Sales is all about volumes. You go after 100 leads, a fraction will convert. The same goes for contacts within a target account. You reach out to multiple people, one will respond to your email or call. This is multi-threading in sales.
What is sales multi-threading
Multithreading in sales is the concept of reaching out to multiple people within a target account, and nurturing relationships with multiple influencers and decision makers who might collectively help in closing the deal. Multithreading is when you identify all the key stakeholders, uncover the hidden buying committee, and connect with each of them in parallel.
This is particularly important in larger companies and enterprises with large buying committees and long sales cycles. The idea behind multithreading is to cultivate multiple champions within the company because working closely with many stakeholders, if not all the key decision makers, can increase chances of deal closure.
With Highperformr, you can identify all relevant stakeholders in an account in the click of a button, and set up automated workflows to identify all decision makers or members of the buying committee and enrich the names with contact information and signals.
Difference between single-threaded vs. multi-threaded sales approaches
Irrespective of the size of the company, every sales person has a single point of contact (SPOC) they work with through the sales process. In small businesses and startups, this could be the person who takes the final call on whether or not the company should buy a product or service. In larger companies, there’s usually a larger team, or “buying committee” that takes the decision, along with the SPOC.
The difference between single-threaded and multi-threaded sales approaches is in how your sales team works with and interacts with each of these people.
Single-threaded sales
A single-threaded sales approach is when the sales person focuses on establishing and nurturing a relationship with just one individual.
Multithreaded sales
The multithreading sales approach involves building relationships with multiple stakeholders across various departments and working with nearly every member of the buying committee.
Benefits and potential challenges
Multithreading can be quite valuable, especially when working with larger companies where buying committees are larger and deal cycles are longer.
Multithreading strengthens deal security by reducing reliance on a single contact, ensuring continuity even if key stakeholders exit. It speeds up the sales process by engaging multiple decision-makers in parallel rather than relying on one champion to handle everything.
This approach also enables larger, more complex deals by providing deeper insights into company needs, allowing sellers to position their product as a comprehensive solution.
Beyond closing the initial deal, multithreading creates upsell and expansion opportunities, as established relationships make it easier to introduce additional products or services.
Multithreading comes with its set of potential challenges, if it isn’t done with focus and thought.
Without a structured approach, multithreading can lead to miscommunication and conflicting narratives, creating confusion among stakeholders. In large buying committees, there’s a risk of overlooking key decision-makers, which can delay or derail deals.
Building trust across multiple contacts is crucial, as any stakeholder feeling sidelined could become a blocker instead of a champion. Additionally, inconsistent messaging across different teams can weaken credibility and alignment, making it harder to close deals efficiently.
The Business Case for Multi-Threading
- Minimizes risk and strengthens deal security
B2B deals typically involve multiple stakeholders, and relying on one contact can be risky. If they switch roles or jobs, your deal could stall. Multithreading ensures you have connections across different teams, and are able to keep the deal alive even if the key contact or SPOC exits the conversation for some reason.
- Speeds up the sales process
With a single-threaded approach, one champion has to handle all the tasks and decisions involved in the process of buying the product. Multithreading is a good workaround, as you can engage multiple decision makers in parallel and close the deal faster.
- Enables bigger, more complex deals
Engaging with multiple stakeholders gives you a better understanding of the company’s needs and the problems to be solved. These insights will help you position your product better and pitch as a comprehensive solution rather than a one-time or ad-hoc purchase.
- Creates upsell and expansion opportunities
A strong multithreaded relationship extends beyond the first sale. You can tap those contacts for cross-sell and upsell opportunities, or expansions within the organization.
Implementing Multi-Threading in Your Sales Process
Multi-threading sales should be baked into your go-to-market strategy. Here are some guidelines to help with implementing multi-threading in your sales process:
1. Qualify early and identify key stakeholders
Multi-threading requires more thoughtful communication and effort from the sales team, so before you start the process of establishing relationships with multiple people, ensure that lead qualification is done accurately. To avoid blind spots, use tools like Highperformr’s keyword search and similarity search to identify decision-makers, budget holders, product users, and potential blockers. Knowing who influences the deal ensures you engage the right people from the start.
2. Map organizational hierarchy and influence patterns
Use AI agents for account research, and get an understanding of the org structure, hierarchy, and the internal dynamics of the company you are going after. Be clear about who has final approval, who influences the decision, who the users of the product are, etc.
3. Do your research and personalize value propositions
Multi-threading works best when you’re able to personalize your conversations and appeal to every persona so that they all collectively vouch for your product. Sales AI agents can be useful here as well. Tools like Highperformr can provide you with real-time signals about every contact, enabling you to have the right kind of conversation with each contact, address their needs based on their role and establish the value your product provides.
4. Time and coordinate outreach effectively
Multi-threading isn’t just about reaching out to multiple people, it’s about doing it in a way such that it all comes together with every person championing for your product. You have to plan what you say and when you say it and plan the communication strategically.
Best Practices and Strategies for Multithreading Sales
Multithreading sales is a smart way to close deals faster and reduce risk, but it is more than just engaging multiple people at the target account. You need to strategize and plan your communications, rather than wing it as the deal moves down the sales pipeline. Here are key best practices to ensure a smooth and effective process:
1. Create a mutual success plan
Be sure to outline what success means for each person involved in the process, including members from your sales team. Working together on shared goals helps move things forward with transparency and accountability.
2. Align multiple viewpoints and keep everyone in the loop
Any B2B sales process involves multiple stakeholders and perspectives. And multithreading sales further complicates things. Be sure that all the people you’re speaking to are aligned on the goals, expectations, and what the status of the deal is.
3. Track job changes and adapt quickly
When working on accounts with long deal cycles and large buying committees, it is likely that the members of the buying committee change because of a promotion or a job change or a new hire. Be sure to use tools like Highperformr to track job changes and get real-time signals about every contact so you can swiftly adjust your outreach strategy, and customize each conversation based on real-time data and intent signals.
4. Synchronize communication across stakeholders
Inconsistent messaging can confuse decision-makers. Ensure that the narrative you and other teammates present to every contact at the target account is cohesive.
5. Customize messaging for different levels
While engaging with people across functions, be sure to customize your messaging and show them the value that you will provide to them and their team. Ensure that every department or team is aware of what value they will get from the product, in addition to the broader benefit the product will offer to the team.
6. Manage complex relationships and information flow
Multithreading sales would require you to interact and engage with different kinds of people across an organization. This requires you to be sensitive about not just the relationship you share with them, but also the relationship they share among each other.
It is critical that you keep this in mind as multiple conversations happening simultaneously and ensure that communication is smooth among all stakeholders involved in the deal.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Multithreading sales helps close deals faster but it is easy to slip up. Here are a few challenges you should watch out for:
1. Engaging too many or too few stakeholders
When multithreading and reaching out to multiple contacts within the same acount, striking the right balance is crucial. Over-threading can overwhelm the buying committee and slow down decision-making, while missing key stakeholders can result in gaps that delay or derail the deal. Products like Highperformr can be used to identify the contacts you should ideally be engaging with.
2. Miscommunication and inconsistent messaging
With multiple stakeholders involved, conflicting narratives can create confusion. Ensure that all stakeholders are aligned so that even when you personalize and customize messaging for different roles, the core message is consistent across all conversations.
3. Poor account research and outdated contact data
Reaching out to the wrong people or not keeping track of new hires, promotions, or job changes of your contacts can impact credibility. To manage this, use products like Highperformr to keep your CRM up to date and set up workflows to get alerts when key contacts change jobs.
4. Overloading champions with information
Your champion is a key advocate, but too much information at once can be overwhelming. Provide clear, digestible insights tailored to their role so they can effectively influence internal discussions.
5. Starting multithreading too late
Waiting too long to engage multiple stakeholders defeats the purpose of multithreading. To avoid this, begin multithreading early to build relationships and create internal buy-in before reaching the final decision stages.
6. Not connecting people at similar levels
The conversations and kind of discussions you have with C-level executives will be quite different from the kind you have with department leads or end users. Ensure that stakeholders interact with counterparts at their level so that there is consensus among all decision makers and stakeholders. Not doing this might lead to skewed decisions with one person having a stronger say in the matter than others.
7. Overcommunicating with executives
C-level leaders may be the decision makers but they don’t need constant updates. In fact, sending them too many messages or emails can be counterproductive. Be sure to balance the kind of and number of emails shared with senior leaders.
Future of Multi-Threaded Sales
With sales teams facing more pressure to close deals faster, multithreading is becoming the norm at most companies. Sales teams are using the multi-threading approach even at the pre-demo stage.
That is, in addition to reaching out to the decision-makers, they reach out to individual contributors and other team members who actually would use the product even if they weren’t decision-makers or influencers in the buying process.
What makes multithreading sales easier and more effective is the availability of tools like Highperformr that help automate several tasks, and use AI to increase efficiency of sales reps.
AI and automation in multi-threading
AI-native sales intelligence tools and data enrichment tools help sales teams identify hidden buying committees, enrich contacts, and get signals about contacts so they are able to have multiple conversations in parallel efficiently.
To start with, Highperformr enables you to identify the hidden buying committees in your target accounts and helps you with stakeholder mapping. If you have one ICP contact at a company, you can use Highperformr to find similar contacts that you could reach out to.
The Highperformr Sales AI Agent can assist with keeping track of every contact and get real-time signals that can be used to customize conversations.
Highperformr keeps your CRM up to date and enriched with the latest intent data and social signals, enabling you to keep your conversations relevant. Highperformr also helps automate workflows.
For instance, you can set up workflows to get alerts each time a key contact changes jobs or when the buying committee changes because of a new hire, a promotion, or a job change.
To learn more about the different features and capabilities of Highperformr, and how you can use it for multithreading sales at your company, schedule a demo with our GTM engineer today!
