Intermediate

Sell to New Hires that Join a Customer Competitor

Use this playbook to identify persona matching new hires joining your customers’ competitors. Reach out to them in their first 90 days to build credibility and drive urgency by mentioning their competitor's success.

Key Signals

Cust. Competitors

New Hires & Promotions

Playbook Overview

When should you run this playbook?

There's a newly hired decision maker or executive in an ICP matching account that is a competitor of one of your current customers.

Who to target?

Playbook goal?

Responsible teams?

Sales and Marketing teams in charge of outbound to individual contacts.

Why New Hires + Customer Competitors Works

New decision makers want to make a splash fast, usually in their first 90 days. That means evaluating what's in place, finding easy wins, and being open to new tools that can help them hit the ground running.

By combining the New Hires signal with Customer Competitors, you can lead with a strong hook to cut through the noise of all the "congrats on the new role!" emails. For example, lead with something like:

“One of your top competitors {name drop} is already crushing it with us. This could be the advantage to {solve the problem you were probably hired to solve that my product helps you with}.”

It’s a smart mix of timing and social proof. Plus it works especially well with leaders who want to stand out early and set the tone.

Messaging Examples

‍

Tip: Drop a customer story if you have one!

‍

Depending on your buyer persona, it could also be helpful to be very direct on why you think they'd see success

Messaging Tips

Speed = Credibility: Reach out within the first 2–3 weeks of their start date to beat competitors.
Name-drop Strategically: Only reference customer competitors where you have real, defensible success.
Be Subtle, Not Aggressive: Frame the competitor mention as informative, not pressure-driven.
Use Sequences: 7-12 touch points over 45 days with email, LinkedIn, and optional gifting.

Optional add-on layer: Promotions

If the new hire is also an internal promotion (vs. external hire), adapt your messaging to reflect institutional knowledge + new responsibility:

“Now that you’re driving strategy, thought you might want to see what [Customer] is already doing to get ahead…”

How to Set It Up in UserGems

Upload specific Customer accounts to UserGems or automatically import all via settings.
Enable the New Hires & Customer Competitor Signals in the Signal Library
Create an audience with:
- Person Signals = New Hires
- Company Signals = Customer Competitors
Activate Gem-E campaign under Campaigns to activate AI messaging and sequence enrollment.

‍