ZoomInfo
HackerOne
Apollo
Clay
Sumo Logic
G2
Chrome Web Store
AppSumo
Updated October 8, 2026
What does trigger event mean?
A trigger event is something that happens at a company and changes the odds of a sale: a new leader, a funding round, an acquisition, a new office, a hiring push. In sales it answers two questions at once, when to reach out and what to open with, because the reason for the message is already on the org chart or in the news.
Sales trigger events fall into three groups:
- People changes: a new leader, a promotion, a departure.
- Company changes: a funding round, an acquisition, a new office, a reorganization.
- Activity: hiring for a role, launching a product, entering a new market.
In Cleanlist AI this agent watches the first group at the accounts you name: sales and marketing leaders whose current role started recently.
Can you give me an example of a trigger event?
A target account hires a new VP of Sales. In their first months, a new leader reviews the team, its tools and its numbers, writes a plan and chooses the vendors that plan needs, without years of history tying them to the current ones. A short, relevant note in that window gets read; the same note a year later meets a settled plan.
Vendors that track this put numbers on it. UserGems says its own analysis of 660K+ prospects found new director, VP and C-level hires 2.5 times more open to evaluating new tools and services in their first three months than after a year. The window also has its own management book: The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins (Harvard Business Review Press) is a guide to that transition, built around reaching the break-even point sooner.
Other examples of trigger events in the same family:
- A new CRO or CMO at an account you have tried before.
- A new head of RevOps or sales operations, the person who runs the tools.
- A sales or marketing leader moving into a new role at a company you already target.
The play: leaders who started at your target accounts in the last 90 days
Each morning the agent runs one people search: your target accounts' domains, the leader titles you chose and a Joined current job window of 30, 60 or 90 days. Anyone inside the window it has not delivered before goes on to Enrich for an email and a phone number, then into one digest in Slack.
| Setting | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Company domain | Limits the search to your target accounts; the play keeps its own copy of the domains | 40 domains, pasted |
| Function and seniority, or job titles | Defines who counts as a leader | Sales and Marketing, Director and up |
| Joined current job | Keeps people whose current role started inside the window | In the last 90 days |
| Leads per day | Caps how many new leaders a day can deliver | Up to 10 |
| How often, Time | When the search runs, within 30 minutes of the time | Daily, 07:00 |
| Each person once | A person this play has delivered never comes back | Always on |
Clu asks which window counts as new and recommends 90 days. A 30-day window gives a smaller, fresher list. A 90-day window also catches leaders whose profiles were updated weeks after they started.
The window reads the start date of each person's current role. Every morning is a fresh search of your target accounts; the agent does not compare one day's staff list with the next.
Keep the target accounts current
The play holds a copy of your target accounts' domains. When the list changes in your CRM or a spreadsheet, the agent keeps searching the old one until you update it. Ask Clu in the agent's chat to add or remove domains; it proposes the change on the canvas and you accept it.
- Paste domains: the people search matches each person's current employer by website domain.
- Skip the list route: a company search seeded from a Cleanlist list fires each company once, so it catches leaders already in place when the company first matches and misses later hires.
- Check the list each quarter: target accounts added since you built the agent are accounts it cannot see.
What to send a new leader in their first 90 days
Send one short, specific note in the first weeks: name the change, offer one thing useful for their first quarter and ask an easy question. Then give it room. A new leader gets many of these, and the ones that read like a congratulations template are the easiest to ignore.
- Weeks 1 to 3: a two-line note that ties their new remit to a problem you solve, with no meeting ask.
- Weeks 3 to 6: something they can use in their plan, such as a benchmark or a short teardown of how a peer runs the same function.
- Weeks 6 to 12: an offer to compare notes, or to show how a similar team set it up.
Check the account first. If your company already sells there, the account owner may want to send the note, or knows the history. To draft first lines for each leader, add an Agents step with the Write skill (a first line, an email, a LinkedIn note or a call opener) and an Approve step, so a person reads each draft before it goes into a sequence.
Other sales trigger events, and which ones Cleanlist AI can watch
Cleanlist AI watches the triggers it can find through people and company search, and through the watches its agents keep: new leaders at named accounts, funding rounds through a company search, job posts through a hiring trigger, companies that start using a tool you name, and job changes among the contacts in your CRM. It does not watch buying intent, because it does not sell intent data.
| Trigger event | Why it matters | In Cleanlist AI |
|---|---|---|
| New sales or marketing leader | A new owner of the plan and the budget | This agent: a daily people search on your target accounts |
| Funding round | New money and a growth plan | A company search with funding filters, which can fire again on a new round |
| Hiring for a role | A team growing, or a gap to fill | The Companies start hiring trigger, which reads job posts |
| A company starts using a tool | A stack decision just made, such as a new CRM, a data warehouse or a rival's product | The Companies adopt a tool trigger: one technology you name, at companies that match your ICP, 2 credits a signal |
| A champion changes jobs | A buyer who already knows you, at a new company | Job change tracking: the contacts in your CRM, each profile rechecked monthly or every two weeks |
| Buying intent or research activity | Interest in a topic or category | Not covered: no intent data |
For intent signals from other vendors, see the intent data providers we compared.
Sales trigger tools, by kind
Three kinds of tool track sales triggers. People-data platforms watch accounts or contacts and flag role changes. Company-signal providers turn news, job posts and funding into structured events. Search-based agents rerun a people search on a schedule and pick up whoever is new. For executive moves, the first and third give you a person you can contact.
| Tool | Trigger events it covers | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| UserGems | New hires in the past 3 months at the accounts you track, scanned monthly, among 30+ signals that include job changes and hiring | People-data platform |
| ZoomInfo | An Employment Changes signal (promotions, new hires and departures), plus funding, hiring plans, intent and technology changes | Data platform with signals |
| Apollo | Notifications when contacts you designate change jobs, and managerial changes at target accounts | Data platform with signals |
| PredictLeads | News events in 37 types, job openings and financing events, delivered as data | Company-signal provider |
| Crunchbase | Funding, growth and acquisition predictions built on private company signals | Company data and predictions |
| Cleanlist AI | New sales and marketing leaders at your target accounts, by a daily people search, with emails and phone numbers | Search-based agent |
Each vendor's description comes from its own pages, read October 8, 2026 (see Sources). Where Cleanlist AI fits: the agent covers one trigger, a new leader at an account you named, and hands you the person with an email and a phone number in the same run.
What it costs, and which plan runs it
The search is free. The agent pays 1 credit for each work email it finds and 10 for each phone number, and nothing when it finds neither. If 10 new leaders arrive at your target accounts in a month, the agent spends at most 110 credits that month.
Running the agent needs Pro (from $89 a seat a month, $67 billed annually), which includes 5 active agents across the workspace, or Enterprise for unlimited agents. The 14-day Pro trial lets you build the agent and review its play; testing it and turning it on need a paid plan.
Every agent Clu builds carries two limits you set: records per run, and a credit limit counted across all its runs each day (each week on a weekly schedule). When the agent reaches it, runs stop until the next period.
