Trigger events improve lead generation results

Have you ever wondered why some sales happen twice as fast others?

This is a true story.  I've changed my friends name because she didn't want to her competitors to know what she was doing and she is busy like all of us. Let's call her Kristin.   

Kristin, a marketing manager, works for a B2B company that sells to executives in mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies. Last year, her marketing budget was cut by 50% mid-year, yet her CEO expected her to still meet her revenue contribution goal. She told me about how she used trigger events to focus her marketing efforts and exceed her revenue targeted by 25%! Here's her secret...

Her key to success
In short, she studied, trigger events. She only targeted companies that were highly likely to need their solutions based on their trigger event and ideal customer profile.

Her VP of Sales requested a meeting. It turned out that he wanted to know, "what she was doing?" Bottom line: he was seeing more sales activity and hearing good things from his sales team.

He shared their revenue forcast. Later she took that information and plotted out her lead generation results against his sales forcast. She compared leads with trigger events against those leads with out trigger events. Companies with trigger events appeared 400% more likely to buy than companies with out trigger events.

Kristin's initial trigger events list

New funding?

New product introduction or New Services?

Significant announcements?

Key Hires or changes? New hires or expansion?

Recent Moves? New location?

Recent Merger or acquisition? Change of ownership

New customer?

What are your trigger events?
Below are some questions to help you define your events.

What happens to fuel interest and focus it on your solution?

What creates the urgency to move sooner?

How is interest created? -- Where does it start and what is it driven by?

Describe an initiative (need) that would involve your Solution?

How does this initiative or need solidify into a plan of action to buy?

Collecting trigger events?
You can research new business opportunities based on trigger events, for little to no cost, by leveraging press releases, websites and news wires. If you have a corporate librarian or business library they can help you find what you need.

I personally use technorati watchlists, google alerts and yahoo RSS feeds.

You can also do research on HillSearch Business Intelligence for a small monthly fee.  You can try HillSearch Membership risk free for one month.