New exec, new stack.
When a VP or C-level lands at your target account, the next 100 days rewrite the stack. The window is short, the field is empty, and the deal sizes are bigger than any other play in this library.
9-minute read · 1 anatomy table · 1 sequence template · 1 worked example
The most expensive seat in the company just turned over.
If you sell tools or services that cost more than 25K a year into mid-market and enterprise accounts, the single most important fact about your buyer is that they did not choose the stack they inherited. Their predecessor did. And their predecessor is gone.
Exec moves are the most consequential job change in B2B. A new VP of RevOps will audit and replace 20 to 30 percent of the GTM stack inside six months. A new CRO will rewrite 40 to 50 percent. A new CMO will rip out and replace the bulk of the marketing automation, attribution, and content infrastructure in the first quarter. These are not vendor decisions that drift slowly. They are scheduled, board-aware, mandate-backed changes.
The window is shorter than the IC-level job change. New execs are evaluated on velocity in their first 90 days, the proposed changes typically go to procurement by week 10, and the new stack is mostly locked by week 14. After day 100, the new exec stops auditing and starts operating. The conversation that was open is closed.
What makes this play different from the IC-level job-change play is the deal size. Average ACV on exec-sourced deals is two to four times what the same product closes for at peer accounts where there has been no exec change. The buyer has air-cover, the budget is fresh, and the procurement path is shorter because the new exec wants their first wins on the board fast.
The rest of this page is the anatomy of the exec-move signal, the multi-channel sequence that has been working when founders run this play themselves, the composite case study of an enterprise data platform that built their entire mid-market book on this signal, and what it costs to run.
Different execs change different things.
The audit window is fast and the stack-change footprint depends almost entirely on which exec moved. The table below is the field map we use when we are sizing this play against a founder's offer. If your tool falls inside the function the new exec owns, the play is on. If it falls outside, the exec-move signal does not buy you much.
| New exec | Stack changed | Decisions in first 100 days | Median ACV uplift |
|---|---|---|---|
| New CRO / VP Sales | Forecasting, CRM, enablement, intel | 5 to 8 vendor changes | 3 to 4x |
| New CMO / VP Marketing | Automation, attribution, content, ABM | 6 to 10 vendor changes | 2 to 4x |
| New CFO / VP Finance | Billing, planning, audit, comp | 3 to 5 vendor changes | 2 to 3x |
| New CISO / VP Security | Identity, monitoring, GRC, vendor risk | 4 to 6 vendor changes | 3 to 5x |
| New VP RevOps | Pipeline tooling, attribution, CPQ | 4 to 7 vendor changes | 2 to 3x |
| New VP Customer Success | CS platform, NPS, churn-risk, comp | 3 to 5 vendor changes | 2 to 3x |
| New VP Engineering / CTO | Observability, CI, security, dev tools | 5 to 10 vendor changes | 2 to 4x |
The high-uplift cases are CRO and CISO, for different reasons. New CROs are explicitly hired to change the revenue motion, which usually means changing tools, and they have the budget to do it fast. New CISOs typically arrive after a board-level security event and are mandated to upgrade the entire risk surface, often with a number attached.
The trap on this table is matching the exec move to your function but not to your specific product category. A new CMO will replace marketing automation; they will probably not touch your invoicing tool. The play only works when the exec is in your category, not just adjacent to it.
Cite their last stack. Multi-thread their reports. Move fast.
Exec outreach lives or dies on personalization that proves you actually understand the buyer. Citing the last company's stack does this in one sentence. Multi-threading the direct reports does it again in a different way: by the time the exec opens your email, two of their reports have already read it.
The sequence below is the shape that has been working for founders running this play themselves. Three channels (email to exec, LinkedIn DM to reports, physical mail for the top 50 names), one cadence, eight weeks. Past week eight the audit has closed.
The physical mail step matters more than founders expect. An exec inbox is overwhelmed; an exec desk is not. A hand-addressed envelope with one printed page lands at a different attention level than any email could. Response rate on the mail step is typically 5 to 10 times the email-only baseline for the same prospect.
The peer-intro offer in touch four is the conversion accelerant. New execs are starved for honest peer conversations in their first 90 days. Offering a real introduction, on terms that benefit them, often converts the exec who had not opened touches one through three.
The data platform that built its whole mid-market book on this signal.
Composite drawn from enterprise engagements running exec-move outbound as the primary GTM motion. Specifics anonymized; the arc and the numbers are consistent with what the play produces at this deal size.
The team was a Series B data platform selling into VPs of Data Engineering at $500M to $5B revenue companies. Average ACV was 250K. They had two named-account reps grinding through a 600-account target list with conventional ABM tactics, producing 8 to 12 net-new logos a year on a flat baseline.
They added a 5-person inside-sales layer dedicated to one job: watching for VP Data Engineering moves at the 600 target accounts plus a 2000-account watch list, and running the multi-channel sequence inside the first 100 days of every move. The named-account reps stayed on the existing motion; the inside layer was the exec-move-only motion.
In the first year of the exec-move layer the company added 27 net-new logos sourced exclusively from the exec-move feed, against the 11 logos the named-account reps closed in the same year. Median ACV on the exec-move cohort came in at 340K, against 220K on named accounts. Sales cycle was 4.5 months on exec-move deals against 11 months on named accounts.
By year two, the exec-move motion was producing more new revenue than the named-account motion at less than half the headcount cost. The company kept both, but flipped the resource ratio. Three named-account reps got reassigned to inside roles; two new inside hires came in. Today the exec-move signal is roughly 60 percent of new ARR and the company has not added a named-account rep in 18 months.
The play does not scale by automation. It scales by people.
Exec-move is the most labor-intensive play in this library. The signal is high-intent and the conversion is steep, but the moment you try to automate the personalization or compress the sequence into a sender, the play breaks. New execs notice. Their reports notice. The peer intros do not happen.
That is the work we end up doing for the teams that hire us. Four pieces, repeated weekly, indefinitely:
Exec-move feed at your target accounts
8-K filings for public companies, The Information and Axios Pro Rata for private, LinkedIn Sales Nav alerts for the long tail. Filtered to your function and stage. Deduplicated, scored, queued.
Per-prospect dossier inside 24 hours
Previous company, previous stack, board context, public quotes from the announcement. Five to ten minutes of structured research per prospect so the sender does not have to think.
Multi-channel sequence in your voice
Email from your domain, LinkedIn DMs from the founder, physical mail to top names. The sequence runs to each move's specific calendar, not a generic cadence.
Recruiter-relationship channel (optional)
Top 4 to 6 GTM-exec recruiters as a warm-intro source. They placed every exec you are chasing. We help you set up the retainer relationships and run the intro flow.
The sizing call is short. You tell us your function and the deal-size band you sell into, we tell you what the exec-move volume against your ICP looks like across a sample quarter, and you decide whether the play is worth running. The math is straightforward at this deal size; the answer usually is.
Tell us your accounts. We will tell you the volume.
We will pull a sample quarter of exec moves across your target account list, send you the names, and walk through the ACV math at your deal size. If the play pencils, we can talk about running it. If it does not, you have a sample dataset and lost 20 minutes.
Book the sizing call →Free for founders selling 25K-plus deals. We will send the sample list whether or not you decide to engage.