Customer Value Study
The impact of former customers on the sales funnel
After analyzing a broader data set than ever before, we found that previous experience is still one of the leading influences in buying decisions, with former customers being 5x more likely to convert. This year, we uncovered that 36% of new customers had a previously closed-lost opportunity.
In 2024, Champify powered over $256M in pipeline and $101M in revenue. This report breaks down how that happened, and how Champify + Insider AI will help GTM teams uncover and win hidden deals others overlook.
The impact of advocate tracking
For this year's report, we analyzed a much larger sample (10x more data) than in last year's report, with insights from 230,000 former champions and 7,000 opportunities.
Why advocate tracking matters
In 2023, Trustradius cited that 72% of technology buyers attributed their own experience as one of the strongest influences on their purchasing decision.
In 2024, the significance of familiarity increased.
TrustRadius’ 2024 Buying Disconnect Report found that when shortlisting solutions, 78% of buyers selected products they had heard of before even starting the research process. Among enterprise buyers, 81% selected a product they had bought or used before.
“Champify has been a game-changer for us, opening up a whole new pipeline and revenue stream that we didn’t have access to before. In a landscape where getting demand is trickier and pricier, turning to our past champions just makes sense. Those nuggets of insight that used to live only in our sales team’s minds as their customers hopped from one company to the next are now out in the open, thanks to Champify. They have effectively enabled us to unlock and act upon these insights, significantly enhancing our approach to relationship management and revenue generation.”
See how Quantum Metric created 8 figures of pipeline with Champify ->
The impact on conversion on your GTM funnel
Outbound effectiveness is down. It takes between 1000-1400 touches to set just one meeting.
1. Response rates hover around 2%
2. Rates from a response to an opportunity 25-50%
3. Win rates have plummeted, landing around 19%
Using these baselines, from first touch to closed-won, former advocates convert 6.3x more efficiently.
Engaging former customers has resulted in a 30% increase in open rate and a 100% increase in response rate, influencing over 7 figures of pipeline. Deals with former champions have a 17% higher win rate.
Advocate impact on activity -> opportunity
Overall our customers see on average a 6% conversion rate from engagement with at least one former customer on an account to opportunity creation. That’s at least 3x more efficient than cold outbound!
Engaging former closed-won contacts is most likely to convert to an opportunity, but even product users have 2.7x efficacy.
Does it matter if the job change is old?
The data says not as much as you might think. The strength of pervious experience as a signal is so strong it continues to perform cold outbound 2.4x, even if the job change was greater than 2 years ago!
"Champify makes the contact identification process much easier" - Ben Coggins, Global Director of Sales Development
Get Navan's guide to creating an SDR Propsecting Dashboard to priortize outbound ->
Advocate impact on win rate
SaaS win-rate has experienced extreme fluctuations over the past two years with the changing macro-economic environment. The average win-rates in SaaS have experienced a steep decline across 2022-2023 with the average win rate for enterprise deals hovering around 17% (down from 26%).
When you include champions in your ops you see win rates above the gold-standard of 2021. If a person has been on a buying committee, they are almost 3x more likely to buy again with 49% win rate, followed by CS Contacts (44%) and Product Users (33%).
Compared to the average win rate, opportunities where contacts have had previous experience outperform opportunities where there is none on average 37% to 17%
Get a Demo ->
Time to pipeline impact
23% of advocates at customer accounts changed jobs the past year. Each month the number of untouched advocates continues to grow. Implementing new strategies and tactics often takes time, but advocate tracking works within your existing systems making it easy for reps to adopt and delivering immediate.
The gap with a manual approach
Most teams have at least one rep using tools like LinkedIn SalesNav. So what are you leaving on the table by incorporating a manual process? On average we have found that CRMs are missing 78% of former champions with qualified job changes*. Of the champions within the CRM, only 50% of them have been engaged.
