Most of us are aware that the buyer’s journey has changed dramatically in the last few years (and months given the global pandemic). 

This is supported by a CEB (acquired by Gartner) report in 2016 that shared “buyers on average are 57% of the way through their buying journey before even reaching out to a vendor”.

Fast forward a few years since that report, the explosion of Inbound Marketing, and the development of buyer journey optimized content I would argue that it is probably closer to 90%.

That is, buyers have almost all the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision.

In 2007 Chet Homes shared the statistic that only 3% of any market is in the “buying mode” now. This means that 97% of prospects aren’t actively looking to purchase a product or service.

When you acknowledge the above statistics, it is easy to understand why the spray and pray method of prospecting doesn’t work anymore (not that I believe it ever did truly work for 99% of B2B sales teams).

If your prospecting efforts consist of sending templated messages to prospects who just match the “job title” of your past customers, it simply won’t cut it. 

Just because someone matches your buyer persona doesn’t mean they are actually interested in buying what you have to offer. 

You’ll be sending out hundreds of emails and generating only a handful of replies. And that isn’t fun for you or the prospect.

Prospecting is tough. It’s time-consuming, it takes tenacity to stick with it and the will power to continue prospecting each day.

But it doesn’t have to be so hard.

By taking a smarter approach to prospecting and focusing on triggers and highly personalized emails, you’ll be able to reduce the volume of emails you send, whilst increasing the number of conversations you have with engaged prospects.

This isn’t a silver bullet, but it is an efficient method for starting more conversions that begins before you even draft an email.

What is Trigger-Based Lead Sourcing

Lead sourcing (or list building) is the process of building a list of leads without previous marketing activities. 

It includes finding the source of targeted leads and extracting them into a CRM system (or a spreadsheet). Usually, if the source is good enough, finding the names, phone numbers, and addresses of your leads shouldn’t be a problem.

Trigger-based lead souring takes this a step further by only sourcing prospects when an event or sales signal has occurred. It is at this moment you have an opportunity to start a conversation when there is a higher chance that the prospect is “in-market”

Examples of triggers range from obvious to not so obvious, these include:

  • New C-suite appointments
  • Opening a new office