Generating pipeline has become extra challenging in the last couple of years. Through it all, our team at UserGems managed to have our best year yet in 2023. And we’re on track for another great year in 2024! 🎉

How have we done it?

By using our own product for pipeline generation, of course.

Tracking buying signals is a great place to start, but it’s only half the battle. If you want to build pipeline, you need to act on your best buying signals. 

At UserGems, our revenue teams have configured our own UserGems workflows so new pipeline is generated on auto-pilot.

In fact, 12-16% of sales-accepted pipeline and 23% of closed won revenue at UserGems in 2023 was driven by our product. UserGems silently captured and actioned key buying signals in the background without adding any work for sales reps.

Need inspiration? Check out how we set up our UserGems' Past Champions program.

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How we set up our own UserGems (UG4UG)'s Past Champions signal

As you’d expect, we’re experts at putting UserGems technology to work. 

For the Past Champions signal, this starts by configuring our CRM in a way that works best for our goals: i.e. — generating pipeline.

In our CRM, you can find a number of different contact types and categories, such as:

• Opportunity contacts
• Demo requesters
• Existing customer contacts
• Conference list uploads
• Webinar attendee list uploads
• UserGems product users

Of course, we don’t look for job changes across every single contact in our CRM. Instead, we filter for the best opportunities, aka the ones that are most likely to know us.

Here are some of the contact categories we use at UserGems:

• Closed Lost Opportunity Contacts
• Open and Closed Won Opportunity Contacts
• Active Product Users
• Customer Success Defined Champions/Primary POCs
• Persona Matching Customer Contacts (Director+)

You should be able to report on opportunity contacts with ease if you have Salesforce or Lists of Deal Contacts if you have HubSpot as your CRM.

Pro Tip: Did you know that UserGems has an automatic opp contact import feature? This is a good place to start if you’re unsure how to build this report.

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How we optimize our Past Champions plays

One reason our pipeline generation strategy works so well is that we did the groundwork to optimize our plays.

Contacts are ranked within our CRM by tier. Tier 1 contacts are people we really care about, and Tier 5 contacts receive a fully automated sequence to not take SDR capacity, but not exclude them completely. This helps our revenue teams dedicate their time to only the best opportunities. 

Each signal is ranked based on its likelihood of conversion. Different scores are given to different attributes. For example, a job change for an admin user is ranked more highly than a normal user. If someone is an NPS Promoter, they’ll rank more highly than someone who isn’t.

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It's also very important to keep our opportunity contact data clean. We de-duplicate these contacts within our platform automatically in case someone shows up in multiple reports. We default a single contact to the report they’re top-ranked in.

All of this ranking leaves us with only our best champions to attach actions to.

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How we decide which accounts are important to track

You might be reading this and thinking, “Great, those rankings work for them, but what about me? How do I decide which accounts are the right ones to track?”

While every company is different, this is our methodology for deciding who to track. It’s pretty simple, and you can do it too!

1. ABM accounts - Narrowing down which ABM accounts to track requires input from Marketing. Our Marketing team picks these based on the number of new hires and the number of past champions working for them each quarter.
   

Tip: If you don’t have ABM accounts, no problem! GemAI can help pick which accounts are more likely to convert, and you can use those.

2. AE outbound accounts - These are different. We let the AEs pick these from accounts they’re actively pursuing since they might know something our CRM doesn’t.

There are other types of accounts that we automatically track at UserGems. 

         3.   Past closed lost accounts

         4.   Churned accounts

         5.   Prospect accounts with Open Opps -> acceleration plays

         6.   Customer accounts -> expansion plays

We automatically track these accounts because these people are already familiar with UserGems. We believe our product’s best salesperson is itself. If an account already knows about UserGems, we know they’re more likely to convert and are worth actioning.

Pro Tip: Struggling to narrow down the best opportunities? Try only adding opportunity contacts from stages past a certain threshold (like when the prospect is seriously evaluating).

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An example of an end-to-end play and its results

A pretty common playbook for us at UserGems is when a contact joins a new company. This contact has been identified as an opportunity because they match our ICP and because of their job title.

Depending on how they’re ranked in our CRM, the ‘Gem’ gets routed and actioned differently.

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Here’s how we action these types of buying signals at UserGems.

First, we use a signal called Past Champion. Any time UserGems finds a job change for someone ranked as an opportunity contact, it automates an action.

If the contact is at a Target Account, we assign them to the right rep. We then add them to an automatic marketing sequence. Finally, we notify the right team member via Slack to help generate pipeline.

If the contact is at an Open Opportunity Account, we assign them to the AE working the deal. We also send that AE a Slack notification so they can take action quickly, helping speed up deal cycles.

If the key contact just left a Customer Account, we need to do something to prevent churn—and fast. UserGems creates an action in our CS tool and immediately notifies the CSM via Slack. This keeps us from losing an otherwise happy account.

Results of this playbook

We run many different playbooks at UserGems. This Champion Job Change signal has several different automated actions attached to it.

This strategy runs 24/7/365 in the background for our sales team. And because each sequence is personalized based on our knowledge of the contact’s situation and knowledge of UserGems, our open rate is high.

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This is what one of these opportunity contacts from our ‘Past Customer - ICP Account’ sequence had to say when they received an automated (though personalized) message from us:

Generating Pipeline with Automatic Signal-Based Actions

We use our own product for always-on pipeline generation without resorting to a ‘spray-and-pray’ outbounding motion. Instead, we find the best opportunities and start taking action on them automatically.

By laying a little groundwork, you can build pipeline too!

Learn more about using signal-based GTM to keep your pipeline full by booking a demo.