Buying Triggers: Capture and quantify

A. A buying trigger is the circumstance, pain point, or change-event that causes a prospect to begin a buying process with you. Anyone trained in sales best practices knows the power of a pain point when it comes to closing a deal. What they may not realize is that capturing and quantifying buying triggers can drastically improve the way you interact with your referral sources, bringing you more business and increasing the effectiveness of your sales efforts.

In HME, each potential lead has two buying triggers that need to be captured. The first is the customer's motivation for seeking out your equipment. Often times, this will be a diagnosis or hospital discharge. They may be looking for a specific product that worked for a friend or family member. Whatever the motivation, capturing this data helps you understand why your customers are in need of equipment. By studying this data, you gain insights on what causes your market to look for certain types of equipment.

The second buying trigger relates to your customers and referral sources. You want to capture what incentive they have to choose your company over your competitor's. You need to identify why they are choosing your company to receive their business. This key insight will show you how your sales and marketing outreach has been affecting your business.

Over the next three months, I will talk about how you can use those two pieces of information to maximize the impact in your market, focus your sales and marketing efforts, and optimize your message to capitalize on your strongest buying triggers. I'll also reveal how you can measure your success by quantifying the buying triggers to create a plan that will expand your outreach avenues.

Jason Lewallen is national business development manager of PlayMaker CRM. Reach him at jason.lewallen@playmakercrm.com