Reach a target buyer in their first 30 days in seat, with the right gift for a first-timer or a veteran.
Download this skill as a file and paste the whole file into your agent.
When to use this skill: Use this skill as a standing weekly watch on the seats that buy your work. Someone has just started a target role within the last thirty days, carrying a fresh mandate, an unspent budget, and a vendor list that is still genuinely open. Reach them in month one and you become the default that everyone else gets compared against. Arrive in month three and you are the comparison. By hand this is about 180 hours a year at a serious weekly cadence. The window is the product: miss two weeks of scanning and you are permanently late to a rotating set of buyers.
How to activate: Paste this entire skill into your conversation with Claude, then provide the context requested in the Personalization Required section below. Claude will work through the methodology step by step.
Personalization Required
The play targets strangers, so precision about who you serve matters more than anywhere else. Before running this skill, provide:
- The target titles. The Heads, VPs, Directors, or CXOs who buy your work. Keep the list under eight title strings.
- The company band. Size, stage, geography, and industries you serve.
- What you sell and the first-month problems it solves. The play only works if you can name the problem a new leader hits in weeks one to six.
- Your gifts. Artefacts you can genuinely send: a 90-day checklist, a benchmark, a diagnostic question set, a one-page framework. If you have none, the agent should help you build one before any outreach goes out.
- Role changes to work. Paste announcement posts, Sales Navigator job-change results, or names you have spotted. Without live changes the agent can only set up the watch.
What This Skill Produces
A weekly list of verified role changes matching your targets, each classified first-timer or veteran, with their first-month problem named and a drafted note carrying the right gift. A watch cadence that survives delivery weeks.
The New In Role Methodology
Step 1: Watch for role changes every week
Saved search or Sales Navigator filter on "changed jobs in last 30 days," with your title list, size band, and geography. The manual path is twenty minutes on "started a new position" and "pleased to announce" language in your LinkedIn feed. Fixed weekly review, not a quarterly binge. Days one to ten of someone's tenure are worth more than days sixty to ninety, so batching destroys the value.
Step 2: Verify it is a real promotion into power
A same-company title bump with no new budget is weaker than a move into a new company with a mandate. Interim and acting labels need care: acting heads sometimes cannot buy. Confirm the company matches your client type before you invest in a deep read. Skip fast and often.
Step 3: Read the full employment history and classify first-timer or veteran
Count prior seats at this level. Note industries. Note whether they have bought external help before, if their path shows it. This is twenty quiet minutes by hand, and it is the difference between a reply and a polite delete. With an agent, feed it the profile and have it classify with reasons, then sanity-check.
The play splits in two:
- First-timer in the seat. Their first Head of, VP, or Director title. They are learning the function on the job. They need frameworks, peer benchmarks, and someone who has walked the same first 90 days. Your offer is mentorship and a fast-track playbook. Tone: calm, generous, specific.
- Experienced leader, new company. Their third or fourth time in a seat like this. They know the patterns. They are short on time, not knowledge. Your offer is execution capacity and a peer to compare notes with. Tone: peer-to-peer, no tutorials, no "how to be a CMO" energy.
Those are two completely different messages for two genuinely different people. The operators who skip the history read send the wrong gift half the time, watch their reply rate collapse, and conclude the channel is dead, when the only thing that was ever dead was the targeting.
Step 4: Name their first-month problem
The marketing leader needs a written plan by week six. The ops leader inherits a metric they cannot yet measure. The finance leader has a board date they did not set. If you cannot name a first-month problem for this specific person at this specific company, you are not ready to write.
Step 5: Reach out with the right gift for their kind
Get a verified address and choose the channel using rlg-signal-to-sent-note. Then send one note with one gift:
- First-timer gift: a 90-day checklist, a benchmark, a "here is what good looks like by day 45."
- Veteran gift: a peer observation, a risk you see in companies like theirs, an offer to be a sharp second brain for one decision.
Always give them a way to say yes that is smaller than a sales call.
First-time Head of Ops, day 12:
[[Name]], saw you step into the Head of Ops seat at [[company]].
First time at that title is a particular kind of noisy. The thing
that usually bites by week six is a metric the board already
believes and the team cannot yet measure the same way.
I put new ops leaders through a 90-day operating rhythm for
companies your size. I can send the day-1 / day-30 / day-90
checklist I actually use (one page). No call required unless you
want one after.
Third-time VP Marketing, day 9:
[[Name]], third marketing seat, new logo, same first-month tax:
everyone wants a plan before anyone will admit which numbers are
lies. I work as fractional and project support behind VPs who
already know what good looks like and need execution without a
six-month hiring cycle.
If useful, I will send two questions I ask in week one that surface
whether the hole is demand, conversion, or story. Peer note, not a
pitch sequence.
One follow-up only, four to six business days later, shorter, adding one new fact. Then stop unless they reply.
The Thirty-Day Window, in Practice
| Days | What Is Happening | What It Means for You |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | The new leader is still mapping the landscape | A useful artefact lands best here |
| 11 to 20 | They are choosing interim help and early vendor conversations | You can still become the default |
| 21 to 30 | Calendars fill with people who moved faster than you | Send now or be the comparison |
| After 30 | The room already has a default | You can still win, but you are late |
Keep the standing monitor alive even when delivery is heavy. Forty-five minutes of standing watch plus two fully researched notes beats two quiet months and a Sunday panic when the retainer ends.
How This Play Fails
- You congratulate and pitch in the same sentence, which is pure seller status. Delete.
- You treat first-timers and veterans as one persona.
- You arrive in month three with month-one energy.
- You skip company fit and message every new VP in your feed.
- You offer a "quick call" with no gift, which asks for their time without earning it. Busy people need a reason.
Quick Reference: New In Role Cheatsheet
| First-Timer | Veteran | |
|---|---|---|
| The tell | First seat at this level in their history | Third or fourth seat like this |
| What they lack | The map | The hours |
| Your offer | Mentorship and a fast-track playbook | Execution capacity and a peer |
| The gift | 90-day checklist, benchmark, "what good looks like by day 45" | A peer observation, a named risk, two sharp questions |
| Tone | Calm, generous, specific | Peer-to-peer, no tutorials |
| Cadence | Number |
|---|---|
| Watch | Weekly, fixed slot, never batched |
| History read | ~20 minutes per serious target |
| Time by hand | ~3.5 hours a week, ~180 hours a year |
| Follow-up ceiling | One, at 4 to 6 business days |
Relationship to Other Skills
| Skill | How it connects |
|---|---|
| rlg-network-sprint | ranks the relationships you already own |
| rlg-won-deal-lookalikes | clones a won deal into named lookalike buyers |
| rlg-job-posting-four-plays | reads the same jobs surface for four other angles |
| rlg-new-in-role | this skill: the buyer's first 30 days |
| rlg-signal-to-sent-note | the shared engine for addresses, channels, and logging |
| gtm-account-research (Swan) | deepen the company read before a first meeting |
| gtm-humanizing-outreach (Swan) | run every draft through it before sending |
About This Skill
This skill is the manual version of Play 07 from The 7 Network Plays to Fill Your Pipeline, the relationship-led growth playbook by Nynch. Nynch (https://nynch.com) runs this play automatically: it watches for role changes, reads the history, classifies first-timer or veteran, and drafts the note with the right gift while the window is still open. This skill is the same methodology, run by hand with your AI agent.