How Job Change Signals can Boost Your Pipeline

A few weeks ago, a friend messaged me. She had just started a new role as VP of Marketing at a Series B startup. From the outside, it looked like a big win. Great company. Exciting product. But she was already drowning. No onboarding. No strategy. A CEO asking for results now. And an inbox full of cold pitches from people who saw her LinkedIn update and pounced. She said, “I just wish someone had said congrats and asked if I needed anything” That stuck with me. In B2B, we’ve trained ourselves to treat these moments like lead scores. - Someone changes jobs? Sell to them. - Company raises money? Sell to them. - They visit your pricing page? Definitely sell to them. Clay just launched a feature called Signals that tracks all of those moments. Job changes. Fundraising. Site visits. New tech in the stack. Hiring trends. Etc. Most teams will use it to go faster. More outreach. More pipeline. That’s fine. But there’s a better way. Use signals to actually show up well. To build trust before there’s even a sales conversation. Here’s how: → Job change: Don’t pitch. Just say congrats or share something helpful for a new leader. → Funding news: Offer insight, not a deck. What might they be walking into? Where do they need support? → Tech added: Send something relevant. Help them get more out of the tools they already chose. → Hiring surge: They’re likely buried. Be useful. Be brief. We’re doing this ourselves. We built a Clay table of past buyers who brought in Refine Labs. Marketers who know how we work. Then we track the signals: → Who just landed somewhere new? → Who’s hiring? → Who joined a company that raised a round? We’re not blasting them. We’re waiting for the right moment to reconnect - with context. Sometimes it’s a congrats. Sometimes it’s a helpful resource. Sometimes it’s just being there. Because these aren’t just leads. They’re relationships. This is brand. Not logos and taglines. It’s how you show up when nobody’s watching. Signals give you awareness. But presence is what builds trust. And trust is what compounds. Use signals to see people. Not just to sell to them. Clay can help. #claypartner

I have lost count of the number of times a surprise decision-maker appeared at renewal time. Years ago, this would throw the whole process off. Suddenly, you are on the back foot, scrambling to rebuild relationships and credibility. I still see this happen, but what has changed is the ability to spot these shifts much earlier. When you are paying attention to new connections, changing job titles, or even the kinds of content your customer’s leadership engages with online, you do not have to wait for the next meeting to learn about new priorities. Now we can turn these signals into early warnings, allowing teams to move from reactive to intentional. Timing is everything (as long as you act on it!) The sooner you know about a change, the faster you can adapt your message and bring fresh value. Sometimes, outcomes hinge on how quickly you spot who actually needs your help. Knowing where to focus makes all the difference.

 📌 The writing is on the wall... but are you reading it? After 15+ years in executive search, I've noticed 3 clear signals that consistently precede successful career transitions: 1. You delivered exceptional results, backed them with data, and professionally requested appropriate comp adjustment. The response? "Maybe next year." High performers know their worth—and so do great companies. 2. That strategic promotion you were perfectly positioned for just went to someone else. Sometimes it's a learning opportunity, but if you've consistently exceeded expectations and shown leadership potential, it might be time to find an organization that recognizes your capabilities. 3. The new executive team is taking shape, but you're not part of the conversation. Pro tip: Have a direct, professional discussion with leadership about your future in the organization. Their response (or lack thereof) will tell you everything you need to know. Remember: Career transitions aren't about running from something—they're about running toward opportunity. The best time to explore options is when you're succeeding, not when you're struggling. What signals prompted your most successful career move? #CareerDevelopment #LeadershipTransition #ProfessionalGrowth #CareerAdvice

One of the most foundational concepts in Machine Learning is the tradeoff between precision and recall. Interestingly, I’ve noticed the best GTM teams use this framework for their strategy on building outbound pipeline with signals. Here’s how it works: When a prospect of ours engages with content around “outbound dying” or “signals” on LinkedIn, it’s a strong sign of interest. Emails can convert at 10% positive reply rates, so Max will manually dig for this information because he knows they are much more likely to be a high quality opp and successful / happy customer. The problem is that not all prospects who are actively considering tools like Bluebirds are posting or engaging on these topics. Signal strength is high, but volume is low, so we we can’t build our entire company pipeline just off this signal. This is an example of a high precision, low recall signal. The flip side is the legendary “job change” signal. A simple but universal truth is that many products are bought when a new leader joins a company because they're shaking things up (it's literally their job). The data backs this up -- several GTM teams backtested their C/W deals and found 50%+ of their C/W opps happened after a key leadership job change. In our market, there’s a LOT of VP of Sales / Marketing / RevOps job changes. The problem is that this signal on an individual basis is fairly weak. Just because a VP of Sales is new to a company, doesn’t mean they have a pipeline coverage problem, are outbound-driven motions, or thinking about signals at all. As a result, the positive response rate is closer to 1%, but the volume is 10x-100x higher than other signals. This is an example of a low precision, high recall signal. Now, here’s the key insight the best teams have already figured out and operationalized: you need both. By blending both types of signals together, you have a high precision and high recall set of signals so that your reps are focused on the 5% of the market that’s will contribute to 90% of your C/W deals. This is exactly why we built Bluebirds as a platform for the full portfolio of signals, because we realized doing one signal (our first was customer job changes) wasn’t enough to move the needle drastically on quality pipeline.