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If you’ve ever sent out an outreach sequence, you’ve probably asked yourself these questions:
Is this the right time for me to contact these prospects? How can I be sure they’re really interested in my offer?
And you’re right. In fact, timing is a fundamental element of successful campaigns.
Unfortunately, it’s often very difficult to know what the right timing is. Fortunately, there’s a solution: rely on a sales trigger.
In this article, you’ll learn what a trigger is in sales, see its different variations, and how to integrate them into your sequences to make your results explode.
What is a sales trigger?
A sales trigger is a clue, based on an event, an action, or the behavior of a prospect or his company, that informs us about the purchase intention or the relevance of our offer to a prospect.
- Each of the funnel steps in the software
- The importance of lead qualification to generate better results
- What are the different lead qualification options?
- What are the 3 ways to qualify leads in LaGrowthMachine?
Triggers are also sometimes called “Intents” for “Buyer Intent”.
Expert Tip 🧠
Here is a non-exhaustive list of possible sales triggers
- Recruitment in progress for a specific position
- Recent change of position
- Raising funds
- Reaction to a LinkedIn post (like or comment)
- A former user of your product has changed company
- Joining a LinkedIn group
- Participation in a trade show
- Participation in a webinar
- Obtain a prize, award or label for your company
- Tools or technology used
- Return from vacation
- Etc.
The power of sales triggers
There are many advantages to integrating a sales trigger into your outreach strategy. Here are the main ones:
1. A smaller, better-targeted audience
As we explained in this article, we have observed an inverse correlation between audience size and campaign performance.
Indeed, the smaller the audience, the higher the campaign performance.
So sales triggers, based on precise events, mechanically reduce the audience size.
Example 🔍
It’s easy to see that companies with between x and y employees AND that are recruiting for a specific position, will be less numerous than simply companies with between x and y employees.
2. Better timing for contact
Indeed, the nerve of outreach is to contact the prospect at the right time. The success of the same offer, with the same prospect, may depend solely on timing. As a reminder, sales triggers, based on specific events, provide us with information on the purchase intent and/or relevance of our offer to prospects.
Example 🔍
For example, if a prospect attends a webinar entitled “Which outreach tool should you choose for your prospecting?”, we can be sure that the timing is right to contact him and introduce him to The Growth Machine.
- Each of the funnel steps in the software
- The importance of lead qualification to generate better results
- What are the different lead qualification options?
- What are the 3 ways to qualify leads in LaGrowthMachine?
3. Having a reason for making contact that reinforces the effectiveness of the message
Having a specific reason for contacting a prospect is a game-changer. It gives the impression that the message is not (completely) automated, that the prospect has researched the company/person contacted and that there is a genuine interest in the prospect’s needs/issues.
For example, the impact and effectiveness of the message are completely different in these two cases:
Message 1 (without trigger):
Hi Tim,
I’ve created {{productName}} a tool that reduces sales training time by 25% in two weeks.
Would you like to know more about it?
→ Unfortunately, the salespeople on Tim’s team have already been with the company for 2 years. So sales training is definitely not an issue. Tim will never respond to your messages.
Message 2 (with trigger):
Hi Tim,
I see you’re in the process of recruiting a sales person for Apple.
I’ve just created {{productName}}, a tool that cuts sales training time by 25% in two weeks.
Would you like to know more about it?
→ Tim was just wondering about the best ways to train his new salespeople. Tim finds this message timely and responds. A call is scheduled.
Which situation do you prefer? The answer is obvious.
Sometimes, the situation even goes beyond the impact and effectiveness of the message:
Situation 1, no trigger:
No one has noticed that John has changed companies. No message will be sent, and an opportunity will be lost.
Situation 2, with trigger:
John, a user of The Growth Machine at Microsoft, has just joined Apple.
Hello John,
I saw that you recently joined Apple, congratulations!
As a former user of La Growth Machine at Microsoft, I was wondering if prospecting is also a topic at Apple?
If so, would you be interested in using La Growth Machine again at your new company?
4. Make copywriting easier
Everyone knows that the hook is decisive in prospecting. With sales triggers, there’s no need to spend hours racking your brain to find the right message: simply state it clearly at the start of the message, as indicated in the previous point. With the beginning of the message written down, it’s then easy to write the rest and present your solution.
How to integrate sales triggers into your outreach strategy?
Now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and put theory into practice. Here are the steps to follow:
Step 1: Define which sales trigger is most relevant to your sequence
The first step is to identify the trigger best suited to your solution. To do this, make a list of all the sales triggers (you can copy and paste the one at the beginning of this article).
For this step, don’t limit yourself: if you have an idea for a trigger but don’t know whether it will work, write it down anyway and see later if you decide to use it.
Once you’ve made your list, select the most suitable trigger. If several are suitable, don’t hesitate to A/B test them in two sequences to see which works best.
Example 🔍
Here are a few examples
- You sell a tool to facilitate the onboarding of sales reps ⇒ relevant trigger = recruitment of sales reps.
- Offline is a channel that works very well for you ⇒ relevant trigger = trade show participation.
- You sell a tool that offers a native connection with Hubspot ⇒ relevant trigger = the company uses Hubspot.
What tools can I use to identify sales triggers?
Numerous tools exist to capture sales triggers. Some of the best-known are
American 🇺🇸
- Clearbit (now acquired by HubSpot) via its “IP Intelligence” feature, which enables you to find out which companies have visited your website
- ZoomInfo via its “IP to Org Pairings” feature, which tracks the IP addresses of visitors to your site.
- Sales Navigator via the “Spotlights” section, which provides access to 3 sales triggers: Fundraising over the last 12 months, Management changes over the last 3 months, Recruitment on LinkedIn
French companies 🇫🇷
- Pharow targets companies recruiting for specific positions, raising funds, or using specific technologies
- LoneScale, which identifies companies that have just posted job offers, or that have just recruited for a specific position
- SocieteInfo with its 49 events, divided into 12 families!
Step 2: Create your prospect list based on sales triggers
Now that you’ve identified the triggers you want to use and know which tools to use, let’s build a list of prospects together.
Example 1 🔍
For the first list, we’re going to assume that we’re selling a tool for rapidly training new sales reps. Our target is all sales management roles (Head of Sales, Sales director, etc.). Our trigger will therefore be sales recruitment. To create the list, we’ll use Pharow.
After selecting the “Sales Management” functions in the “Targeting prospects” section, I click on “Explore” in the “Targeting companies” section.
Numerous filters are available, classified by category: activities, themes, NAF, and … magic filters (the one we’re interested in here):
Once on “Magic filters”, I’ll click on the “In recruitment” section to display more filters. Then, I select Recruitment by job type > Employee recruitment > Employee recruitment: Sales & Marketing > Employee recruitment: Business Development.
I then indicate the desired location. Here, the department I’m interested in is Ile de France.
Finally, I indicate the company size. In my case, I select from 10 to 49 employees.
And voilà, we have a very precise list in line with our trigger!
You can even go a step further to personalize your copywriting, by clicking on “recruitments” to see the offer in question and the site on which it is referenced:
Example 2 🔍
In this example, let’s imagine that I’m preparing to launch a tool on Product Hunt, aimed at users of this platform
The good news is that I’ve discovered that a LinkedIn group called “Product Hunt | Products | Discussions | Stories” exists, with over 1,000 members. So I’m going to use it as a trigger.
To export these prospects, I use Sales Navigator. In the “Prospect” filters, I’ll enter the name of the LinkedIn group to be targeted in the section of the same name:
I’ll then import these leads into The Growth Machine. To do this, I go to the “Leads” tab, and create an audience that I’ll call “Audience Product Hunt”:
Then I click on “Import Leads” and select “Import from LinkedIn”:
I then select the Sales Navigator Search option, and paste the link to my Sales Navigator search:
I then select my previously created audience and voilà!
All my prospects are in my audience and I can now create my campaign to contact them.
- Each of the funnel steps in the software
- The importance of lead qualification to generate better results
- What are the different lead qualification options?
- What are the 3 ways to qualify leads in LaGrowthMachine?
Step 3: How to integrate sales triggers in your copywriting?
Now that the list is ready, we can move on to the next step: writing the sequence. And mentioning the trigger couldn’t be simpler: just include it at the beginning of the first message in your sequence.
As we saw at the beginning of this article, the trigger is the reason for making contact. It acts like an icebreaker, arousing the prospect’s interest and encouraging him or her to read on.
Here are a few examples of simple wording to mention the trigger.
- I saw that
- I noticed that
- I’m writing to you because
- I’m contacting you because
- I saw you at the trade show
Expert advice 🧠
After mentioning the trigger, I advise you to continue writing with the following structure
- Problem: we mention the problem faced by our prospect
- Value proposition: we introduce the value proposition of our tool/service, which will respond to the problem
- Benefits: we present the quantified benefits derived from our value proposition. At this stage, don’t hesitate to include a link to a resource you’ve created (customer use cases, blog articles, customer testimonials, etc.)
- Social Proof: mention famous customers who use the solution, or present figures demonstrating the solution’s credibility (number of users, customer satisfaction, etc.)
- CTA: a soft call to action that encourages conversation (e.g. making sure the prospect actually encounters the problem mentioned).
Example of a sales sequence with a relevant sales trigger:
I created this campaign for Leexi, a great conversational intelligence tool that uses artificial intelligence to transcribe, analyze, and summarize calls and videoconferences.
Leexi is particularly well-suited to onboarding sales reps, as the tool enables them to listen to and review past calls for training purposes, while also having statistics available to explain why some calls are more effective than others.
Our target audience is as follows:
- Heads of Sales at tech companies with between 50 and 200 employees who are currently recruiting salespeople.
To create the prospect lists, we used Nomination, a tool that also identifies companies that are recruiting.
We then created a multi-channel sequence to contact all prospects and maximize the response rate. Here it is:
Two main branches make up the sequence:
- A mail and LinkedIn messages branch, when the pro mail is found.
- A LinkedIn Only branch, when the mail is not found.
Let’s start with the email branch:
Email #1
Subject: Onboarding commerciaux
Hello {{gender}} {{lastname}},
I’m contacting you because you’re currently recruiting sales staff.
Post-recruitment training is crucial, but complex and time-consuming.
I’d like to introduce you to Leexi: a complete platform for recording and replaying calls.
Thanks to the call library, coaching is made easier, resulting in a 40% reduction in onboarding time and a faster rise in skills (20-50% conversion rate).
These are the reasons why Fnac Darty, Efficy and Datagma have placed their trust in us.
Here’s the link to access the platform: {{identity.link}}
Would you like to learn more?
Email #2
Subject: Notes & meetings
Hello {{gender}} {{lastname}},
So, have you had a chance to take a look at the platform?
I mentioned the time-consuming nature of sales training. But that’s not the only time-consuming activity:
Taking notes and manually entering information into the CRM.
Today, with AI, this should be a thing of the past!
That’s precisely why we decided to do it with Leexi.
No need to concentrate on two things at once: an automatic summary of calls and visio is sent automatically to your management software/CRM.
Here’s a video presenting these features: {{identity.video}}
To test the platform, click here: {{identity.link}}
Have a nice day,
LinkedIn Contact Request #1:
Hello {{firstname}},
I tried to contact you by email (via {{proEmail}}).
Did you receive it?
First LinkedIn Message:
Thanks for adding {{firstname}}.
Mandatory step after each meeting: sending a follow-up email (summary, next steps, …)
In addition to writing a summary of your calls and visios, Leexi will generate a list of next steps and a follow-up email.
We’ve measured it: our customers save 1h30 / week, or 6h / month.
We’d be happy to talk to you on the phone if you think it’s relevant.
Second LinkedIn Message:
Hello {{firstname}},
As I haven’t received a reply, I’d like to ask you one last time.
Perhaps you’re not the right person to contact at {{companyName}}?
If so, could you please direct me to the right person?
Thank you,
Have a nice day,
Let’s take a look at the LinkedIn Only branch:
Message #1
Hello {{firstname}}
I’m contacting you because you’re currently recruiting sales staff.
Post-recruitment training is crucial, but complex and time-consuming.
I’d like to introduce you to Leexi: a platform for easily recording and replaying calls.
Thanks to the call library, coaching is made easier, resulting in a 40% reduction in onboarding time and a faster rise in skills (20-50% conversion rate).
These are the reasons why Fnac Darty and Efficy have placed their trust in us.
Here’s the link to access the platform: {{identity.link}}
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Message #2
Hello {{firstname}},
So, have you had a chance to take a look at the platform?
I mentioned the time-consuming nature of sales training. But that’s not the only time-consuming activity:
Taking notes and manually entering information into the CRM.
With Leexi, you no longer need to concentrate on two things at once: an automatic summary of calls and visio is sent automatically to your management software/CRM.
To test the platform, click here: {{identity.link}}
Have a nice day,
Message #3
Hello {{firstname}},
I thought you might like to see what the platform looks like.
Here’s a video introducing it and all its features: {{identity.link}}
Have a nice day,
Message #4
Hello {{firstname}},
I haven’t yet received a reply, I’d like to ask you one last time.
Perhaps you’re not the right person to contact at {{companyName}}?
If so, could you please direct me to the right person?
Thank you,
Have a nice day,
Conclusion
Today, with the democratization of cold outreach (email & LinkedIn), people are receiving more and more prospecting messages in their mailboxes. And let’s be honest, the quality and relevance of these messages are often approximate..
Using sales triggers gives you a real opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Their ability to provide information on a prospect’s buying intent, behavior, an event, etc. really does enable you to contact the prospect at the right time and with a relevant message.
If you have any questions about using sales triggers in your sequences, don’t hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn. I’d be delighted to answer your questions!
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