Trigger events.
Those events that trigger something that is changing, has changed unexpectedly, or may need to change soon also trigger some sort of emotional reaction for people!
And those emotions create an opportunity for you to connect to people you already know and leverage those existing relationships into opportunities to meet new people.
How? Well, I cover that in our last post. Let’s so we can now take a closer look at trigger events and the 5 nuances that will help you generate the most leads from them.
The Good and the Bad
Trigger events can be positive or negative. Maybe somebody’s excited about this event, or maybe there’s fear, concern, or uncertainty around it.
Take the proposed tax law changes for example; it’s a perfect trigger event.
In my previous video I gave you the specifics of how to use that event to make an offer to people that you know to make introductions to people that you don’t yet know. Let’s look at the nuances to make your offer most productive.
The 5 Nuances for Effective Trigger Offers
The five nuances for making trigger offers effective and comfortable for you also make them comfortable and effective and NOT seen as some kind of sales manipulation.
1. Put the Offer into Your Own Words
Before you do anything else, take the ideas that I shared about making the offer and put them into your own words. What you say has to feel natural coming out of your mouth, or it won’t feel natural to the person that you are talking with.
One caveat, words like, “people who you know and care about” are important to include whenever possible.
2. Get Specific with Who You Can Help
The second nuance for making trigger offers is to get specific. What specifically will make these people whom they know and care about good candidates for an introduction? Who can you help with your expertise?
Did they have a sale of a house this year? Did they have an IPO event? Are they in a high tax bracket because of their career and income?
Whatever you can do to make the description specific allows the person you’re talking with to filter and make the best introductions because they’re going to have that AHA and think, “Oh, he’s talking about Bob and Joanne.” Or “He’s talking about Jose and Christina.”
Help them get that filter going by being specific with them.
3. Make the Introduction Easy
The third nuance is to make it easy for them to make that introduction. A lot of times people don’t know how to make an introduction, and they’ll say, “Oh, I mentioned your name to so and so, did you ever hear from them?”
Instead, help them know how by suggesting, “To make the introduction so that I can help them sooner rather than later, could you do a joint email that then takes you out of the introduction and leaves it up to us to make the connection?”
4. Pick Up the Phone
The fourth nuance — Ready for this one?
Pick. Up. The. Phone.
If you make your trigger offer through email to connect with someone they know, it’s a lot less personal than if you pick up the phone. Leave a voicemail if you must so they can hear your voice, tone, and connect better.
Remember, these are people that you already know in some way, either because they’re a client, they’re in your business network, or they’re in your personal network. Whatever the connection, they know you. So let them hear your voice, your tone, and your energy. You can always follow up with an email if you don’t get them live, but start with the telephone.
5. Don’t Overthink It
And that leads me to the fifth nuance: Don’t overthink this.
You can spend days and weeks working on the perfect script, the perfect words that you can say — and that is not going to get you far.
Imperfect and done has value. Perfect and undone has none!
Instead, set aside the time to make connections with people who are already in your network.
Find out how you can answer any questions for them about the trigger event and then make that offer to answer questions for others that they know and care about.
Here are three ideas to MAKE time for your outreach:
- Commit to 15 minutes at specific times/dates.
- Set a specific number of contacts you will make by a certain date. Is it 3 or 15?
- Bite the bullet and schedule 2 hours to knock out your initial outreach phone calls.
But don’t delay.
Don’t overthink because a trigger event has a shelf life to it. And if you don’t capture the emotions that people are feeling around it, you’ll have to wait till the next trigger event to make that offer again.
