Champion tracking: The next high-performing marketing channel

B2B marketing is at a crossroads. With so many teams using the same playbooks, it’s harder and harder for marketers to stand out in a crowd. Add the rising customer acquisition costs, tightening budgets, and higher targets, and you have marketers scrambling to adjust their strategies to generate more pipelines with fewer resources.
Enter: champion tracking.
Champion tracking is one of the oldest playbooks for sales teams. Why? Because champions (i.e., previous users, past buyers, and internal influencers) can help sales teams find a way into valuable target accounts.
Today, 41% of employees are seeking new opportunities, and about 20% of your CRM contacts will make job movements this year alone, making this play a meaningful channel for generating a qualified pipeline. It’s time for marketing to adopt this champion-tracking play to turn their CRM into an always-on pipeline generation engine.
My background is in product marketing. As a product marketer, I was a huge fan of a particular call recording tool—let’s call it Software A. I used this tool extensively and sang its praises. I said it was an absolute must-have tool for sales and marketing.
Then I joined a new company that didn’t have a call recording tool. Around the same time, I started noticing a different call recording tool all over LinkedIn—let’s call it Software B. Their company and employee content was educational and entertaining. And they stayed on my radar. By the time a seller reached out from Software B, I was already a fan. I made the switch from my favorite must-have tool and became a raving fan of this new one.
If the team from Software A had reached out, I’m not sure if I would have bought from them again—but the chance would have been higher. However, since they did not reach out to me at my new role, a competitor swooped in and got the deal.
It’s a pretty common story. Buyers have nothing to lose by checking out new options.
So I am always surprised when marketers tell me: “I know the value of repeat champions, but we don’t need to reach out when they change their jobs. Our customers love us, and they will come back on their own!”
That is a nice thought, but it’s risky to assume your champions will buy again without outside influence. I can think of three reasons why these marketers should be tracking their champions:
Don’t leave finding your best buyers up to chance.
There are many ways B2B marketers can use champion tracking to bring in more qualified pipeline, but, in my experience, these are the best ways to leverage champion tracking for marketing:
The good news about champion tracking is that you don’t need new software to get started. Here are some of the best ways to get started with champion tracking without having to purchase additional technology.
When a previous buyer moves to a new company, the marketing team has the opportunity to capture a new account. So how can you reengage your champions when they move to another company?
Sales teams have been using the champion tracking playbook for years because they understand the value of relationships for making connections and closing new deals. Marketers can adapt this same playbook to generate new pipeline and drive efficient growth (especially in an era of economic uncertainty).