Track champion job changes

Track champion job changes

A champion who moves is the warmest pipeline you will ever get — someone who already bought or used your product, now sitting inside a new account with fresh budget authority and a honeymoon window in which tooling decisions are open. And every move is TWO plays, not one: the new company becomes a target (FOLLOW), and the vacated seat at your existing customer becomes a relationship risk (BACKFILL). Most teams run neither because nobody is watching. This skill builds the watcher: a scheduled Clay workflow that checks each champion's current employer, flags real moves, and produces a play-ready digest.

Clay workflows are an Alpha product — say so to the user before building, so they can calibrate expectations.

Step 0 — Verify Clay is working

Run clay whoami; echo "exit_code=$?". If it fails, or the Clay workflow MCP tools (read, edit_node, validate_workflow, execute_clay_action) are missing, run the Clay plugin's setup skill (or follow https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clay-run/agent-plugins/main/GETTING_STARTED.md), then restart the agent if setup says to and re-run this skill. Confirm which workspace you are signed into and tell the user before touching anything.

Step 1 — Collect the inputs (interview the user; do not guess)

1. The champion list. Where do champions live today? A CRM export (CSV), an existing Clay table, or a Clay Audience segment. Minimum viable row: name + LinkedIn URL + the account (domain) you know them from. If there's no LinkedIn URL, ask for email instead — the workflow will resolve it. If champions aren't in an Audience yet, help the user get the list into one — an Audience segment is what lets the workflow re-check everyone on a schedule.
2. What counts as a champion. Past buyer? Power user? Deal contact on closed-won? This defines the list; don't expand it silently.
3. The ICP filter for the FOLLOW play. Industry, size, region — a mover whose new company is outside ICP gets logged, not pursued.
4. Cadence. Weekly is the sensible default; monthly for lists under ~200.
5. Where the digest goes. A summary table the user reads, a CSV, or a Slack/webhook destination the user owns.

Step 2 — Plan the workflow and get approval

Present this plan, mapped to the user's inputs, and wait for approval before building (follow the workflows skill's build protocol throughout):

TRIGGER: audience-scheduled over the "Champions" segment (weekly tick)
         + a manual trigger for testing
  1. [tool]        Resolve current employment. Resolution order matters:
                   (a) LinkedIn URL on file → person enrichment (cpj-enrich-person);
                   (b) no URL → people-index search by name + last-known company;
                   (c) reverse email→LinkedIn lookup LAST (weakest coverage; fails often).
                   → current employer name, domain, title, current-role start date
  2. [code]        Extract + compare, deterministically — never an LLM. Pin the tool
                   node's whole $.result (deep paths fail the run when empty), find the
                   is_current experience entry, normalize both domains, and emit flat
                   string fields: verdict (current / moved / unverified), evidence with
                   dates, new-company domain/name/title/start. Use non-empty sentinels
                   ("none") — a pinned value that resolves empty fails the run.
  3. [conditional] Rules mode, routing on the verdict string (rules cannot compare two
                   dynamic fields — that is why the code node computes the verdict).
                   → current: deterministic digest leaf (code node), end
                   → unverified: "could not verify" digest leaf (code node), end
                   → moved: continue. Genuinely ambiguous cases (rebrand/acquisition
                   suspicion) belong in the digest flagged for human review.
  4a. FOLLOW branch (real move):
      [tool]        Enrich the NEW company (industry, headcount, region)
      [conditional] ICP gate — outside ICP: log "moved, out of ICP" and end THIS
                    branch only. 4b still runs and still reaches the digest: the
                    champion leaving is what vacates the seat, and that is true
                    whether or not their new employer is worth chasing.
      [agent]       Compose the play: champion-arrival note anchored on the shared
                    history (which product, which account, when), plus 2-3 suggested
                    buying-committee titles to source at the new account
  4b. BACKFILL branch (real move, runs in parallel — never gated on the new
      employer's ICP fit):
      [tool]        Find people at the OLD account matching the vacated title/persona
      [agent]       Pick the most likely successor + note why; flag "seat vacated"
  5. [leaf]        Append one digest row per champion: verdict, evidence, plays

Build node-by-node with edit_node, confirm every action's real shape with execute_clay_action before wiring it, run validate_workflow with prettier, and show the user the graph. Where more than one Clay action can do a step (several person-enrichment or people-finding functions usually exist), list the options by human-readable name with costs and let the user choose.

Build gotchas verified against the Alpha at time of writing — re-verify node shapes with execute_clay_action before trusting them:

• Code nodes are def handler(context): returning a dict; read inputs with context.get_input("name"). Top-level return is a syntax error.
• Pin inputs via the flat inputSchema shorthand ({"x": {"type":"string","sourceNodeId": "wfn_...","sourcePath":"$.field"}}). Pins that resolve to undefined OR empty string fail the whole run — pin container objects, not deep paths, and emit sentinels.
• Prompt {{vars}} on agent nodes fill reliably from flat string/object pins; a raw array pin can leave the model claiming it got nothing. Flatten arrays in a code node first.
• Tool-node parameters wire via tools[].inputMappingConfig references, and the referenced value must ALSO be pinned on that tool node's inputSchema when it comes from 2+ hops back.
• Keep agents on a cheap model while wiring, then graduate only the nodes that write prose; comparisons and routing stay in code — an LLM asked to compare domains may wander off to the web instead.

Step 3 — Test small, then scale

1. Run 3–5 champions through with clay workflows runs test — include at least one you know has NOT moved (the no-change path must terminate cheaply) and, if possible, one known mover.
2. Walk the user through each run's path. Fix, re-test.
3. Before the first full run: estimate cost (roughly 1–3 credits per champion per check — verify against the actual actions chosen with execute_clay_action / clay credits), state the total, and get explicit approval.
4. Publishing the draft as live automation is the user's click in the editor — prompt them, don't attempt it yourself.

What good looks like

• Join and compare on domains, never company-name strings. Names differ across sources ("Initech Ltd" vs "Initech"); domains don't. If the enriched employer has no domain, validate one before deciding anything.
• A move verdict must trace to evidence in the enrichment payload — quote the old and new employer with dates in the digest. Never infer a move from a name mismatch alone, and never fabricate a change to have something to report. Empty or errored enrichment = "could not verify", not "no change" and not "moved" — and watch for the sneaky version: an enrichment can return status SUCCESS with an empty payload. Gate on the presence of an actual employer value, never on the run status.
• Use the current-role start date. A mover who started < 12 months ago is in the honeymoon window — tooling decisions are open. Rank the FOLLOW digest by recency.
• Both plays evaluated for every real move. A digest that only follows movers and never flags vacated seats is half the value. The out-of-ICP exit in 4a ends the FOLLOW branch, not the run — an out-of-ICP mover still produces a vacated-seat row.
• The FOLLOW note leans on the shared history — which product, at which account, roughly when. "Congrats on the new role" with no history is generic outbound wearing a costume.
• The common mistake: treating every domain mismatch as a move. Acquisitions and rebrands produce mismatches constantly; the verdict step exists because of them.

Rules

• MUST get explicit user approval before the first full run, any CRM write, and any publish/schedule — and NEVER send outreach automatically; the digest ends at play-ready.
• MUST re-check credits before scaling a run to the full list.
• NEVER drop a champion silently: every input row lands in the digest as verified-current, moved (with plays), out-of-ICP, or could-not-verify.

Output

Per scheduled run, one digest with a row per champion: champion · old account · verdict (current / moved / could-not-verify) · evidence · new company · new title · ICP fit · FOLLOW note draft · suggested committee titles · BACKFILL successor · seat-vacated flag plus a summary line: champions checked, moves found, plays generated, rows needing human review.

Worked example

Input: 120 champions in an Audience segment "Champions — Closed Won", weekly cadence, ICP = B2B software 100–5,000 employees, digest to a summary table. First test run of 5: 4 verified current, 1 real move — Jordan Lee, former Head of RevOps at longtime customer acme.com, now VP RevOps at northfield.io (2,300-person B2B software firm, in ICP). Digest row: verdict MOVED with LinkedIn evidence; FOLLOW note referencing the three years Jordan ran your product at Acme; suggested committee: CFO, Director of Sales Ops; BACKFILL: Priya Shah, current Director of RevOps at Acme, flagged as likely successor; seat-vacated alert on the Acme account. Weekly cost at 120 champions ≈ 150–350 credits; user approved before the first full run.