Sales trigger events: ten examples and how to use them

Trigger events versus ideal customer profile

Your ideal customer profile tells you who could buy: industry, size, stack. A trigger event tells you when. Most companies that fit your profile aren't buying this quarter; a trigger narrows the list to the ones that might be, and gives you the opening line.

Ten trigger events worth watching

Grouped by what changed at the company:

• First hire on a function (first security engineer, first RevOps, first data person): a team is being created and will choose its tools.
• A team growing fast: several roles on the same team at once, well above the company's usual pace.
• A new leader: a VP or Head role that was open and came off the board, or a new name on LinkedIn.
• Funding round: a new SEC Form D filing or an announcement.
• A job post that names a tool: “experience with [product] required” shows what they use today.
• A competitor's script on their website: they're a customer of what you replace.
• Expansion: roles in a new country, a new office or a new product line.
• A public question: a post asking for recommendations or complaining about a current tool.
• Engagement with a competitor: people reacting to and commenting on a competitor's posts.
• A champion moving: someone who bought from you starting at a new company.

Where to find them

Job boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and others) for hiring, pace, leaders and tools in use. SEC EDGAR for Form D filings. Company websites for scripts and pages. LinkedIn for leaders, engagement and job changes. X and Hacker News for public questions.

The hard part isn't access, it's reading: thousands of posts a day, most of them irrelevant to what you sell.

A first message for each kind

The structure is the same every time: the evidence, why it matters now, one outcome, a small ask. For a first hire: “Saw you're hiring your first security engineer to own SOC 2. Teams at that stage usually spend the first quarter on evidence collection; we cut that to weeks. Worth a 15-minute look before they start?”

For a new leader, congratulate and offer the plan, not the product. For a funding round, tie your outcome to what they said they'd do with the money. For a public question, answer it usefully first; mention your product only if it fits.

Timing

Triggers decay. A public question is stale in a day, a new leader's window is a few months, a funding round's spending wave is the next couple of quarters. Act on the fast ones the same day, and put the slower ones on a short sequence with a new piece of evidence each touch.