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trigger events and selective perception

29Apr08

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you buy a new car you see it all over the road? When women get pregnant, suddenly they start seeing other pregnant women everywhere. When couples give birth of to their first child, they stop noticing pregnant women and now start seeing babies around every corner. This is called selective perception. We tend to see the things that reinforce what we believe, or the things we can relate to. The rest we usually disregard.

The Trigger Events we experience change what we see. Every time we experience a Trigger Event a new version of selective perception is created. We begin to notice things that were always there. We just did not ’see’ them.

Why is this important? By focusing on those who recently experienced a Trigger Event you can use the words, visuals, or scenarios, that are highly likely to resonate with them. In sales, that means saying the words that will capture your prospects attention. In marketing, that means using the words or visuals that will make your advertising jump out of the page and get noticed by those readers who recently experience a Trigger Event and are most likely to become your customers.

The next time you are crafting a message, focus on the audience that recently experienced a Trigger Event. Focus on shaping your message so that when they see it, they will take that most important step to becoming your customer - phoning you.

Other Trigger Event Resources to Consider

I scour the Internet searching for ideas, resources, articles, and success stories about leveraging Trigger Events to outsell the competition. This time I want to share with you an article by Frank Filippo, of Dow Jones’ Factiva SalesWorks, called Sales Triggers for Advantage. In his article Frank shares his thoughts on the different types of Trigger Events you can find in the news.

I encourage you to get together with others and brainstorm on ways to capitalize on Trigger Events to outsell your competition. Contact me when you have ideas, resources, or success stories about leveraging Trigger Events that you want to share with the over 2,000 entrepreneurs, business leaders, and sales and marketing professionals who subscribe to this blog.

Have an eventful week!

Craig


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How to get your foot in the door

03Mar08

One of the biggest challenges in sales is to get your foot in the door and have that first meeting.

To make that challenge less daunting I have  partnered with Jill Konrath and three other thought leaders on the teleseminar series Get Your Foot In The Door, that starts this Thursday.

The Get Your Foot In The Door series brings together the following thought leaders:

  • Selling to Big Companies expert Jill Konrath
  • Cold calling expert Leslie Buterin
  • Trigger Event expert Craig Elias
  • Lead Generation expert Marguerite McLeod-Fleming
  • Communications expert Mark Bowden

Sign up for each teleseminar individually. Or, for the best value, sign up for the entire series. All programs are recorded, so if you miss the event or want to listen to it again, you’ll be able to. You’ll be sent a link to download the audio after the session.

Individual teleseminars are $79

Save $117 by registering for all 4 Get Your Foot In The Door teleseminars

As a strong supporter of Jill’s work, and a speaker in the series, I am giving away 1 hour of my Trigger Event expertise to everyone who registers for the Get Your Foot In The Door series via the link Jill has created for me.

See all the details here.

Have an eventful week!

Craig


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How to Find the ‘Trigger Events’ For What You Sell

19Feb08

In previous posts - Back on Track … Finally! & What’s The Big Deal About Trigger Events - I described how to increase close ratios, shorten sales cycles, and increase margins by getting to buyers when they are in the ‘Window of Dissatisfaction’ and the three types of Trigger Event’s that put buyers into the Window of Dissatisfaction.

In this post I will describe how to identify specific Trigger Events for the products/services that you sell. This can be done by doing a specific form of sales analysis.

Use Google to search for the term sales analysis - by using quotes around the words “sales analysis” when you search - and you’ll find around 3,000,000 pages on sales analysis. If you believe that when you lose the business you don’t want to lose the lesson and you use Google to search for the term “lost sales analysis” you will find around 1,750 pages on lost sales analysis.

I am looking to replicate my successes, therefore I want to better understand what it is that makes me win business. To do this I conduct a Won Sales Analysis. Here is what I find amazing, if you use Google to search for the term “won sales analysis” you’ll find, on last check, only around 50 pages that talk about how to capture more customers by analyzing the business that you have already won.

The Trigger Event method of Won Sales Analysis identifies the Trigger Events that resulted in getting new customers, when these Trigger Events happened, what made the customer choose you over your competition, and how you can  close more sales in the future.

If you want to use the Trigger Event method of Won Sales Analysis you’ll find the Adobe Acrobat version (.pdf) version of this tool at http://www.wonsalesanalysis.com.

Contact me if you want an explanation any of the aspects of the tool so you can use it to enhance your selling efforts.

Other Trigger Event Resources to Consider

I scour the Internet searching for ideas, resources, articles, and success stories about leveraging Trigger Events to outsell the competition. This time I want to share with you a blog post by Don Dodge called “Is your product a vitamin or painkiller?“. In this post Don shares his thoughts on what catalyst or event causes your prospects to actively seek your product or solution”

I encourage you to get together with others and brainstorm on ways to capitalize on Trigger Events to outsell your competition. Contact me when you have ideas, resources, or success stories about leveraging Trigger Events that you want to share with the over 1,500 entrepreneurs, business leaders, and sales and marketing professionals who subscribe to this blog.

Have an eventful week!

Craig


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The Science of Trigger Events

21Jan08

In the search for resources that provide different perspectives on ‘Trigger Events’ I discovered the the work of R.J. Rummel. In chapter 15 of “Understanding Conflict and War Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field“, R.J. Rummel  does a great job explaining some of the science behind ‘Trigger Events’.  See section 15.4 for the details on ‘Trigger Events’.

In this work R.J. understands and discusses the significance of routine. Consider RJ’s perspective of a routine as the buying pattern that customers and prospects are already in - buying from their current supplier.

In Figure 15.1 you can see how ‘Trigger Events’ cause expectations continuously rise. Notice how a rise in expectations change a person’s routine. Consider this change in routine as a potential change in suppliers.

RJ’s work relates to the sales of products or services in the following ways:

  1. A seemingly small ‘Trigger Event’ can lead to a large selling opportunity
  2. Buyers can change routines when expectations grow beyond performance
  3. Even though a ‘Trigger Event’ creates a compelling reason to change routines the perceived risk of tipping the apple cart can prevent people from changing their routine.

Please contact me when you have ideas, resources, or success stories about leveraging ‘Trigger Events‘ - aka selling triggers - that you want to share.

Have an eventful week!

Craig


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Free ‘trigger event’ sales training

06Dec07

After finally getting the SHiFT blog back up and running last week I had a number of phone calls and emails about two things:

  1. When is your next free teleseminar on Trigger Events
  2. Why does the email I get have links to past events.

1) The next free trigger event sales seminar "Six Ways to Outsell Your Competition" is Monday December 10th @ 10:00AM Pacific, 11:00AM Mountain, 1:00 Eastern.  The registration link for this seminar  can be found at http://sixways.eventbrite.com.

2) When the Feedblitz service send out notification of updates it automatically included links to previous posts under the heading of "Most Recent Articles". Any reference to teleseminars in this section of the notices send out via Feedblitz will be from events that have probably already happened because they were posted several weeks ago.

Trigger Event Resources to Consider

Each week I scour the Internet searching for ideas, resources, articles, and success stories about leveraging Trigger Events to outsell the competition. This week the best resource I found is the article Identify The Compelling Event, By Gene Meskill

Please contact me when you have ideas, resources, or success stories about leveraging ‘Trigger Events‘ - aka selling triggers - that you want to share.

Have an eventful week!

Craig


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Contact Info

You can contact Craig Elias by phone (toll free +1.866.744.7901 | direct +1.403.313.0412), Skype, or using our contact form.

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Welcome to the blog for Craig Elias, the creator of Trigger-Based Selling™ - THE modern revolution in sales strategies. Trigger-Based Selling is about identifying, finding, and capitalizing on the trigger events - aka selling triggers - that create motivated buyers.


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