Promotions as a Second Trigger
Outcome: promotion and new-executive detection running alongside job-change detection, with a filter that separates real authority changes from title inflation.
- Surface
- App and MCP server
- Level
- Intermediate
- Uses
- check_promotions · newly_hired_executives
- Credits
- ~1 per person checked
- Prerequisite
- Lesson 03
Two different triggers
Promotion — someone you know gains authority
A tracked person moves up at the same company. The relationship is intact and the constraint that blocked them may have just been removed.
Reference: check_promotions, Recently promoted.
New executive — a stranger arrives with a mandate
Someone new takes a leadership seat at a target account. No relationship, but a person hired to change something and two quarters to do it.
Reference: newly_hired_executives, Leadership change.
The first runs against your tracked list. The second runs against your target accounts, and needs no prior relationship at all.
Promotion versus title inflation
Not every title change is a change in authority.
| Change | Real? |
|---|---|
| Manager → Director | Usually yes |
| Director → VP | Usually yes |
| Individual contributor → Manager | Yes, but may be below buying authority |
| Manager → Senior Manager | Often title inflation |
| ”Head of X” → “VP of X” | Often a retitle at a growing company |
| Lateral move into a different function | Not a promotion — sometimes a better trigger |
The test that works: does the new title imply budget authority for what you sell? If it did before and still does, nothing changed. If it did not and now does, that is your trigger.
A lateral move into the function you sell to is worth flagging even though it is not a promotion. Someone who just took over a function is auditing everything in it, which is the same evaluation window with a different cause.
Why this trigger is quieter
Job changes are visible: people announce them, and every vendor tracking them arrives at once. Promotions are announced less, tracked less, and consequently far less crowded.
The practical effect is that a promotion trigger reaches an inbox that is not already full of the same message — which is worth more than the marginally weaker signal costs you.
Messaging a promotion
The relationship exists, so the message is easier and the register is different.
| Situation | Angle |
|---|---|
| Past customer promoted | ”Now that you own X” — they know the product, so this is a scope conversation |
| Blocked champion promoted | The blocker may have been the previous decision maker. Light touch: “circumstances have probably changed” |
| Past evaluator promoted | They now own the decision they previously only influenced |
| New exec, no relationship | The mandate: what people in that seat usually change first |
Do not congratulate and pitch in the same message. A promotion note that arrives with an ask attached reads as a pretext, and the recipient will file it as one. Congratulate with nothing attached, and let the real conversation start when they reply — or two weeks later.
New executives at target accounts
This one runs against accounts rather than people, and it pairs with everything else in the library.
- A new exec plus hiring in their function is a mandate being staffed — the strongest combination.
- A new exec plus a recent funding round is a spending plan with an owner.
- A new exec alone is a workable but weaker signal.
Set a window of 30–90 days: before 30 days they are still onboarding, and past 90 the plan is usually set.
Do this now
Run promotion detection on your tracked list
Alongside the job-change check, in the same weekly run.
Apply the authority test
Does the new title imply budget for what you sell, where the old one did not?
Flag lateral moves into your function
Separately from promotions.
Run new-executive detection on target accounts
With a 30–90 day window.
Cross-reference with hiring and funding
The combinations are stronger than any single trigger.
Route by relationship
Past customer, blocked champion, evaluator, or cold.
Separate the congratulation from the ask
Two messages, two weeks apart.
Check your work
- Promotion detection runs in the same weekly job as job-change detection
- Title inflation is filtered out by the authority test
- Lateral moves into your function are captured separately
- New-executive detection has a 30–90 day window
- No message combines congratulations with a pitch
Where this breaks
Congratulating someone on a promotion that did not happen is worse than missing it entirely. Title strings change for reasons that have nothing to do with authority — a company-wide retitle, a profile cleanup, a correction. Verify that the new title represents a genuine level change before anything sends, and route uncertain cases to a human rather than to a sequence.
Further automation
Combine both triggers into one weekly run over one tracked table. Job change, promotion and new-exec detection all read the same profiles, so running them together costs barely more than running one — and the combined output is a single queue rather than three lists nobody reconciles.
Next lesson
05 — Qualify the new company, the gate that keeps the weekly run affordable.
Reference for this lesson: check_promotions, newly_hired_executives, Recently promoted, Leadership change.