Lead qualification guides · Leadership and voice
When a new executive takes over the function you sell to, every inherited tool and vendor goes under review at once. Here is how to read a leadership change as qualification evidence, and reach the new chair while the mandate is fresh.
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An executive's first two quarters follow a script: assess what you inherited, decide what to keep, and make a visible mark. That script is the single most reliable buying window in B2B. The new head of the function you sell to has no loyalty to the current vendors, an explicit mandate to improve things, and a short honeymoon in which changes are expected rather than resisted.
The person also imports their past. Leaders bring the tools that worked at their last company; if they used something like your product before, you are halfway in. If they used a competitor, you at least know the category is already understood and budgeted, and switching conversations are easiest during regime change.
After roughly six months, the window closes: the audit ends, the kept vendors are confirmed, and the new leader's choices become the new status quo. Timing is most of the value in this evidence.
Leadership changes are among the easiest evidence to confirm.
LeadSmarts researches the person as well as the company: role changes, seniority, and the influence of the contact's seat are part of the scored evidence, each claim carrying a source link. A recent start in a decision-making role relevant to your product earns buying-intent points, weighted by how fresh the change is.
Contact-level fit is scored alongside company fit, so a perfect-fit company with a brand-new relevant decision-maker outranks the same company with an entrenched incumbent contact. The result page shows the split, and the outreach draft can be grounded in the same evidence, so the message the rep sends matches the reason the lead scored high.
New leaders go to conferences. It is the fastest way to map a market they are now responsible for, which means event lead lists are disproportionately rich in people who just changed jobs, exactly the contacts worth finding. The quiet visitor who took a brochure may have started their role three weeks ago and be assembling a shortlist right now.
Qualify the event list with this in mind: a contact whose role started recently deserves a different follow-up than a five-year incumbent, and the research will show you which is which before you write a word.
Write to the mandate, not the job title. A new leader's inbox fills with vendor introductions the week their appointment is announced; the messages that survive are the ones that speak to what this person was hired to change.
If you met at an event, the meeting plus the new role is the whole opener: few things are more natural than following up with someone who is openly in discovery mode.
"Good meeting you at WorkplaceSummit. I saw you've since taken over Workplace at Calder: if the first-90-days audit includes how the offices actually work for people, that is the exact problem we live in, and I'd be glad to show you what your peers are doing about it."
Acknowledges the new seat, respects the audit, offers a shortcut.
Roughly the first two quarters. Early on, the leader is auditing and unusually open to input; by month six, kept vendors are confirmed and the appetite for change drops sharply. Recency weighting in the score reflects exactly this decay.
A senior arrival reshuffles priorities below them too: new CROs change what sales managers buy, new COOs change what office managers are told to fix. It is weaker than a direct match on your buyer's seat, and scores accordingly, but it is far from noise.
Research covers what is publicly available about the person's role history and current seat, always from public sources, never by accessing private accounts. What is found lands as evidence with source links; what is not found is honestly reflected in the confidence score.
Evidence rarely arrives alone. If you are seeing this, check for these too.
A job post for your buyer's exact title means someone is about to own the problem you solve, and their first 90 days are your window.
Read the guide →A leader describing your problem in their own words is the strongest buying-intent evidence that exists. It is also the easiest to open on.
Read the guide →SDR and AE openings are a public bet on growth. Growth mode means budgets move fast, and new problems get bought, not built.
Read the guide →Qualify your list and find the leads whose decision-maker arrived this quarter.
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