List the events that make your buyers more likely to talk to you now, and say where you would spot each one.
Pick the moment before you worry about the script. In a cold conversation, when you get in touch counts for more than what you say, and the best time is soon after something in the buyer's situation has changed.
Imagine you ring two people one afternoon and say exactly the same thing to each. The first tells you she isn't interested and puts the phone down. The second says it's funny you rang, because they talked about this very topic on Monday. Nothing about your message changed between the two calls. Each person was having a different kind of week, and that decided the response.
A trigger event is a change in a buyer's situation that makes the problem you solve more pressing right now. Lesson 1.1 introduced the term. For most of the year, the people in your profile live with your problem in a mild form that stays in the background. A trigger moves it to the front of their mind. If you get in touch before that happens, your message joins the pile of things they can safely ignore. If you get in touch afterwards, you are talking about something they are already turning over. So two prospects with identical details on paper can answer you in completely different ways, because one of them has just been through a trigger and the other hasn't.
Take Mei, the bookkeeper you met in lesson 1.2. Picture a cafe group that has run three outlets without change for two years. If Mei contacts them during that stretch, she gets one kind of answer. In the month the group signs a lease for a fourth outlet, it has more invoices to handle, more staff on the payroll and a bank wanting proper accounts. The same call from Mei that month gets a very different answer.
Business triggers come in four kinds: a change in size, money, people or reputation. Opening a new branch or outlet is a change in size, and it adds volume and complexity overnight. A funding round, a new investor or a large contract is a change in money, because someone now expects reports, controls and growth. A key hire, such as a new finance manager or head of sales, is a change in people, and it counts for two reasons. A person new to the role wants to make a mark within their first few months, and they usually feel no loyalty to the suppliers chosen by whoever held the job before. A public complaint is a change in reputation: a string of bad reviews about slow delivery, for example, or a news report about a service failure. The problem is now out in the open and somebody is under pressure to fix it.
Job ads deserve more attention than most people give them, because they hand you a reason to call that has nothing to do with you. When a company advertises for two outlet managers, it is telling you it is growing. When a company hires its first accounts executive (also invented), it is telling you the founder has had enough of doing the books late at night.
Personal triggers are events in someone's life: starting a new job, a promotion, getting married, having a child, moving home, a parent falling ill, someone in the family retiring. Each one shifts what the person needs and pushes them to deal with matters they had been putting off. Darren, the adviser from lesson 1.1, has noticed that his best clients usually came to him within a year of having their first child. A couple picking up the keys to their first flat is at a similar point, where questions about loans, insurance cover and the monthly budget are no longer abstract for them.
Treat personal triggers more carefully than business ones. A company opening a new branch puts out the news because it wants people to hear it. A family coping with a parent's illness would not want a stranger raising it. The rule is to let a personal trigger guide when you get in touch and what you offer, and to refer to the event itself only if the person told you about it or made it public. Congratulating someone on a new role they announced on LinkedIn is fine. Bringing up an illness that a mutual friend mentioned to you is not acceptable.
A trigger only helps you if you spot it while it's still fresh, so link each type of trigger to a source you will really check:
LinkedIn shows job moves, promotions, new hires and company announcements, and you can follow the companies on your list. News sites and industry newsletters report funding, expansions and contracts. Job portals such as MyCareersFuture, along with the careers pages on company websites, show who is hiring and for which roles. Your own network picks up what the others miss, such as a friend telling you her company has just moved offices, or a former client who is getting married. If you sell to households, property listings and new-launch announcements near where your profile lives show where people are about to move.
You don't need to watch all of these. Choose the two or three sources your profile actually uses and go through them on the same day every week.
Speed counts because each trigger has a short shelf life. For the first few weeks after the event, the problem feels urgent and the buyer hasn't settled on how to deal with it. Around three months later, they have usually solved it with another supplier or got used to living with it again. Aim to make contact inside those first few weeks.
Calling within that window gives you an opening about the buyer, which is unusual in cold outreach. "I saw you're opening in Tampines next month" is about them. "I wanted to introduce our services" is about you. Module 3 builds full call openers on that difference, beginning with lesson 3.2, "A reason for calling that is about them".
For the activity below, think about the last five customers who said yes quickly. What had just happened to each of them? Those events are your first trigger list, and the place you heard about each one is where to look next.
List five trigger events for your profile. Next to each one, write where you would see it: LinkedIn, news, job ads, your network or a property listing.
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