Multithreading

A single contact can change jobs, go on leave or discover they never had the authority to buy. The conversations that decide a purchase also happen between the buyers, when the seller is not in the room. A lone champion relays your case second-hand and loses detail on the way. With several relationships, objections surface earlier and more than one person argues your side.

• Map the buying group in the CRM: name, role, and whether you have actually spoken to them.
• Ask your main contact who else cares about the outcome, and request introductions rather than going around them.
• Aim for at least three contacts at different levels before a proposal goes out.
• Bring a second person from your own team to calls, so the relationship does not rest on one seller either.

Multithreading borrows its name from computing, where a program runs several threads at once. In sales, each person you have a real relationship with inside an account is one thread. A deal with a single thread is easy to snap.

Most business purchases involve a buying group, often six or more people: someone who will use the product, someone who holds the budget, someone who checks technical or security fit, and someone who signs. One friendly contact rarely covers all of those roles.

• Going over the champion's head. It damages trust, so ask for the introduction instead.
• Collecting names without conversations. A contact you have never spoken to is not a thread.