Why are job changes a good buying signal?

A new hire often reviews the tools and suppliers they inherit, and brings preferences from their last job. If they used your product before, they already know its value.

How soon should I contact someone after a job change?

Give them a week or two to settle, then write within their first couple of months, while they are still forming opinions about what to change. That is a rule of thumb, not a measured window.

How do I track job changes?

Re-check the people you care about on a schedule, monthly is enough for most teams, and compare their current employer against what you recorded.

Should I still contact their old company?

Yes, if it was a customer or a good prospect. Someone has replaced them, and that new person may not know your product.

Job change signals: when a contact moves, and what to do

Why a move matters

Most signals tell you about interest. A job change tells you about authority and timing. Someone new in a role is expected to make changes, has a budget to inherit, and has not yet committed to the tools already in place. If they used your product before, they also bring the strongest kind of recommendation: their own experience.

But not every move is worth a message. The value depends on who moved and where they went.

Four kinds of move, ranked

Who moved	Where	Value	What to do
A past user or champion	To a company that fits your profile	Highest	Congratulate, then ask about their plans for the area you cover
A strong prospect who never bought	To a company that fits	High	Treat as a fresh lead, re-scored at the new company
A past user or champion	To a company that does not fit	Low	Stay in touch, do not pitch
Anyone	Out of the role you sell to	None for now	Update your records

There is a fifth, often missed: the replacement at the old company. When your champion leaves a customer account, someone takes over who may not know why you were chosen. That is a renewal risk, and it is worth a proactive, friendly introduction from the account owner.

The decision rule: re-score at the new employer

A job change does not make someone a lead. It makes them worth re-checking. The person who scored 85 at their last company might score 40 at the new one (wrong size, wrong industry) or 95 (exactly your customer). Score again from scratch against your profile, using the new company's facts.

Decision rule:

Scored well before, scores well now: contact them.
Scored well before, scores poorly now: keep a light relationship, no pitch.
Was a customer user, scores well now: highest priority. Contact them, and alert whoever owns the old account.
Moved into a role you do not sell to: archive, check again in six months.

Timing

There is no published study on the perfect window that we would stand behind, so here is the reasoning instead. In the first week, people are drowning in onboarding and introductions. After a few months, they have made their first round of decisions. The useful window sits between: settled enough to read messages, new enough to still be choosing. Our rule of thumb is to write between about two weeks and two months after the start date.

How to track it without a dedicated tool

Keep a list of the people who matter: customer champions, power users, and prospects who scored well but did not buy. For most small teams that is a few hundred people.
Record their current employer and title with the date you checked.
Re-check monthly. LinkedIn profiles are the usual source. For a few hundred people this is a few hours a month by hand.
Flag anyone whose employer changed, and run the decision rule above.

Monthly is enough. Checking weekly finds moves a few days sooner, at four times the effort, and the timing window above is weeks, not days.

What to write

Keep it human. You are congratulating someone, not processing a trigger.

For a past user:

Congratulations on the move to Northfield, Sam. When you were at Ashby you set up our scheduling for all three sites. If Northfield has the same headache, happy to help you get it running faster the second time. Either way, good luck with the new role.

For a strong prospect who never bought:

Saw you have joined Northfield as operations lead, congratulations. Clinics of Northfield's size often hit the no-show problem as they add rooms. How are you handling bookings there today?

Notice what neither does: claim a relationship that does not exist, or pretend the timing is a coincidence. More on writing from what you know in write a first message from their words.

Pitfalls

Stale profiles. Some people update LinkedIn months after moving, and some never do. A job change you discover late is still worth acting on, with the timing adjusted.
Wrong person, same name. Check the history matches before you write "congratulations".
Suppression. If the new company is already your customer, do not cold-pitch them. Tell the account owner instead. See stop pitching your own customers.
Over-weighting the signal. A move into a company that does not fit is still a company that does not fit.

How tools handle it

Several tools offer job change tracking. Clay includes job change signals on its Launch plan; Common Room tracks job changes alongside other signals; Apollo has job change enrichment. Each has its own scope and price; check which people it watches (your CRM contacts, or everyone).

Sluice re-reads the people who scored well each month, flags anyone who moved company and re-scores them against your profile at the new employer, which is the decision rule above done automatically. It does not watch every contact in your CRM, only people it scored well, and it will not tell you about funding rounds or other company events (no supplier serves those reliably yet). See job changes as a lead source and buying signals that actually convert.

Start with this list

Write down your ten best customer champions from the last two years and check where each works today. If even one has moved to a company that fits, you have your best lead of the week.