Even if I do everything right to track triggers and growth indicators as a sales rep, there is still not one solution or tool to help me get past the manual work of it all on a daily basis.
There are lots of helpful articles out there around the topic of how a sales rep should reach out to a company. What message stands out? What makes someone open your email? How much text should there be? Should you have links in your email? I could keep on going and going and going…
All of these articles have a trend lately…it all revolves around the sales rep reaching out because of a funding round.
A funding round announcement is an example of a trigger event that smart sales reps have figured out they should be tracking.
I can tell you flat out that here at HubSpot I am the Trigger event lady. When I started here 5 years ago as a SDR/BDR (whatever you want to call it) I somehow figured this out. I have followed trigger events of many kinds including funding rounds for that long as well. Doing this has helped me work my way up the ranks in sales here over the years and helped me to consistently hit and exceed quota every month. So I want to thank funding rounds that happened to the companies who have bought HubSpot from me over the years.
That is just one example of a trigger event or a growth indicator. There are many other examples but this seems to be the one that is a growing trend among sales reps.
We as sales rep must take note. There is a trend happening. Our prospects are seeing the trend and we must respond.
It is obvious that our prospects and companies that we are reaching out to are catching on to us... Let me tell you, 5 years ago people respected this approach that I had and thought I was super smart for reaching out because of that “trigger.” I was on to something.
Not so much anymore. I sell into the hardest territory in the US for tech and software (I think). Silicon Valley. This area is the 1st area to start picking up on things in the market. So it is my job to recognize these things quickly…react and then change.
So, I want to thank my prospects and thank the people who have written articles on this topic of sales reps reaching out about funding rounds. You have helped me to have a nagging thought in my brain daily now around how the heck I can do this better.
How the heck should I reach out then? When is the best growth indicator to reach out? What is the best combination of inbound activity plus growth factors that mean I should reach out then and there? Even if we all had these answers there is still one problem we face as great sales reps who do care about these things.
We don’t have one solution, one software to do this in.
Believe it or not, decision maker of the company we are reaching out to, we don’t want to bother you. We want to help you. We want to sell software or products to good fit companies that we know we can help. The growth indicators and triggers are supposed to be those things that help us to help you at the right times.
As a sales rep each day is spent trying really hard to move deals along, help your current opps who you are talking to, and then get net new ones in the door to start working with. There is no one good platform or software that I know of that does everything to help me stay on triggers the way I want to.
I know what good growth indicators are. I know what growth triggers I should look for. I know how to find trigger events on domains I am working.
BUT, that process is manual at best right now.
My options are to sign up for every trigger software out there, use Linkedin Navigator (costs money too), follow people on Crunchbase and Angel list, Twitter, Google Alerts, etc. I could keep going… BUT that is all still manual. I have to go into each software or each app or each website every time I want to reach out to a company or person a company I think that I can help and search them. I have to be on point here. I have one chance to stand out and know my Sh*t.
That process of tracking triggers and growth indicators is actually hard, time consuming and something that is broken.
As a sales rep we don’t want to reach out to you the same way everyone else does. We aren’t out there doing this job to just make money. I actually sell software because I know that the software I sell can help marketers to do their job better. I know what I sell can help a company to grow. That is what keeps me going and keeps me wanting to find good fit companies at the right times.
