trigger-finder

name	trigger-finder
description	Daily prospecting workflow when building event-triggered sequences, prioritizing who to contact in the next 24 hours, or operationalizing buying in...

Trigger Finder

When to activate

Daily prospecting workflow when building event-triggered sequences, prioritizing who to contact in the next 24 hours, or operationalizing buying intent signals into a repeatable outreach cadence.

When NOT to use

Cold outreach where no trigger exists — use Personalization skill instead for static ICP outreach. Do not use Trigger Finder for warm inbound leads (they already have intent) or account-based sales where relationships are pre-established.

Instructions

The 4 Trigger Categories

1. Company Events — direct organizational shifts that create budget and urgency

• Funding rounds (Series A/B/C, seed) — capital influx triggers hiring, tool expansion, infrastructure overhaul
• Hiring spree (job postings 3+ roles in 90 days) — new team = new tool budgets, skill gaps, process bottlenecks
• M&A activity (acquisition or being acquired) — integration challenges, system consolidation, legacy platform replacement
• Leadership change (new CTO, VP Engineering, CMO) — new executives bring fresh vendor relationships and mandate to improve under their watch

2. Behavioural Signals — intent-revealing activities that indicate active evaluation

• Content downloads (whitepapers, guides, ROI calculators) — self-education phase, comparing options
• Webinar/demo attendance (your competitors' events, industry conferences) — shopping mode, benchmark gathering
• Review site activity (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot — site visits, comparison views, demo requests) — late-stage evaluation
• Job postings mentioning skill gaps or new initiatives — hiring for capabilities they don't have in-house

3. Tech Stack Changes — platform adoption and churn that reveal spend and priority shifts

• New tool installs (via BuiltWith, LinkedIn job postings that mention "experience with X") — active stack expansion, budget allocated
• Competitor tool removal/discontinuation announcements — active replacement search underway
• Competitor adoption by their peers (case study visibility, social proof erosion) — FOMO, fear of being left behind
• Stack consolidation or modernization initiatives (gleaned from job postings, LinkedIn content, engineering blogs) — platform rationalization = RFP window

4. External Events — macro triggers that shift buying urgency at scale

• Regulatory change (GDPR, SOC2, data residency laws, AI compliance) — forced compliance spend
• Competitor failure or market contraction — trust loss, alternative-seeking behavior
• Market shift or industry disruption (AI, API-first, serverless adoption) — category creation, new category adoption

Signal Sources: The Stack

Free or low-cost sources:

1. LinkedIn (free) — job postings, company updates, leadership changes, founder posts about funding
2. G2/Capterra (free) — competitor review activity, download counts, demo request spikes
3. Crunchbase (free tier, alerts via email) — funding announcements, hiring data, company news
4. BuiltWith (free/paid) — identify who uses specific tech, set up tracking for competitors or ICP profiles
5. Google Alerts (free) — set up alerts for companies, competitors, regulatory keywords, industry terms
6. Job posting aggregators (free: LinkedIn, Indeed, Ashby) — proxy for hiring velocity, pain points, budget direction
7. Company careers page (free) — active hiring sprees, new team formation
8. Zapier/Make templates (paid, $10–50/mo) — automate daily signal collection into your CRM

Premium sources (optional for at-scale operations):

• Apollo.io, Hunter.io, or ZoomInfo — trigger alerts, intent data overlays
• 6sense, Demandbase, Terminus — account-level intent signals

Trigger Scoring Framework

Assign each signal a score that determines speed of response:

High (Act within 24 hours)

• Active funding announcement (within 7 days)
• Job posting explicitly mentioning your product category or competitive gap
• G2 competitor review (demo request, moving reviews, follow-up activity)
• Leadership change in target role (CTO, VP Eng, CMO)
• Company news about product pivot, expansion, or M&A (acquired or acquiring)

Medium (Act within 1 week)

• Content download from your site or competitor's site
• Webinar attendance (your own or competitor events)
• Hiring 2+ roles that suggest capability gaps
• Tech stack change indicating modernization initiative
• Regulatory announcement affecting their industry

Low (Park for future sequence)

• General job posting (not role-specific pain point)
• Quarterly earnings mention of strategic initiative
• Peer adoption (interesting but not direct intent)
• Industry trend (macro, not company-specific) Score low signals and add to a nurture sequence; revisit if a higher-score trigger appears.

The Trigger Message Formula

Your opening message must contain exactly three elements in this order:

1. [Name the specific trigger] — Be explicit about what you observed

   • ✓ "I saw your Series B announcement last Tuesday"
   • ✗ "I noticed you're growing"

2. [Why it matters to them specifically] — Connect the trigger to a concrete business impact

   • ✓ "Series B typically means 2–3 new hiring goals, and that's where onboarding friction kills velocity"
   • ✗ "Series B companies need to scale"

3. [One question] — Open-ended, not a yes/no, that invites them to share their specific challenge

   • ✓ "What's the biggest pain in onboarding your new hires right now?"
   • ✗ "Are you interested in better onboarding?"

Example formula in action:

"Hi [Name], I saw that [Company] just closed your Series B — congrats. Most teams in your position struggle with onboarding new engineers quickly, which delays TTM. What's been the bottleneck for you?"

Building Your Trigger Monitoring Stack

Daily workflow:

1. Each morning, run queries across your sources (or set up Zapier/Make automations to run overnight)
2. Collect signals into a single intake document or CRM view
3. Score each signal (high/medium/low)
4. Route high-score signals to your daily outreach list
5. Add medium and low signals to your CRM with a 7–14 day follow-up date

Automation pattern (Zapier/Make):

• Trigger: "New job posting matching keywords [your ICP]" OR "Funding announcement for [company list]" OR "G2 review posted on [competitor]"
• Action: Create a new row in your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) with signal type, score, date, and link
• Frequency: Daily 8 AM your time
• Cost: ~$20–50/month for a 3–5 trigger automation

Sample Zapier setup:

1. LinkedIn job posting trigger → Filter for keywords ("hiring," "engineer," "full-stack") + company ICP
2. Crunchbase funding trigger → Add "Series A, B, C" filter
3. Action: Create/update deal in HubSpot with pipeline "Trigger Queue," set score tag
4. Notification: Slack daily digest of high-score signals for your team

The 14-Day Decay Window

Critical rule: Most triggers lose relevance after 14 days.

• A funding announcement on Day 1 is fresh and urgent (budget is being allocated)
• By Day 14, procurement cycles have tightened; by Day 30, the window has closed
• Job postings peak in relevance during weeks 2–3 (active recruiting, unfilled positions = pain)
• Leadership changes are highest intent on days 1–7; after 30 days, they've settled into their role
• Regulatory announcements have a longer window (60–90 days) but stack with other signals

Implications:

• Do not sit on high-score triggers. Outreach on day 1 or 2
• Medium-score triggers can wait 3–5 days but not longer
• After 14 days, move a signal to "nurture" (lower cadence, add to email sequence)
• Track response rates by trigger age; you'll see sharp decline after day 10–14

Operationalization: From Signal to Sequence

1. Identify — Run your daily sources, capture signal
2. Score — High/medium/low framework above
3. Message — Use the trigger formula; personalize in 2 minutes
4. Time — High = today, Medium = this week, Low = nurture
5. Track — Log trigger type, date, score, and response in CRM for predictive scoring
6. Decay — Archive or nurture after 14 days if no response

Trigger Message Templates by Category

Company Events:

"I saw [Company] hired [Name] as [Title] last month. Leaders in that role typically reshape the [function] stack. What's been the mandate from your leadership around [theme]?"

Behavioral Signals:

"I noticed you downloaded our '[Resource]' guide last week. The teams using it most are tackling [specific pain]. Where are you most blocked right now?"

Tech Stack Changes:

"I saw [Company] added [Tool] to your stack recently. A lot of teams do that when [business reason]. Are you rebuilding [system] this cycle?"

External Events:

"With [regulation] coming into effect in [timeline], teams like you are reviewing [category] solutions. What's your priority—compliance or performance?"

Example

Scenario: You're selling developer onboarding automation to engineering teams at Series A/B startups.

Today's signal intake:

Company	Trigger	Score	Source	Today's Message	Response
TechCorp Labs	Series B, $25M round (announced 2 days ago)	High	Crunchbase	"Congrats on the Series B close. Most teams at this stage hire 5–8 new engineers in the next quarter, which breaks onboarding. What's your current TTM for a new hire?"	Read (2h later): "Ha, we're at 6 weeks. Agreed it sucks."
Aurora Systems	VP Engineering hired (LinkedIn post, 3 days ago)	High	LinkedIn	"Saw you brought on [Name] as VP Eng—strong hire. New leaders typically want to cut TTM in half. Are you looking at onboarding tools this cycle?"	Read (next day): "Actually yeah, we're evaluating now."
Vertex AI	4 job postings for "Senior Backend Engineer" posted in 7 days	Medium	LinkedIn job search + Crunchbase	"I see you're hiring aggressively for backend. When you're scaling the eng team that fast, onboarding bottlenecks compound. Quick question—how are you scaling onboarding processes to keep up?"	No response yet (park for 5-day follow-up)
Momentum Inc	Downloaded your "Onboarding Metrics" guide (email tracked)	Medium	Email tracking	"Thanks for downloading the metrics guide. Most teams find their TTM is 40% of the way to industry best practice. What's your baseline right now?"	Read (same day): "Around 6 weeks, looking to cut to 3"
Scale Ventures	Closed Series A 8 weeks ago; no recent signal	Low	CRM history	[No outreach today; add to nurture email sequence]	—

Result of one morning's work: 2 high-score conversations opened same day, 1 medium moved to follow-up, 1 warm inbound generated from email touch.

Key observation: The VP Engineering hire and Series B announcement moved the needle fastest because they signal fresh decision-maker + fresh budget. The onboarding guide download was lower velocity but indicated active evaluation. Job postings are lagging indicators (pain already existed; now they're hiring to fix it).

---

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more deep dives