Part of The ABC of Sales series — Authentic, Business,
Connection. Real stories, practical lessons, one letter at a time.
It was a Monday morning. Coffee in hand, routine check-in
scheduled, pipeline looking solid.
And then the bounce.
"Hi, I received your message, but Sarah is no longer with
our organisation. For enquiries, please contact our main switchboard..."
I stared at that auto-reply for longer than I would like to
admit. Sarah was not just a contact. She was a decision-maker I had spent four
months building a genuine relationship with — learning her priorities,
understanding her team’s challenges, earning the kind of trust that makes a
procurement committee feel comfortable recommending a new vendor. She was the
person who had said, just three weeks prior, that our proposal was very much in
the frame for their Q4 budget.
My first instinct was the same one most salespeople have in
that moment: start over. Find the replacement. Re-educate. Re-establish. Repeat
the entire exhausting process with someone who has never heard of you.
Then I remembered something: the relationship is not with the
company. The relationship is with the person.
N is for Networking. Specifically, the art of following your
best contacts wherever their careers take them.
📧 The Bounced Email Is a Signal, Not a Dead End
A client who leaves a company carries three extraordinarily
valuable things: their professional credibility in the new organisation, their
personal trust in the vendors they have already worked with, and an urgent need
to deliver results quickly in an unfamiliar environment.
That combination is not a closed door. It is one of the
warmest sales opportunities available in any pipeline.
|
“When a decision-maker starts a new role, they don’t
have time to vet ten new vendors. They want a partner they already trust to
help them win in their first 90 days.” |
📱 They Move, You Move: The Sarah Story
Instead of deleting the contact and moving on, I spent twenty
minutes on LinkedIn. Sarah had not simply left — she had been headhunted to
lead a newly formed sustainability division at a significant competitor in the
Renewable Energy space. A brand new role. A brand new mandate. A brand new
budget to allocate in her first quarter.
While my competitors were fighting over the scraps she had
left behind at her old organisation, I sent one message. Not a pitch. A human
message:
|
“Hi Sarah — huge congratulations on the new mandate. I
saw the announcement and knew immediately you were the right person for that
challenge. When the dust settles, I would love to hear about your new goals
and explore how I might support your launch.” |
She replied within the hour. Six weeks later we had signed a
deal three times the size of the original opportunity I had been pursuing at
her previous employer.
The message worked because it was everything a newly appointed
leader in a high-pressure role needs: recognition of their achievement,
confidence in their capability, and an offer of support framed entirely around
their new situation rather than my existing product.
🌐 The Strategy: Following the Sarahs of the World
For mid-life career changers entering sales in their 40s, this
approach is a natural extension of something you have likely been doing
professionally for decades: maintaining relationships that outlast
organisations.
Listen to the New Mandate
The single most common mistake salespeople make when following
a contact to a new role is pitching the same solution. Sarah’s new mandate in
Renewable Energy had completely different pain points, different stakeholders,
and different success metrics than her previous Life Sciences role. The
proposal that followed addressed her specific new challenges. The rule is
simple: when a contact moves, their needs move with them. Your first
conversation at the new organisation should be a discovery conversation, not a
product pitch.
The Power of Familiarity in Regulated Industries
In Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Fintech — where compliance,
data governance, and vendor qualification processes are long and demanding —
being the known quantity is a competitive advantage that no new entrant can
manufacture quickly. When Sarah introduced us to her new organisation’s
procurement team, she did not introduce us as a vendor. She introduced us as a
partner she could vouch for. That endorsement compressed a qualification
process that would normally take three months into three weeks.
The Gentle Pause
If your contact moves into a department or organisation with a
long-standing, genuinely happy vendor relationship in your area, do not barge
in. Maintain the connection. Focus your active energy on the contacts who are
starting fresh, who need an ally in the first ninety days. The trust you build
by not being aggressive in the wrong context will serve you when the moment is
genuinely right.
🔍 Building the Habit: Professional Observation as a Daily Practice
Networking in this context is not an event. It is a daily
habit of professional observation — paying attention to what is happening in
the careers of the people you have built genuine relationships with.
•
Follow your key contacts on LinkedIn and set
notifications for role changes. Know about a job change within 24 hours, not
three weeks later.
•
Congratulate genuinely and promptly. A
personalised message sent within 48 hours of a role change lands completely
differently from the same message sent three weeks later.
•
Keep a simple contact movement tracker. Your ten
most valuable contacts, their current roles, any recent changes. Review
monthly. Fifteen minutes that could surface your next major deal.
•
Stay valuable between deals. Share a relevant
article. Comment meaningfully on something they post. Maintain the connection
in periods when you have nothing to sell so that when you do, the relationship
is warm.
🌱 The Growth Room: Three AI Tools That Make Networking Smarter
In the Growth Room, we explore tools that help sales
professionals build high-quality relationships at scale. Here are three
directly relevant to N for Networking:
|
🤖
Three AI Tools for the Strategic Networker 1. 🔍 LinkedIn Sales
Navigator — Track Every Career Move That Matters LinkedIn Sales Navigator's
AI-powered alerts notify you when your saved contacts change roles, get
promoted, or move to new companies. You are alerted within hours of a job
change, giving you the opportunity to reach out at exactly the right moment.
Sales Navigator also surfaces relationship pathways — showing mutual
connections who could make introductions and helping you map the stakeholder
landscape of any new organisation your contact joins. 2. 🤔 ChatGPT —
Craft the Perfect First Message The message that wins a
response from a newly appointed leader is not generic. Describe your
contact's new role, your existing relationship, and what you know about their
new organisation's challenges, and ask ChatGPT to help you craft a
personalised, warm message that leads with their situation rather than your
product. The difference between a message that gets a same-hour reply and one
that is ignored is almost always specificity. 3. 📊 Perplexity AI
— Research Any New Organisation in Minutes When a contact moves to a new
organisation, your first conversation needs to be informed by what is
actually happening in that organisation’s world — strategic priorities,
recent announcements, sector challenges, competitive position. Perplexity AI
gives you real-time, cited research on any organisation in minutes. Ten
minutes with Perplexity before reaching out to Sarah in her new Renewable
Energy role would have surfaced the specific regulatory and commercial
context her new division was navigating. That context turns a warm
reconnection into a first meeting that actually advances a deal. Explore all three — visit the Growth Room → |
⚡ Five Networking Habits to Build This Week
1.
Follow your ten most valuable contacts on LinkedIn
today. Set notifications. Know about career moves within 24 hours.
2.
Create a contact movement tracker. Ten contacts,
current roles, date of last meaningful interaction. Review monthly.
3.
Send one genuinely personalised reconnection message
this week. Not a product pitch. A human message framed entirely around
their situation.
4.
Research one contact's organisation before your next
interaction. Use Perplexity AI to understand their sector context and
strategic priorities.
5.
Congratulate promptly and specifically. Next
time a contact changes roles, send your message within 24 hours. Timing signals
attention.
🏁 The Relationship Outlasts the Role
The bounced email that opened this article is not a defeat. It
is a signal. Someone you have invested in professionally has moved into a
situation where your support, your trust, and your existing relationship could
be exactly what they need to succeed in their first ninety days.
When Sarah moves, you move. Not as a salesperson following
a commission. As a professional following a relationship that was worth
building in the first place.
👉 Next up: O is for Organisation — The
Non-Negotiable Lifeline for Every Account Executive. Don’t miss it.
💬 Have you ever followed a contact to a new company
and landed a bigger deal? Share your story in the comments.
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