Are Job Change Alerts the Key to Unlocking Massive Pipeline Growth?

Everyone is trying to source net-new leads. But what if there were dozens of buyer-ready prospects sitting idle in your CRM?

Whenever a prospect changes roles, new selling opportunities emerge. To capitalize on these opportunities, you need the tools in place to identify these job changes at speed and scale.

In this post, we’ll explain why job changes are an important trigger event you should be prioritizing and how top Apollo AE Andres Angulo uses job change alerts to fill his pipeline and close major deals.

Job changes create a new playing field for B2B sellers

In the era of the “Great Resignation”, frequent job changes have become the norm. 53% of Americans quit and/or changed roles last year alone.

For B2B sellers this means a few things:

• Your CRM is more prone to decay. Large swaths of contact data can become inaccurate in just a few months' time. “If your team is trying to engage with these out-of-date contacts, not only are they wasting time but potentially getting lots of bounces”, Andres says.
• You’ll lose more decision-makers. In LinkedIn’s State of Sales Report, 80% of salespeople say they have delayed or lost a deal due to a job change within an account. It’s hard to sell to a moving target and sellers often hit setbacks when a decision-maker or point of contact leaves their target account.
• New employees look to incorporate new tools. There are benefits to the ever-changing professional landscape. In new roles, decision-makers often start from scratch and look for new tools to add to their workflow. On top of that, the contacts who have parted ways with your target account are 3x more likely to buy from you due to your previous interactions.

With the right processes in place, your original lead just turned into three potential leads:

1. Your original lead at a new company
2. Their replacement at your original lead’s old company
3. The replacement’s previous company (that is likely in the same industry and is also experiencing turnover—a perfect potential account)

Magic!

Now, all you have to figure out is how to identify when and where a prospect has switched jobs…

How AE Andres Angulo sourced one of his biggest deals with a single job change alert

One of the biggest deals that Andres ever closed began with a simple job change alert.

With alerts on in Apollo, he was notified that a champion left one of his current accounts and joined a new company as the Global Director of Sales Operations. He targeted that contact at their new company, and then used Apollo to find and connect with their BDR team leads and set them up with a trial. Once they were seeing favorable results, he reached out to the champion who changed jobs and was now the decision-maker at this target company, and closed the deal!

Job change alerts helped Andres quickly and easily identify low-hanging fruit. With little-to-no prospecting efforts, he was able to quickly leverage a pre-existing relationship to create an ‘in’ at a new company and use the right selling strategies to close a massive new deal.

And—chances are—there’s a similar opportunity hiding in your CRM, too.

How to use job change to activate hot leads

In Andres’ experience, 95% of prospects he encounters aren’t leveraging job change tools in their existing database.

If you want to be a part of the savvy 5% who use job changes to generate more revenue, here are a few of the ways he recommends you start.

#1: Filter your CRM account stages

Too often, CRMs are out-of-date and have limited functionality. “I notice that once people link their CRM to a sales engagement tool, at least 10-25% of their database is out of date”, says Andres.

Integrating Hubspot or Salesforce with an end-to-end sales engagement platform not only enriches your CRM, but also allows you to filter by account stage to easily track job changes in each of your accounts.

This saves sales teams a lot of time because they no longer need to download a list of their target accounts and upload it to Apollo to begin prospecting. All they need to do is set their filters and they have access to buyer-ready accounts.

#2: Get your foot back in the door with target accounts

Maybe you’ve had not-so-positive sales interactions with a decision-maker in one of your target accounts. They’ve made it crystal clear that they are not interested.

But, all it takes is one job change alert to tell you that that decision-maker is parting ways with the company. This gives you another opportunity to get in the door and start booking fresh meetings with the target account.

#3: Filter active opportunities

Another excellent way to identify job changes is filtering by active opportunities.

Opportunity stages (in both Apollo and Salesforce) are ways to map exactly where potential customers are in the sales funnel (ie. prospecting, qualification, perception analysis, proposal).

If one of your points of contact in a crucial opportunity stage moves to another company, follow them there! There’s a good chance you’ll be able to pick up where you left off and close the sale.

#4: Create a job change sequence

Once you have a fool-proof process for finding the leads who’ve changed roles and meet your ICP, add them to an outbound sequence to congratulate them on their new job. This is a perfect way to engage prospects with personalized, eye-catching messaging.

Here’s an example of an Apollo sequence targeted at prospects who’ve recently changed roles:

This is an example of a sales sequence that leverages perfect buying opportunities.

With three automatic emails and a LinkedIn request over six days, this sequence is aimed at prospects who are previous product users and have recently changed companies. It asks if they want to meet with a sales rep to discuss how they can integrate the product into their new role.

If you’re part of a B2B sales team, you can use this sequencing format (along with our handy job change alerts) to reach out at pivotal sales moments automatically.

Conclusion

People are cycling through jobs quicker than ever, which may feel a little overwhelming as a B2B seller. But, with automated, data-driven sales tools in your stack, you can instantly recognize opportunities and convert new, buyer-ready employees into happy customers.