The Sniper Campaign Playbook

When a new VP of Sales, CMO, or CRO starts a role, three things happen in the first 90 days. They audit what exists. They evaluate what to keep, change, or replace. And they allocate budget toward their vision.

This is the most receptive a decision maker will ever be to outbound. They are not defending existing vendor relationships because they did not choose those vendors. They are not emotionally attached to the current tech stack because they did not build it. They are in evaluation mode by default.

After 90 days, the window closes. They have made their choices. They have committed to a direction. They are now the defender of the status quo instead of the challenger of it. Getting in front of them at day 120 is 5x harder than day 30.

The math is simple: a new hire in their first 90 days is 3x to 4x more likely to take a meeting than the same person at month 6. Because at month 6, they are executing. At month 1, they are shopping.

Not every new hire is a Sniper target. You are looking for decision makers and budget holders who control spending in your category.

High Priority Titles

• VP Sales / CRO: Controls sales tech stack, outbound vendors, pipeline generation strategy. If you sell anything related to revenue generation, this is your primary target.
• CMO / VP Marketing: Controls demand generation budget, content strategy, marketing tech. If you sell marketing services or tools, this is ground zero.
• VP Revenue Operations / VP Growth: Controls the systems and processes that connect marketing to sales. Often the actual decision maker even when the CMO or CRO signs off.

Secondary Titles

• VP Engineering / CTO: Controls technical infrastructure budget. Relevant if you sell dev tools, cloud services, or technical products.
• VP Customer Success: Controls retention and expansion budget. Relevant if you sell CS platforms or services.
• Head of Partnerships: New partnership leaders are building their ecosystem from scratch. Prime targets if you have a partner or integration play.

Filter by company size. A VP of Sales at a 20 person startup has different buying power than a VP of Sales at a 500 person company. Match your ICP criteria.

The Sniper campaign runs on three signals: job change detection, enrichment, and sequencing. Here is the stack.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Job change alerts are the primary signal source. Set up saved searches for your target titles at companies matching your ICP. Sales Nav sends notifications when someone matching your criteria changes roles. Review these daily.

Clay Enrichment

Take the job change signals and enrich them. You need: company size, industry, tech stack, recent funding, and the person's previous role. The previous role matters because it tells you what they are used to working with and what they might want to change.

Sequencing

Route enriched leads to your outbound sequence with the job change context attached. The timing matters: reach out 2 to 4 weeks after the start date. Too early (week 1) and they are still onboarding. Too late (month 3+) and the window is closing.

Set up a recurring weekly process: pull new job changes, enrich, filter to ICP, sequence. 30 to 45 minutes per week once the system is running.

The Sniper outreach angle is welcome plus specific value. You are acknowledging the role change and immediately connecting it to something useful.

The Structure

Step 1: Welcome to the role. Reference one specific thing about their new company or challenge. Offer a relevant resource, insight, or perspective that helps them in their first 90 days. No pitch. Pure value.

Step 2 (4 days later): Share something specific to their situation. A case study from a similar company. A framework for evaluating vendors in their category. Data from their industry. Make it useful regardless of whether they buy from you.

Step 3 (5 days later): Connect the dots. "Most new [title] at [company type] find that [specific problem] is bigger than they expected. Worth a conversation about how [your approach] handles it?"

What Makes This Work

You are the first vendor to acknowledge their situation instead of just pitching. That positioning creates goodwill. They remember who was helpful during their transition, not who was pushy.

Sniper campaigns are precision instruments, not volume plays. Expect 150 to 300 qualified contacts per quarter from a well configured monitoring setup.

Expected Performance

• Positive reply rate: 12% to 20%. Significantly higher than cold outbound because the timing and context are highly relevant.
• Meeting booking rate: 3x to 4x standard cold campaigns.
• Sales cycle: Often compressed because you caught them during the evaluation window.

When the Sniper Campaign Does Not Work

• Your target buyer is the founder. Founders do not "start a new role." They built the company. There is no 90 day evaluation window because they have been evaluating since day one.
• Your ICP has low executive turnover. Stable industries with long tenures produce few job change signals. Government, utilities, and mature enterprises turn over leadership slowly.
• Your offering requires committee buy in. Even a new VP cannot unilaterally purchase enterprise software. If the sales cycle requires 5 stakeholders, the 90 day window advantage is diluted.

Best used as a high conversion supplement alongside volume channels. Not as your only campaign type.