One of the most difficult aspects of lead generation — whether you’re in sales or marketing — is crafting messaging that snatches prospects’ attention. Too often, lead generation messages never survive what I like to call the “Glimpse Factor” — that three-second window you have to capture your prospects’ attention before they move on to something else.
So, what’s the mysterious approach to getting more people to actually care about your cold call, email campaign, webinar or social chatter enough to respond?
Trigger events. More specifically, “events” that are happening in the account, industry, market, or overall business environment that cause a contact to consider making a change. Think: new regulations, a key employee moving on, economic recovery.
When your messaging is driven by trigger events, you pique prospects’ interest, push past the Glimpse Factor and drive unusually high response rates. Prospects want to talk with someone who understands their situation.
And when you don’t include triggers? Boom – it’s the delete barrier for all your efforts.
Whether you’re a salesperson or a marketer, trigger events are critical to extreme lead generation success — and not just in email nurturing. Use them to get your foot in the door with:
- Voicemails
- Email campaigns
- Sales prospecting value propositions
- Events
- Social networking
- Website content
- Social profiles and social content
One of the most relevant hot button issues for our SMB and entrepreneur target markets is the need to get more leads. These companies are focused on growing their business and many of them have very small sales staffs. As a result, they need strategies that help them attract leads without a lot of effort. So, when I reach out to these business, I focus my message on this critical trigger.
That said, I’d caution against relying on just one trigger event.
Here’s why: While you might think a trigger event is relevant to a prospect, there’s no way to know with certainty until you bring it up. To work around this, brainstorm a diverse list of trigger events, prioritizing the ones you think are most relevant, and starting with those. If the top triggers don’t resonate with your audience, then move down the list and experiment with different ones in your prospecting and lead generation activities.
Over time, your conversations with prospects will help you identify the triggers that will generate the highest response rates. Even better, if you’re using sophisticated marketing automation software like or email marketing software like Constant Contact, you can see which trigger events resonate most with a prospect before you ever call them.
Using trigger events to drive your lead generation demonstrates that you truly understand the challenges your prospects are facing in their businesses. More importantly, it confirms that you’re someone worth talking to because you have the answers to help them be successful. And that’s the real mystery behind driving extreme response rates.