MCP

Triggers and timing

TL;DR

  • The hardest question a cold email has to answer is not "why you" but "why now". A trigger answers it for you.
  • Trigger Event Selling is the canonical framing: dissatisfaction opens a window, and the vendor who arrives while it is open wins disproportionately (2010) [1].
  • A trigger is only useful if the recipient agrees it is relevant. Naming an event they do not consider significant reads as surveillance, not insight.

The window

The trigger-event idea is that buyers are not continuously in the market. Something changes — a person, a system, a target, a constraint — and for a period afterwards the status quo is in question. Before the window, outreach is noise; after it, someone else has been chosen. The practical claim is that timing beats targeting: reaching an averagely-qualified prospect inside the window beats reaching an ideal one outside it [1].

This is the strategic reason signal-based list building outperforms static firmographics (List sourcing methods) — a signal-sourced list arrives with why now already attached.

Triggers worth watching

People. A new person in the role you sell to is the strongest common trigger: new arrivals are expected to change things and have not yet chosen their vendors. Departures matter too — someone's absence leaves work unowned.

Money. Funding, acquisition, or a public target. New money creates permission to spend it, and a deadline to show something for it.

Growth and strain. Hiring in a function is the visible edge of that function struggling with volume. Ten open support roles says more about a support problem than any research could.

Technology. Adding, removing or outgrowing a system. Removal is the underrated one — a gap is easier to fill than an incumbent is to displace.

External pressure. Regulation, a competitor's move, a public incident, a market shift that changes the cost of doing nothing.

Using a trigger without sounding like a stalker

The failure mode is real and easy to trip. Three rules keep it useful.

Cite what is public and intentional. A press release, a job posting, a conference talk, a published post. Things the company chose to announce are safe; things you inferred from tracking behavior are not, whatever the tooling permits.

Connect it to the problem in the same sentence. The trigger is not the point — the consequence is. "You are hiring three support engineers" is an observation. "Hiring three support engineers usually means ticket volume outgrew the team about two quarters ago" is a reason to reply. This is the personalization-to-relevance move in Relevance vs personalization.

Be timely or be silent. A trigger referenced six months late signals that you were not paying attention. If the window has closed, find a different reason to write.

When there is no trigger

Most of your list will not have one at any given moment, which is a fact about the world rather than a research failure. Two honest options: wait, keeping the prospect on a watch list until something happens; or write an email whose why now comes from the offer rather than from their situation — the strongest version being a genuinely useful thing that exists now (Offer design).

What does not work is manufacturing urgency. Invented deadlines and "I wanted to reach out before the end of the quarter" are transparent, and they spend credibility to buy nothing.

References

  1. Craig Elias & Tibor Shanto — SHiFT! Trigger Event Selling (book preview chapter, 2010)