Teach Sellers to Use Sales Power Tools

Want your team to start 2018 strong? Then help your salespeople learn how to leverage trigger events. According to Forrester Research, sellers who get good at this have an unbelievable 74% close rate. CEB/Gartner recently reported that this skill is the key factor differentiating top performers from average ones. 

Personally, I’ve found trigger events to be so powerful that I ‘ve stressed them in all four of my books. Most recently I created a FREE video training course about them too. 

Click here to access it now!

Let me give you a bit more details. First off, trigger events are defined as changing situations, either inside or outside your prospect’s company, that make it important or even critical for them to shift priorities. I’m talking about happenings such as new leadership, financial announcements, industry developments, new funding …. and the list goes on.

Sellers who focus on, find, and take action on trigger events will: 

• Discover prospects who are thirsty for their new ideas. 
• Beat their competitors to the table. 
• Speed up their sales cycle.

In short, they unlock the vice-like grip of the “status quo,” get new business with minimal competition and close deals faster.  

When sellers get good at finding trigger events, they win more new contracts with the most desirable (and profitable) prospects. 

How can sellers leverage Trigger Events? 

To successfully leverage Trigger Events in prospecting, your sellers need to do three things: 

1. Determine the most valuable trigger events.

Start by looking at current clients and prospects. What internal factors made existing clients finally decide to make a change and work with you?

Look outside your clients’ companies, too. Did something happen in the business environment that impacted them so much that the status quo was no longer sufficient? 

Encourage sellers to ask clients and prospects: “What happened recently that caused you to look at new options?” Invariably, something occurred that shifted priorities. 

2. Identify when trigger events are occurring.

Once your sellers know the most valuable trigger events, it’s essential they get a jump on the competition as soon as they’re occurring.  

If sellers are targeting specific companies, they can use their prospects’ PR pages to keep up with what’s happening. They can read public financial reports. 

If they target specific market segments, your sellers can follow industry news, participate in industry forums, and subscribe to popular blogs or newsletters. 

Sellers can create Google or Business Journal alerts that send notifications when designated trigger events occur. I’ve even found several powerful apps that do the heavy lifting for them, allowing complex searches that reveal valuable insights.

3. Beat your competitors to the punch.

Now that you’ve found them and identified that trigger events happening, your sellers can leverage these events to set up meetings with people inside the organization. They need to create a viable vision of the future that addresses the changes faced by their prospect—and be first at it. (That’s where Forrester’s 74% close rate comes in.) 

Your reps can put together a multi-touch campaign using email, voice mail, and social platforms. The trigger event is at the heart of their messaging and should be mentioned up-front in every communication. That way people who are reading it or listening to it know your reps have done their homework. 

Train Your Team to use Trigger Events 

Now, it’s your turn. I’ve created an easy (and free) video training course, complete with Leader Guides and Workbooks, so you can train your teams to use Trigger Events. Download them for your next sales meeting. 

This mini-course will develop your reps to do what elite sales performers reliably do to outperform their competitors and close deals faster! 

https://mapanything.com/resources/more-sales-less-time#triggerEvents

P.S. The training is provided courtesy of MapAnything and you’ll access the course materials on their site. 

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Jill Konrath is the author of four bestselling sales books: More Sales, Less Time, Agile Selling, Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling. She's a frequent speaker at sales meetings and conferences. Check out the tons of free sales resources on her website: www.jillkonrath.com/sales-resources.