Trigger Event Finder

Triggered outbound dramatically outperforms cold outbound because timing is the most underrated variable in conversion. A buyer 2 weeks after a funding round is a different person than the same buyer 6 weeks before. trigger-event-finder maps the events that move your ICP from "passive" to "active intent" and tells you how to monitor for them. Without a monitoring plan, trigger identification is just theory - you need to know the signal, the source, and the lag time between event and action.

When to use

Shifting from cold spray-and-pray outbound to event-triggered outbound
Setting up monitoring after completing ICP definition - once you know who to target, this defines when to reach them
When reply rates suggest your timing is wrong (people aren't cold, they're just not at the right moment)
Building a signal stack for a new segment before the first campaign goes live

When NOT to use

You have no audience to monitor yet - use audience-builder first to define who you're watching
You have an existing trigger but your messaging is generic - a well-timed generic opener still loses. Use icebreaker to build the trigger-anchored message first
You're targeting a single named account tactically - this skill is for systematic monitoring across a list, not one-off account research

Use this instead

For defining the ICP first -> icp-definer
For building the audience to monitor -> audience-builder
For drafting the trigger-anchored opener once the event hits -> icebreaker

Inputs

Required: An ICP document or paragraph with at least:

Firmographics (industry, company size, stage)
Trigger events - this skill expands on what the ICP identified
The buying role (title and function) - determines which triggers are actually observable

If the ICP has no trigger events section at all, stop:

"The ICP you've pasted has no trigger events. Before identifying how to monitor for triggers, you need to know which situations create urgency to buy. Run icp-definer and populate the Trigger Events section, then come back."

Output: Trigger Map

High-Signal Triggers (specific moment, high conviction)

These fire at a specific point in time and correlate tightly with buying intent. Worth building dedicated monitoring for each.

Funding rounds A new round means new budget, new operational ambitions, and a leadership team under pressure to show progress. Series A and B are the highest-signal rounds for most B2B tools - the company is now large enough to professionalize and has budget to do it.

Monitor: Crunchbase (/company/{slug}/funding_rounds API, or daily Crunchbase Alerts for saved searches), the Funded Today newsletter (daily digest of Crunchbase new rounds), TechCrunch and the specific trade press for the ICP's industry
Lag: reach out within 2-5 business days of the announcement. After 2 weeks the signal ages fast

Leadership changes (new VP or CXO in your buying role) New leaders evaluate the existing tool stack in the first 90 days. They come in with mandates, not institutional attachment to the current setup. This is a structural buying window.

Monitor: LinkedIn job-change alerts (free, set up for saved searches by title + company size); Wiza, Apollo.io, or People Data Labs for bulk alerts; LinkedIn Sales Nav "Changed Jobs" filter
Lag: reach out within 30 days of the job change. After 60 days the evaluation window may have already run

Specific job postings that signal the pain A company posting for the role that maps to using your product is signaling they're scaling the function. A company posting for "Head of Data Quality" is a different signal than a company posting for a general data analyst.

Monitor: LinkedIn Jobs API, Greenhouse's public /boards/{companySlug}/jobs endpoint (works for Greenhouse-hosted job pages without auth), We Work Remotely for remote-first ICPs, Wellfound for startups
Lag: job postings are pre-buy signals - the company is building capacity, not yet buying tooling. Reach out within a week of posting; the role is still unfilled and the pain is fresh

Regulatory deadlines (industry-specific) In compliance-heavy industries (healthcare, fintech, legal tech), regulatory deadlines create hard timelines. A company that has 6 months to achieve SOC 2 compliance is not the same as a company in a post-deadline panic.

Monitor: industry trade press and regulatory body announcement pages, Google Alerts for "regulation" + "[specific law or standard]" + ICP industry term
Lag: the ideal window is 6-9 months before the deadline, not 30 days out. Map the calendar when building the trigger list

Earnings calls mentioning the pain (public companies) Public companies disclose strategic priorities and operational problems in earnings calls. If the CFO names "operational efficiency" as a Q3 priority, the VP of Operations is now funded to act.

Monitor: SeekingAlpha transcripts (free, covers most US public companies), Motley Fool transcript archive, Quartr app for real-time transcript feeds. Search the transcript text for keywords from the ICP's JTBD language
Lag: reach out within 1-2 weeks of the earnings call while the mandate is fresh

Medium-Signal Triggers (correlation, not certainty)

These suggest fit and openness to conversation, but don't pinpoint a specific moment. Combine with high-signal triggers for prioritization; don't lead the sequence with a medium-signal trigger alone.

Overall headcount growth (hiring spree) A company that grew from 100 to 180 employees in 3 months is in scaling mode. Scaling mode creates operational debt.

Monitor: LinkedIn Insights headcount graph (available in Sales Nav Company Pages), People Data Labs historical headcount API, Bombora intent data for "hiring trends" topic spikes

Tech stack changes detected from job postings A job posting that now requires "experience with Snowflake" where last year it required "experience with Redshift" signals a migration. That migration may create buying opportunities at the integration or workflow layer.

Monitor: Diffbot's job posting change API, or manually compare current and archived (Wayback Machine) job postings for key technical requirements

M&A activity in their space When a direct competitor gets acquired, the acquiree's customers often go into "evaluate alternatives" mode. The acquirer's customers sometimes have the same reaction.

Monitor: Crunchbase acquisitions feed, industry newsletter digests, Google Alerts for "[competitor name] acquired"

Industry awards and shortlists Companies that make a "fastest growing" list or an industry ranking have leadership teams in motion - they're growing fast and may be buying tooling to support it.

Monitor: industry publication websites (G2, Gartner Peer Insights, Deloitte Fast 500); most publish lists annually with company names

Low-Signal but Cheap-to-Monitor

These are weak signals individually but free to watch and useful for warm context when used alongside a stronger trigger.

Social posts mentioning the pain by name The ICP contact posting publicly about the problem is as warm as cold outbound gets. Not common, but high value when it happens.

Monitor: LinkedIn search for keyword terms from the ICP's JTBD language + title/industry filter; X Advanced Search for the same terms

Conference attendance or speaking slots Attending a conference signals active engagement with the topic. Speaking at one signals enough subject matter ownership to have a point of view.

Monitor: conference agenda pages, LinkedIn event attendees for industry events (visible up to 2nd degree connections)

Blog posts on their company site about related projects A company that published a blog post titled "How We Rebuilt Our Data Pipeline" is mid-project and talking publicly about it. Their engineering team is in the weeds on exactly the problem.

Monitor: Google Alerts for "[problem keyword] site:[company.com]" - works for companies with active engineering blogs; RSS feeds from known company engineering blogs

Guidance-only (v1)

This skill outputs a monitoring PLAN. It does NOT execute the searches, set up the alerts, or pull the data. To act on this output: pick the 2-3 highest-signal triggers for your ICP, set up the monitoring tools listed above, and build a lightweight process to process the feed daily or weekly.

If you have a web search MCP installed (e.g., a Brave Search MCP, a SerpAPI MCP, or a Crunchbase MCP), you can use this skill's output as the brief for that tool to execute the monitoring queries.

A future version of this skill will connect directly to monitoring sources and surface live trigger events against a saved prospect list.

At scale

Watching 3-5 high-signal triggers for a list of 100 prospects is a daily 20-minute job - a spreadsheet and a handful of saved searches will do it. Watching 20 triggers across 10,000 prospects is full-time operational work; tools like Clay, Apollo, and ReachRobin's signal-detection features automate it. The skill is the brief; the tool is the execution layer.

trigger-event-finder