Every salesperson and revenue operations (RevOps) leader is always on the hunt for fresh ICP contacts and new leads. They’re constantly exploring multiple lead generation sources and keeping their antennae up for B2B buying signals.
Of all the avenues, one of the easiest ways to generate warm leads is by tracking job changes and tapping into your existing network to unlock new opportunities.
The average tenure in the corporate world has been declining, and people frequently hop jobs or take up different roles within the same company. And monitoring this activity and acting on the job change signals can be a great source for pipeline generation.
By tracking job changes, you’d be able to uncover upsell and cross-sell opportunities with existing clients, identify new accounts to target as employees move to other companies, and connect with new decision-makers who align with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Using tools like Highperformr, you can track job changes in real time and get first-party data about promotions, new roles, or new jobs of your existing contacts.
Importance of tracking job changes
Job change tracking is not just a good-to-have tactic for teams, but should be a critical part of the go-to-market strategy in any B2B company.
Sales reps and account executives (AEs) need to be hawk-eyed when it comes to tracking job changes among their prospects and customers. It’s not just about keeping your CRM up to date with the latest contact details; monitoring job movements is critical for B2B sales and customer retention.
It helps reduce sales cycles, refine account-based marketing (ABM), and brings many other benefits that can help sales teams with better prospecting, building a stronger pipeline, and improving conversion rates.
Here’s why it is important to track job changes:
- Improve conversion rates and close deals easily through former champions
Customer advocates and key champions who were power users of your product are likely to influence decision-makers in their new roles. Their experience with your product saves you the time and effort you’d spend in educating them about the value of your product, helping you reduce sales cycles and improve conversion rates.
- Generate cross-sell and upsell sales opportunities from job changes
Loyal users of your product are more likely to double up as brand advocates and recommend your product. You can work closely with power users to connect with other decision makers when they move to other teams or departments within the company. This helps you to identify cross-sell or upsell opportunities and drive new streams of revenue.
- Revive closed-lost opportunities and identify warm leads
A closed-lost opportunity isn't the end of the world, so to speak. It doesn't mean that everything went wrong, it only shows that the deal wasn’t the best one for the customer at that point in time. Tracking job changes of people involved in a deal that was a closed-lost one can help you revive the opportunity and turn an existing contact into a customer. For example, if a contact who was impressed with your demo during a sales process changes jobs, you could reach out to them in their new role and try to convert them into a customer. The goodwill you’ve earned could help you close the deal quickly and easily.
- Improve pipeline generation by tapping into referrals and ICP contacts
Customer advocates and key champions who have taken on new jobs can be excellent sources of referrals. They can introduce you to more ideal customer profile (ICP) contacts and decision-makers within their network, helping you with pipeline generation.
- Monitor signals and take action instantly to engage the right accounts at the right time
If you are able to track job changes in real time, you will be able to get recent and relevant signals that will help you outreach better, For example, if you see that a lead from your account book has taken up a new job, you can use that as a hook to strike a conversation and make a pitch.
- Reducing churn risk through job changes
When you track job changes, you can ensure that you maintain relationships with existing customers who move on to other roles, preventing any disruption in the account and current processes. A job change in the team doesn’t have to affect the smooth functioning of your product or services.
For instance, if a regular user of your product changes jobs, you can promptly reach out to their team to offer support. This proactive approach ensures that shifts in user dynamics don’t lead to churn, keeping the account stable and well-managed.
Tracking job changes also includes promotions and new roles and helps strengthen existing relationships. If you see that a customer has taken up a new role, you can take that as an opportunity to engage with them, congratulate them, and ensure that the relationship doesn't go cold.
- Spearfish leads for sharper prospecting
When you closely track job changes and shifting roles, you gain clear insight into your lead’s priorities and requirements. You can use these signals and insight to draft better conversation starters, tailor your pitches, and ensure you position your product as something that can help their new role, increasing the chances of closing the deal.
What kind of customer job changes should you track?
Tracking job change is more complex than you might think. What kind of activities or what kind of contacts should you look at if you want to regularly track job changes? Every job change activity can have an impact on your sales process or pipeline, and you need to track all kinds of job changes.
Here’s a list that includes job change activity of people across your sales cycles, tracking promotions and new roles within the same organization, or a change to a new organization.
- Contacts in your customer accounts
These are key decision-makers in your existing customers list who directly play a role in purchasing decisions. Monitoring their career moves and engaging with them when there’s a job change can help you maintain solid relationships and spot new opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
- Key contacts who’ve switched jobs
Loyal advocates who change companies may become key decision-makers or influencers in their new roles. Identifying this can be helpful as they would be able to introduce your product in the new organization.
- Contacts from open opportunities
Prospects already in your sales pipeline could switch jobs while you’re still in conversation with them about the deal. If you’re able to track job changes in real time, you can approach such conversations better. You could either change the way you pitch, or identify other contacts in the account that you need to pitch to.
- Contacts from closed-lost opportunities
When you track job changes, be sure to also include all contacts in the list, including past customers or past prospects who didn’t convert. These contacts might be in a better position to reconsider your product or even be willing to refer you to other contacts.
- Contacts from churned accounts
Former customers who moved to new companies might be good sources as well. You might be able to re-engage them as they take up a new role and could pitch your product to them for use at their new workplace.
Strategies and tools for tracking job changes
Tracking promotions, new roles, or other job moves is critical for sales teams, but it only yields results if it is done the right way.
How to track job changes effectively:
CRM integration for job change tracking
Job change tracking is not different from managing and updating your CRM. It is a form of data enrichment, where you are enriching the CRM with the latest information. Integrating job change tracking into your CRM enhances prospecting and sales outreach.
Your CRM should serve as the single source of truth for every lead or customer your sales and marketing teams engage with. If you closely track job changes, you can keep the CRM updated with the latest employer and contact details of all your prospects or contacts. This ensures that whenever a team member from sales or marketing needs to reach out via phone or email, they always have accurate and up-to-date information.
Using AI and automation for job change tracking
Monitoring job changes manually can be time-consuming and difficult to scale. Using AI technology and automation is the best way to track job changes in real-time.
Here’s a breakdown of the best tools and techniques for effective job change tracking:
Manual tracking:
This refers to tracking job changes by collecting first-hand or second-hand information about a contact and using spreadsheets to track job changes. This could also be partially automated using tools like Google Alerts but would not be comprehensive as the data wouldn’t be real-time and wouldn’t always be based on first-party data.
Pros: Manual tracking is a lot cheaper as it wouldn’t involve the use of sales intelligence tools or products that require subscriptions.
Cons: It would be time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale, especially if you are looking to track job changes in real time.
Social media or using LinkedIn for job change tracking:
Social media platforms are among the best channels to go to if you need to track job changes in real time. Most people update their bio, summary, or profile information, making it easy to track job changes and collect accurate data.
Pros: Most companies have a presence on social media platforms and it is convenient to periodically check and track job changes. Social media platforms are also free to access, making it suitable for companies with small budgets.
Cons: Tracking job changes on social media requires a lot of manual effort, and a lot of contacts or details could slip through the cracks.
AI software designed to track job changes:
There are many AI-powered tools that help you automate the process of job change tracking. Here are some of the best ones:
Highperformr
Highperformr is an AI-native GTM platform that is built to provide sales and RevOps teams with signals and social insight that will help with precise outreach and higher response rates on outbound calls. With Highperformr, you will be able to track job changes in real time, for all kinds of contacts and leads. Highperformr has access to first-party data under the hood, and will be able to provide users with real-time updates.
Pros: Highperformr is AI-native and has access to first-party social data, making it easy to track job changes at scale and get real-time updates.
Cons: Highperformr does not have a free version and requires purchase of Highperformr AI credits to track job changes.
UserGems
UserGems is a sales intelligence tool that informs you when active or former champions change jobs.
Pros: UserGems provides data on job changes of contacts and prospects, and integrates the data with intent data that you have from other sources.
Cons: UserGems data is not always accurate or up to date, according to user reviews on G2.
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a data enrichment tool that provides users access to a large B2B contact database and also helps businesses get buyer intent data and for website visitor tracking.
Pros: ZoomInfo provides users access to over 70M phone numbers and more than 174M verified email addresses.
Cons: ZoomInfo can be pricey for companies and may not always deliver sufficient value for the cost. As a result, many customers prefer ZoomInfo competitors when looking for tools to track job changes.
How sales teams can use job changes for more effective outreach
You’re sold on the benefits of job change activity tracking, and even have a tool to track job changes. What do you do next? How do your sales teams use this information to close more deals? Here are a few things SDRs and AEs can do:
- Strengthen relationships with existing customers
Congratulate customers on their new role or promotion. It’s a simple, genuine way to stay in touch and keep the conversation warm.
- Reestablish connections with past contacts
When former customers move to new companies, you can use it as an opportunity to reconnect with them. Their familiarity with your product makes it easier to start fresh conversations.
- Seek warm referrals into target accounts
Ask contacts in new roles to introduce you to key stakeholders at their company. These introductions can help you pitch to warm leads, and reduce sales cycles to close deals faster.
- Personalize outreach for better responses
Tailor your message to their new role or challenges. You can use the job change or role change signals to tweak the tone of your conversation and steer the conversation accordingly.
- Build pipeline for cross-sell or upsell opportunities
It is important to engage the successor when a customer moves roles as it is a chance to showcase additional use cases or expand solutions within the company.
- Identify new champions in key accounts
If you regularly track job changes, you can swiftly connect with the new decision-maker in accounts to ensure continuity even if the point of contact (POC) is different.
- Proactively improve customer retention
If you notice that a key contact in an account leads, immediately reach out to others in the account or the new hire to mitigate churn risk.
- Track hiring trends to prioritize accounts
It is useful to track job changes not just from a contact or lead building perspective but also to understand broader trends. For example, if you notice that there are multiple job changes or new hires at a company, it is a signal that the company is growing and you can use this signal to customize your pitch accordingly.
- Turn champions into advocates
If you notice that a power user of your product and one of your key champions has moved roles, you can reach out to them requesting them to advocate for your product in their new role.
- Track job changes to prioritize outreach
Job change signals can be super useful in helping you prioritize the accounts you want to reach out to first, so you can close more deals faster.
- Monitor trends across your ICP
Track where your champions move over time and keep track of the kind of problems they face and solutions they seek. This insight can help you prepare better demos and make better pitches that resonate with your ICP.
Use Highperformr to track job changes and build a bigger pipeline
Highperformr’s AI-native platform has access to first-party social media data, because of which it is super quick and easy to track job changes in real time. This makes it easy to quickly reach out to contacts in the context of the career change and engage with them accordingly. To learn more about how you can configure the updates and track job changes in real time on Highperformr, schedule a demo with our experts today!
