In my last post, The #3 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media, I showed how you can sell more by using a free service called AddThis to make it more convenient and therefore more likely that viewers will share your content.

In that post I offered $3,000 worth of Trigger Event Selling™ services to the person who provided either the most popular example of ,or idea on, how to sell more by using sharing tools.

Carla Young is this month’s winner by sharing with us a second way to maximize word of mouth by using a content sharing service and getting the most votes for her idea.

In her comment Carla mentions “Sharing links through social media is just one of 5 key strategies for increasing your social media exposure!” I’m going to reach out to Carla and see if I can get her to write a guest post explaining the the other 4 strategies.

In her comment Carla also mentions that “social media tools maximize word of mouth”. It”s a well known fact that the #1 way to grow business is through word of mouth. One of the beauties of Social Media is it’s like word of mouth on steroids.

Traditional word of mouth is when, as the saying goes, you tell two people and they tell two people and so on and on and so on. Social word of mouth is when you tell a thousand people and they tell a thousand people and so on and so on and so on. It doesn’t take long and that becomes a really big number. Just look at the over 100 Million people that have seen Susan Boyle’s videos on YouTube.

Stay tuned as next week I announce the #2 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media.

In the mean time have a look at the Seven Steps to Word of Mouth Success by Joe Cullinane.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

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In case you missed it, McKinsey & Co.’s recent research of 20,000 people, in the three geographical regions, and five major industries, on the customer decision journey identified that Trigger Events are the first step in a making a purchase decision. To learn more take five minutes and watch David Court explain the new customer decision journey.

Congratulations to Eliot Axelrod.  Eliot receives $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services (training, coaching, advise) for getting the most votes for his answer to the question related to the #1 Mistake Sales People Make, by midnight of Monday July 29th.

Craig Rosenberg of Funnelholic fame recently asked me what marketers could be doing to harness Trigger Events. In this interview I share what I think are three of the top Web 2.0 applications marketers should consider. You can read the full interview at Funnelholic.com.

I’m off for month of summer holidays and when I return I’ll start series of posts on Seven Ways Sell More by Using Social Media. Each post will detail how you can use social media to identify, learn of, and harness the Trigger Events that TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS.

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Congratulations to Iain Beveridge of All Phase Communications the winner of $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services. Iain’s name was drawn from the over 700 people who registered for this weeks webinar – Trigger Events: The Silver Bullet in Sales – that featured Craig Elias and Frank Filippo and was sponsored by Dow Jones.

I do my best to regularly scour the internet for additional resources on Trigger Events. A little while ago I came across an interesting blog post that mentioned compelling events, by John Gannon an associate at the venture capital firm L. Capital Partners, that I thought would be of interest to the readers of this blog.

Come back next week, as I continue the countdown of the top seven mistakes salespeople make with a perspective on the #2 mistake salespeople make.

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

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Congratulations to the winner of $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services – Laura Waggoner. Laura won when her answer to the question related to The #5 Mistake Sales People Make received the most votes.

Stay tuned next week as I make available $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services to the person with the most votes for their answer a question that is related to The #4 Mistake Sales People make.

Till then, here is another free Trigger Event resource that I have found – the new “Save This Search” feature on LinkedIn. When you do a search and want to be informed when the results change you simply save the search and you’ll be notified via email (weekly or monthly) when the results change. For example: Let’s say you’re trying to get into Hewlett Packard and you want to target VPs, Senior VPs, and Executive VPs who recently got promoted or transferred.

Do a people search on LinkedIn for those currently employed by Hewlett Packard and have the “Vice President” in their title and you’ll get over 1,000 results. Now if you save that search next week you’ll receive an email that contains a list of the Hewlett Packard employees with “Vice President” in their title that recently updated their profile to reflect their new position. This past week there were six people who meet that criteria that changed their profile. Now you have a list of people to call who recently experience a Trigger Event and are more likely to be interested in your product or service.

Call me (+1.403.874.2998 or 866.744.7904) if you want help making LinkedIn’s new “Save This Search” feature work for you or have other free Trigger Event resources you want me to share with the over 3.500 readers of this blog.

Have an EVENTFUL New Years Eve!

Craig

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One of the Sales 2.0 services I am a real believer in is JigSaw. “Trigger Events tell you when to talk to buyers, Jigsaw will tell you which buyers to talk to.”

With their new open data initiative you can download complete and accurate company records in seconds, at no charge.

Below are some popular searches to get you started:

• Fortune 1000
• US Public Companies
• Software & Internet
• Healthcare & Pharmaceutical

See the complete list of currently saved searches.

If you are not already a member of JigSaw, get 20 bonus contacts by using this link when you join.

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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 (.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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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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