

1. Set up Job alerts for senior-level executive positions relevant to you via Linkedin or Angel List

2. Use sales navigator to track job changes at positions you want to track along with other targeting criteria applicable. Linkedin also gives you a notification when someone in your network gets promoted or starts a new 

How to personalize messaging

Don’t just congratulate your prospect, everyone would be doing that instead take this opportunity to show your prospect how you can help them make an impact in their new role.

Keeping the conversation only to a congratulatory note would be the waste of an opportunity. 

For e.g.

I wanted to congratulate for assuming the responsibility of the VP of sales at @companyname. 

Hope you are settling down well in your new role and thought of sharing a few articles which might be helpful for getting started in your new role.

[links]

Wishing you success!

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Here is what to do next

1. Tell us which sales trigger you have used and how

2. If you are curious to learn more about sales triggers. You can read more in this post by Hubspot