One contact is a single point of failure
Many B2B deals run through one person: the contact who first reached out, takes the meetings, and promises to "take it to the team". It feels efficient. It is also fragile. If that person changes jobs, goes on leave, loses an internal argument, or simply gets busy, the deal stops, and you may not find out why.
Multithreading means building relationships with several people involved in a decision, on both sides. It makes deals more resilient, gives you a more accurate picture of what is happening inside the buyer's organisation, and usually shortens the time to a decision, because the people who will decide have been part of the conversation all along.
Map who is involved
Start by working out who has a stake in the decision. In a typical B2B purchase, that includes some of:
- The economic buyer, who controls the budget and signs off.
- The champion, who wants the change and argues for it internally.
- Users, who will work with the product every day.
- Technical evaluators, such as IT, security, or integration specialists.
- Procurement and legal, who manage terms and risk.
- Sceptics, who prefer the current way or a competing option.
Ask about this in the first meeting. "Who else would be involved in a decision like this?" is one of the most useful discovery call questions. Write the answers down, with what each person cares about.
Ask your champion for help, not access
Your main contact may feel threatened if you go around them. Work with them instead.
- Frame it as helping them win. "Your security team will have questions. It might save you time if our security lead talks to them directly."
- Offer to prepare materials they can use internally, such as a short summary or a business case, so they look good in front of colleagues.
- Ask who would be useful, not just who decides. People are happier to introduce a colleague who "should see this" than to hand over their boss.
- Never go around them without telling them. If you meet someone else in the organisation, let your champion know.
Give each person a reason to meet
People agree to meetings that are useful to them. Each stakeholder needs a different reason:
| Stakeholder | A meeting they would value | | --- | --- | | Economic buyer | A short briefing on outcomes, costs, and risks | | Users | A hands-on session built around their daily work | | Technical evaluators | A deep dive with your technical specialist | | Procurement | An early conversation about terms and process | | Sceptic | A chance to raise concerns and have them taken seriously |
Keep each meeting short and specific, and say in the invitation what the person will get from it. Our guide to writing a meeting request email covers the wording. Social settings help too: a customer dinner at an event is a relaxed way to meet a senior stakeholder for the first time.
Matching people on both sides
Multithreading works best when it is two-sided: your specialists meeting their specialists, your executive meeting their executive.
- Match seniority. A senior buyer expects to meet someone senior from your side at some point.
- Match expertise. Bring your security lead to the security review, not the account executive with a slide about security.
- Keep one owner. However many people are involved, one person on your side owns the account and knows about every conversation.
Keeping track of the threads
More relationships mean more to track.
- Record every contact and conversation against the account, with what each person cares about and any concerns raised.
- Share notes internally, so your colleagues do not ask the buyer the same questions twice.
- Write down the shared plan. A mutual action plan shows who on each side does what, and by when, and makes it obvious when a stakeholder is missing.
The same habits matter after the sale. A customer relationship that depends on one person is a renewal risk waiting to happen.
CallShark is being built to keep every meeting with an account, and everyone who attended, attached to that account. The product is temporarily down.