Tuesday September 14^th is the third in a series of three no-charge webinars: 5 Ways to Accelerate Sales by Leveraging Industry Trigger Events.

The webinar is being held from 10-11AM Pacific (1-2PM Eastern) and you can register at www.TriggerWebinar.com

If you missed either of the previous webinars, get access to the recordings here:

• 3 Ways to Exploit Untapped Opportunities by using Executive Trigger Events
• 4 Ways to Win More Deals by Using Company Based Trigger Events

Next Tuesday I will start my countdown of the top seven sales 2.0 tools. Please contact me by phone (North America: 866.744.7904 | International +1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or this contact form, if you know of some tools you think should be considered.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

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Next Tuesday is the second in a series of three no-charge webinars on how to harness the Trigger Events that TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS.

The webinar is being held from 10-11AM Pacific (1-2PM Eastern) this coming Tuesday – August 10th. Here is the link to register for  this Tuesday’s webinar.

The last in the series – 5 Keys to Accelerating Sales with Industry Sales Triggers – will be held from 10-11AM Pacific (1-2PM Eastern) on Tuesday September 14th. Here is the link to register for both webinars.

I’m still holidaying in Ontario’s cottage country so I won’t start blogging on my next topic “The Top Seven Sales 2.0 Tools” until the first Tuesday of September. In the meantime here are couple of articles on the importance of Trigger Events by Kendra Lee & Jack Vincent:

• Using Triggering Events to Grab Sales Prospects’ Attention
• Make a “Cold Call” Warmer – The Triggering Event

Have an eventful August!

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Tibor Shanto and I will be revealing the secrets of Trigger Event Selling^™ during a three part no-charge webinar series. Why three webinars you ask?

We are doing three webinars so:

• You can consume more content without feeling like you are drinking from a fire hose
• You can learn to crawl, before we ask you to walk, and then challenge you to run
• We can give more examples so you can see that no matter what you sell, who you sell it to, or where you sell, Trigger Events are highly relevant to becoming and staying a top sales performer

During the series we’ll show you how to:

- Exploit Untapped Opportunities: 3 Strategies for Using Executive Sales Triggers
- Land Your Target: 4 Ways to Win More Deals Using Company-Based Sales Triggers
- Shorten Your Sales Cycles: 5 Keys to Accelerating Sales with Industry Sales Triggers

Each webinar will share the secrets of Trigger Event Selling™ and show you tools you can use to get started right away.

The webinars are held from 10-11AM Pacific (1-2PM Eastern) on the 2nd Tuesday of July, August, and September (July 13, August 10, September 14)

The link to learn about and register for all three webinars is http://TriggerEventWebinars.com

The link to register for just the first one is http://TriggerWebinar.com

Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias) or email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) if you have ANY questions.

P.S. For those of you who don’t know Tibor Shanto he is the co-author of my Trigger Event Selling™ book called SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That TURN PREOSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS that will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble,and  Chapters by early August.

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This blog post is about three things:

• My Trigger Event Selling™ session at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on June 28^th
• The upcoming book launch for the Trigger Event Selling™ book SHiFT!
• A three-part,  no-charge, webinar series on how to harness Trigger Events to turn prospects into customers

Boston

I will be speaking at the Sales 2.0 Conference East on June 28^th in the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel.

I speak from 3:15 to 4:15 on how to Find Hidden Opportunities & Shorten Sales Cycles by Harnessing Triggers Events.

During that session I will:

1. Detail some of my latest Trigger Event Selling™ strategies
2. Provide information on a number of creative Trigger Event alert options
3. Give away 80 copies of the preview version of my upcoming Trigger Event Selling™ book SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS
4. Share information of my upcoming three-part,  no-charge, webinar series with Tibor Shanto, the co-author of my book.

Call or text my cell phone number (+1.403.874.2998) if you are attending the Sales 2.0 Conference and would like to connect in person at the conference.

Book Launch

Now that my Trigger Event book SHiFT! has gone through the final approval processes with the publisher and the logistics company, it should be added to all the major online and offline book stores by late August or early September.

With endorsements from Steven M.R. Covey, Keith Ferrazzi, Dr. Ivan Misner, Gerhard Gschwandtner, Tim Draper we look forward to helping forward thinking sales and marketing professionals grow sales faster by harnessing Trigger Events to get in front of highly motivated decision makers at EXACTLY the right time.

Not wanting to wait until September to launch the book, 80 copies of the preview version of the book will be available to participants of the Trigger Event session at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston and the first five people who call and share a success story about how they used Trigger Events to close a big sale. If you get my voice mail be sure to leave a message.

Three Part Webinar Series

On Tuesday July 13^th Tibor Shanto and I will be delivering the first of three webinars (one each on the three major types of Business-To-Business Trigger Events).

The first webinar “Exploiting Untapped Opportunities: 3 Strategies for Using Executive Sales Triggers” will share insights into the many Business-To-Business sales opportunities created by a single executive change and discuss unique strategies to gain an unfair advantage over your competition when executive changes happen.

Each one-hour webinar starts at 1:00PM Eastern / 10:00AM Pacific on the 2nd Tuesday of every month – July 13^th, August 10^th, September 14^th.

Stay tuned for registration links for the other two on webinars.

Have an Eventful week!

Craig

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Here are the names of the lucky winners of the eight tickets to The Art of Marketing – coming to Calgary on Monday June 14^th:

• Volker Mendritzki
• Kashif Choudhry
• Chuck Warnica
• Nora Bouz
• Kae Shummoogum
• Berta Gomez

I took the names of all those who entered and created a random number generator, in Excel, to come up with the six winners above.

I then created a second random number generator to choose two of the six people from the list above as winners of a pair of tickets. The winners of  a pair of tickets were Volker Mendritzki and Kae Shummoogum. Everyone else won a single ticket.

Winners can contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or by using the contact form found at http://ShiftSelling.com/Contact

So that’s eight tickets I’ve given away but I have one extra pair. Thursday morning I will send out a message via Twitter (CraigElias is my Twitter name) saying that I have two more tickets to give away and the first two people to phone my cell phone (+1.403.874.2998) and mention my favorite two words that are in that tweet will win those tickets.

If you don’t win it’s well worth the money to attend. Save $50 off the ticket price by registering here,

Here is a list of the speakers and a brief bio on each of them:

Chip Heath — Strat­egy and Communications
Chip Heath is the Thrive Foun­da­tion of Youth Pro­fes­sor of Orga­ni­za­tional Behav­ior in the Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. He is the co-author of the New York Times best­seller book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Sur­vive and Oth­ers Die. Chip’s lat­est book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, writ­ten with his brother Dan, was released in Feb­ru­ary 2010 and is already a NY Times and Wall Street Jour­nal best seller.

Sally Hogshead — Per­sua­sion and Influence
Nine sec­onds. That’s the length of the aver­age atten­tion span today. Just nine sec­onds! Peo­ple become dis­tracted by the next prod­uct, the next ad, the next option. How can you pos­si­bly hold your cus­tomers’ inter­est long enough shape their opin­ion? How can you break through the clut­ter to nail your next sales call, or moti­vate your inter­nal team? For that mat­ter, how can you influ­ence any decisions?

Sir Ken Robin­son — Inno­va­tion and Cre­ativ­ity
Last month I fea­tured Sir Ken’s inspir­ing TED Talk in the blog. Sir Ken Robin­son, PhD is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized leader in the devel­op­ment of cre­ativ­ity, inno­va­tion and human resources. He has worked with gov­ern­ments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with inter­na­tional agen­cies, For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, and some of the world’s lead­ing cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions. In 1998, he led a national com­mis­sion on cre­ativ­ity, edu­ca­tion and the econ­omy for the UK Gov­ern­ment. ‘All Our Futures: Cre­ativ­ity, Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion’ (The Robin­son Report) was pub­lished to wide acclaim in 1999.

Mitch Joel — Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and Social Media
When Google wanted to explain online mar­ket­ing to the top brands in the world, they brought Mitch Joel to the Google­plex in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia. Mar­ket­ing Mag­a­zine dubbed him the “Rock Star of Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing” and called him, “one of North America’s lead­ing dig­i­tal vision­ar­ies.” In 2006 he was named one of the most influ­en­tial author­i­ties on Blog Mar­ket­ing in the world. Mitch Joel is Pres­i­dent of Twist Image — Canada’s best Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency (Mar­ket­ing Magazine).

Gary Vayn­er­chuk — Per­sonal Brand­ing in the New Media Land­scape
Online mar­ket­ing trail­blazer Gary Vayn­er­chuk is a 33-year-old entre­pre­neur whose dual iden­tity as both busi­ness guru and wine guy has made him known as the “Social Media Som­me­lier.” A self-trained wine expert, he rev­o­lu­tion­ized the wine indus­try with his video blog, Wine Library TV (affec­tion­ately known as The Thun­der Show), and grew his fam­ily wine busi­ness from $4 mil­lion to $60 mil­lion in five years. What raised Vaynerchuk’s noto­ri­ety even more than his busi­ness acu­men was his fore­sight com­bined with his pio­neer­ing, multi-faceted approach to per­sonal brand­ing and business.

Max Len­der­man — Brand­ing and Expe­ri­en­tial Mar­ket­ing
Max Len­der­man is Exec­u­tive Cre­ative Direc­tor at GMR Mar­ket­ing, the largest expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing com­pany in North Amer­ica, where his work has won numer­ous indus­try recog­ni­tions, the lat­est includ­ing the 2009 Effie Award and the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Ex Awards. He pre­vi­ously founded and ran Gear­w­erx Expe­ri­en­tial Mar­ket­ing, Canada’s pre­mière expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing agency, with offices in Mon­tréal and Toronto.

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

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Congratulations to Richard Goddey. He won $1,500 worth of Trigger Event Selling^™ services by getting the most votes for his answer to April’s question about how you can use TweetDeck to sell more.

My apologies for taking not announcing April’s winner sooner. I took a 6 week hiatus from blogging to complete the manuscript for my upcoming book with Tibor Shanto – SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS.

Now the book has been completed and I have reached #1 of the top seven ways to sell more by using social media, next week I will begin counting down the top seven Sales 2.0 tools – from a Trigger Event Selling perspective.

In the fast few weeks I have fielded a number of questions about Trigger Event Marketing^™ – how to market using knowledge of Trigger Events.

Here are three resources that I recommend:

1. The Trigger Event Marketing™ page on Facebook that has some excellent examples and resources
2. Pulling the Trigger on Trigger Marketing: Best Buy and Discover Show How it’s Done – by Jeff Zabin
3. Keys to Trigger Based Email Marketing – by Michael Thompson

Speaking of marketing, I am giving way eight tickets to The Art of Marketing in Calgary on June 14th.  Complete the form found at http://www.shiftselling.com/events/art-of-marketing/ for your chance to win one of two pairs of tickets or one of the four individual tickets.

Next Tuesday I’ll start my list of the top Sales 2.0 tools and give away $1,500 to the person who gets the most votes for their answer to the question “How can you use the #7 Sales 2.0 sales tool to sell more?”

Until then   …   good luck have an eventful week!

Craig

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This is my last post in a series on the Top Seven Ways to Sell More by Using Social Media. Remember, the person with the most popular answer to my question at the bottom of this blog post wins $1,500 in Trigger Event Selling services

The #1 way to sell more by using social media is to learn of opportunities just after a decision maker has experienced a Trigger Event, that makes them realize what they have is not longer sufficient, but before they notice, or worse yet call, your competition – This powerful selling window is called the Window of Dissatisfaction.

My experience is that the single most powerful Trigger Event is a change in a decision maker at an organization.

You know this scenario. You have an account you want to get into, but the competition is entrenched in the account and no matter how often or how hard you try, you can’t get in. Then, one day, the decision maker at the account changes. Suddenly, resistance disappears and, before you know it, you have yourself a new customer.

The opposite is also quite common. You have a relationship with a decision maker, and that relationship allows you to enjoy the benefits of having the “inside track” on a lot of new projects. Then, one day your reliable contact leaves and you lose the business to someone else!

Just like MIT’s Lead Response Study shows the odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The ideal moment to cold call a decision maker is as soon as possible after the Trigger Event has happened and the best solution I have found to learn of these events as soon as possible is TweetDeck.

Now for all you Twitter fanatics out there, yeah I get that Twitter is the power behind TweetDeck but who has the time to sit around on Twitter waiting for a decent Tweet – like this one about a new CFO being hired – to show up.

My preference is to set up a column inside TweetDeck with a search for lets’ say VP of Sales and then every now and again include a filter that allows me to make the search results relevant to my sales targets. In this case finding more customers in Boston.

So this month’s question is how else can you use TweetDeck or something similar to harness a change in decision makers to sell more. Win $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use TweetDeck or a similar service to sell more. To win the $1,500 prize you must get the most votes for your answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – April 27^rh – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday April 26^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an eventful week!

Craig

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In my last post, The #2 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media, I shared three ways to sell more by using LinkedIn. Jos Willard added a fourth way and received the most votes for his answer to my question “How else can you use LinkedIn to create or harness relationships to sell more?” For his efforts Jos won $2,000 worth of Trigger Event coaching, training, or advice.

For a while now I have been sharing, with my customers, ways to generate leads by using Trigger Events in their marketing efforts – aka Trigger Event Marketing™. Doing so allows them to harness the Selective Perception that is created when people experience the Trigger Events that turn them into highly motivated buyers.

Here is an excellent example of Trigger Event Marketing™, that I recently noticed on the home page for TD Canada Trust. It is based on the knowledge that getting pregnant triggers couples to want a house, which leads to needing a mortgage. The event of getting pregnant typically triggers a number other purchases besides houses and mortgages – Cars, life insurance, and finally getting around to doing a will.

If you want to do the same thing for your own business all you have to do is conduct a Won Sales Analysis™ the next few times you win a new customer. Doing so will allow you to identify the Trigger Events that motivate buyers to want what you sell. Once you know what the best Trigger Events are for your product or service, all you need to do is apply what you learn to your marketing efforts. When you do, your marketing will jump off the page because it’s resonates with the reader and you are highly likely to generate leads that result in core, loyal, customers, who will represent 80% of your profit and only 20% of your headaches.

If you want to learn more about Trigger Event Marketing I have a Facebook page that shares the resources and examples I come across. I invite you to become a fan of the page and post any examples you come across. I also invite you to call me (+1.403.874.2998) or Skype me (Craig.Elias) if you want to spend 15-20 minutes brainstorming ideas on how to make Trigger Event Marketing work for you.

Next Tuesday I’ll post the #1 way to sell more by using social media. Take a look at numbers 2 through 7 and see if you can guess what it is.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

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The #2 way to sell more by using social media is to harness the power of people and relationships to get things done and the single most powerful relationship building and relationship harnessing social media resource is LinkedIn.

Now a lot of readers will say it should be #1 and for the longest time I would have agreed with you. I do agree it is the social media tool with the biggest number of different ways it can be used to sell more but in the last year I have found a social media tool that provides users with the most powerful information to sell more.

There are so many different ways to use LinkedIn to sell more that Amazon lists over 200 books on how to use LinkedIn.

Here are my three favourite ways to use LinkedIn to sell more:

1. Company Search: A search on a company lets you know who to target and the best way to get to them. The #2 most powerful Trigger Event is when there has been a change in decision makers at a prospect. These people who recently experienced the Trigger Event of being hired or promoted are the ones most likely to have interest in your products or services. When you do a company search you can see who recently got hired and who recently got promoted. A company search also lets you see who in your network works there now and who use to work there. Those in your network who use to work there can give you some valuable insight or context for your sales pitch and those  in your network who work there now are the ones likely to make the most valuable introductions.
2. Contact Information: Someone who was a customer in their last job is likely to become a customer in their new job. Being connected via LinkedIn give you access to their latest contact information and with this contact information you can reach out to congratulate them on their new position and see if and when they will have a need for your products or services in their new position.
3. Profile Organizer: Keep track of all your interactions with your connections – I have a personal plus account which allows me to use LinkedIn’s new profile organizer. This allows me to organize contacts and even keep notes on my activities with each person. The best part is you don’t have to be connected with someone to add them to a folder or make notes. It’s like a mini Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Sometimes it’s not worth the time and effort to add every prospect’s contact and company information into your CRM tool until there is enough activity or interested in becoming your customer. Now there is a quick way to keep track of the early interactions without having to take the time and effort required to enter all that company and contact information into a CRM tool first.

So this month’s question is how else can you use Linkedin to create or harness relationships to sell more.Win $2,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use LinkedIn to sell more. To win the $2,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,000 worth of Trigger Event Selling services to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – March 30^rh – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday March 29^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an eventful week!

Craig

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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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