Sales cycles are getting longer. There's no getting around it. Corporate buyers are involving more people in the decision - and it takes forever to get them all together. Urgent fires and pressing priorities pop up, further delaying or derailing your sales efforts. It can be so darn frustrating because you have no control over these situations.

That's why I tell sellers to leverage trigger events to drive short-term sales results.

What is a trigger event? It's an "occurrence" that creates an immediate need for your products or services. Internal trigger events include reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions or new product introductions. External triggering events could be new legislation, hurricanes or announcements of new technology.

Recently Josh Gordon of Smarter Media Sales posted an excellent article on how Google is leveraging the release of Sicko (Michael Moore's new movie) to drive sales with their health care advertisers.

It's very savvy what they're doing. What's important to note is that they created opportunities that didn't exist before - all because they figured out a connection between an "event" and their own offering. If you want to shorten your sales cycle, put on your thinking cap and figure out how you can use the news!

(For more info on trigger events, check out my article on Use the News: How to Create New Opportunities Fast.