Executives ignore most cold emails. UserTesting doubled their response rate anyway—and drove $25M in revenue—by targeting past champions who already knew their product. Connecting with and nurturing executives at target accounts is harder still.

UserTesting doubled their response rate and drove $25M in revenue between 2021 and April 2023 by tracking past champions who changed jobs.

How?

By using champion tracking to bring in new customers.

This involves proactively tracking and reaching out to past champions who have used or evaluated your tool and hopefully loved it to get the warmest paths into target accounts. UserGems tracks your customers' job changes and surfaces them as warm leads in your CRM—automatically.

Priscilla Converse, UserTesting's Senior Demand Generation Manager, walked us through their playbook: how they score, route, and reach out to past champions to convert them into pipeline.

Why is tracking champion job changes so important?

20% of your customers change jobs every year. We analyzed 5,000 opportunities and confirmed it.

Most teams miss this: reconnecting with these champions at their new companies is one of the fastest ways to build pipeline.

In part 2 of our Hidden Gems series, we found these alumni customers—'Gems'—generated 5% of closed won revenue.

The key, however, is to actively target these Gems because only 9% of them return on their own — even after they’ve been in their new role for more than 90 days.

Without tracking customer job changes, you lose pipeline. Here's what the data shows:

1. Double your win rate

Tracking job changes surfaces past champions who already know your product.

These Gems already know and trust your product, which is why they convert at higher rates.

Deals with Gems more than double your win rate. Our Hidden Gems series confirmed it:

• 114% higher win rates

• 54% bigger deal sizes

• 12% shorter sales cycles

2. Get an internal cheerleader in the buying committee

Buying committees now include 7-12 decision-makers, not just 1-2.

A champion on the buying committee makes the case for you internally—someone who already knows your product works.

3. Multithread your way into the buying committee

Gems open doors to other stakeholders in the account.

In fact, in part 3 of our Hidden Gems series, we found that multi-threaded deals involving previous champions have:

• An additional 63% higher win rate

• A 66% increase in the size of multithreaded deals

Quick recap: Gems are people who've used, bought, or evaluated your product and have since changed jobs.

Gems are people who have previously used, bought, or evaluated your product and have since changed jobs.

They've been through your sales process before. They know how your product works and what results it delivers—which makes them qualified to sell it internally at their new company.

You could track these Gems manually in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Or UserGems can surface them automatically in your CRM every time a customer changes jobs.

In fact, for UserTesting, the job change trigger functionality in UserGems delivered 1,300 warm leads within a week — an efficient way to beat pipeline anxiety.

UserTesting’s VP of Demand Generation, Steve Jones commented:

UserTesting’s playbook to add new warm leads to its sales pipeline

UserTesting's strategy: target Gems at scale.

They track champions with UserGems, score and route the leads, then reach out with personalized messaging.

Here's how they do it:

Step 1: Track past customers

UserTesting tracks its past customers with UserGems — dividing warm leads into two broad categories:

• Alumni customers or past customers who have moved to new companies

• Warm prospects or folks who showed a high likelihood to convert in the past but didn’t for some reason

This category includes two types:

The first: people who requested a demo but went dark. 'Maybe they went on vacation,' Priscilla explains. But because they reached out themselves, they have high purchase intent.

The second: closed lost opportunities. 'People who were part of a buying cycle but didn't close,' Priscilla says.

These people have high intent—they've seen a demo or tried the product before changing jobs.

Step 2: Prioritize and assign UserGems leads

Once UserGems finds a champion who’s recently changed jobs, it drops the warm lead into UserTesting’s CRM.

From there, their system scores leads and routes them to the right rep.

Most of these leads fit UserTesting's ICP. 'They've been in our platform before,' Priscilla says. 'They're spot on.'"

Leads that don't fit the ICP get a lower score and go to marketing for nurturing first.

Step 3: Rep studies the prospect

Sales enablement matters here too.

Personalized outreach that addresses real pain points converts better.

This is why, Priscilla shares:

Before reaching out, reps ask:

• “What company did [the Gem] work for previously?

• How long has that company been a customer of ours?

• What kind of a user was [this particular person] within the platform? Did they actually use it themselves or were they just a viewer of somebody else’s work?”

After studying the lead, reps add them to an automated sequence.

Step 4: Multi-channel, personalized outreach

UserTesting also reaches out across multiple channels.

They use email, LinkedIn InMail, and calls to reach leads across multiple channels.

Here's an example email with the key elements:

• Reference: The email starts off by making a reference to the previous company the Gem worked with.

• Value proposition: It then shares the value of the tool as a reminder.

• Call-to-action: The message closes with an invite to introduce their tool to the Gem’s new team.

This email got them a meeting the next day. Deal closed in 45 days.

The email works because it's relevant: it shows how UserTesting can help in their new role.

{{usertesting-pro-tip-1}}

Results UserTesting drove from their playbook

UserTesting doubled their response rate by targeting warm leads from UserGems.

Their typical outreach gets a 10% response rate. With UserGems alumni leads: 20%.

Priscilla also adds:

Bonus tip: Use champions to connect with the buying committee

At the end of your first meeting with a Gem, ask them to introduce you to other stakeholders. This gets you in front of key decision-makers.

Also reach out to C-suite executives directly via LinkedIn and email.

Don't ask for a call right away. Start with low-commitment messages that update them without asking for anything.

Update them on progress without asking for anything. Example:

After a few updates, invite the executive to join your next meeting with their team.

You can also run multithreaded ads targeting the C-suite on channels they use. We ran this playbook at UserGems: 31% higher win rates, 17% shorter sales cycles.

Using this playbook to boost pipeline generation at your organization

Finding and targeting Gems—past champions at new companies—is the fastest way to build pipeline.

Tracking them is step one. You also need a scoring system, routing process, and outreach plan.

UserGems handles the tracking automatically.

UserGems surfaces alumni customers monthly and provides playbooks you can adapt to your strategy.

See how UserGems can double your response rates.Book a demo.