Lead generation and creating a healthy sales pipeline are usually towards the top of the list when it comes to the biggest challenges many businesses face.

Yet sales opportunities are everywhere.

This means we must become more effective in how we identify them and then respond to them if we want to stand a chance of seizing upon them.

So what are these opportunities and how do they appear?

How do you know when you’re faced with a potential sales opportunity?

Sales opportunities can simply be defined as a sales trigger event. These are events that happen to an organisation as a result of external forces or within an organisation as a result of internal initiatives that prompt them to look into options on what to do next given the change in their status quo.

Note that a trigger event is a neutral term. It can be initiated either by a positive or negative event which will inform how you approach them

It can alternatively be referred to as a buying signal which means it could be a great time to reach out to a prospective buyer for the purpose of starting a relationship with them. This will enable you to position your solution as the viable option that will see them through their changing circumstances.

So what are these trigger events or buying signals?

These vary according to the nature of your business and what you sell.

For example in the hospitality industry, it can simply be an upcoming birthday or celebration.

Whereas for a software development company it could be an investment round or that your prospect is going through a change in organisational structure requiring a change of process. This means that their current infrastructure may not be fit for purpose so an alternative is required. Enter your solution.

Hiring velocity is another great and all too common signal which could indicate that a particular company may imminently require training and development professionals to support their onboarding process.

As the examples above demonstrate, they can vary in complexity and as a result, require a different system or mechanism for identifying and approaching them.

So take for example the birthday or anniversary trigger in the hospitality industry.

This simply requires creating a booking form requesting that specific piece of information which then feeds into a database, triggering an offer as the event approaches. Simples.

The other two are slightly more complicated and will require a higher level of trigger management using numerous systems and channels to identify.

Whether that’s setting up an alert online using tools available on platforms like Google and Sales Navigator, subscribing to industry and special interest newsletters, or developing daily disciplines to manually detect any opportunities.

The truth is, with the proliferation of opportunities available the management of them becomes a task in itself.

But the good news is with a bit of preparation, prioritisation and systemisation you could set your sales operations up to increase the flow of decent leads into your sales pipeline.

In the past 2 to 3 years we have never experienced more turbulence in the economy which is throwing out all manner of challenges for businesses requiring them to adapt.

These constantly changing circumstances require all manner of solutions to enable an organisation to steer its course to steadier ground and along with that, comes your opportunity.

You just need to make sure you’re ready for when that happens.

If you’re looking for some help with this, click here and you will receive a list of sales trigger events that you could deploy in your business to get sales conversations started along with the tools that can alert you to them.

Happy lead generating!