As a salesperson, you likely understand the importance of building relationships, but did you know that the key to closing deals in today’s complex business landscape lies in multithreading sales relationships?

That's right! You need to weave a network of connections across all levels and departments of an organisation.

Multi-threading is a sales approach that recognises that the buying process has changed. Over the years, it’s become more collaborative and complicated. If you want to close big deals, you need to adapt.

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What is Multithreading in B2B Sales?

Multithreading in sales is not about stitching together a patchwork quilt, but it's about weaving multiple relationships within a potential buyer's organisation.

Instead of relying on one key decision-maker, this strategy involves nurturing relationships with various stakeholders to ensure a robust consensus for your product or solution.

Relying on just one contact (single-threaded sales) is like putting all your eggs in one basket. People move jobs, get promotions, switch departments, and bam, you're back at the starting line with their replacement. On the flip side, multi-threading gives you more options if things go slow with one contact.

In a nutshell, it's a many-to-many approach, ensuring that even if one thread snaps, the rest of the network remains intact to support your deal.

Why Multithreading in Sales? (And When to Start!)

The B2B buying journey has transformed. Today, it is a labyrinth involving on average 6.8 stakeholders and Gartner research suggests that number is up to 10 people for more complex products, all of whom need to be convinced before a buying decision is made. The traditional practice of courting a single decision-maker is no longer sufficient.

If you only build a relationship with one key decision-maker, you risk leaving the rest of the buying team to research alternatives without your expert guidance. This makes multithreading a must in the following scenarios:

• Enterprise sales: Where you need to understand the organization's structure, key players, and evolving pain points.

• Product-led sales: Where power users can influence other decision-makers and boost product adoption.

• SMB sales: Where stakeholder alignment is essential in a small, collaborative decision-making environment.

• B2B sales: Where understanding different departments' pain points fosters more champions.

• High-stakes deals: Where reducing reliance on a single point of contact mitigates risk.

• Complex deals: Where multiple champions can push bigger deals forward.

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Single-Threaded Sales vs Multi-threaded Sales

Let's dive into a full breakdown.

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Single-threaded sales approach:

• Focus on Individual Relationships: Builds a strong personal rapport with the buyer and relies on the skill and relationship management of one person.

• Simplicity and Streamlined Communication: Communication is straightforward with only one sales rep to contact.

• Risk of Single Point of Failure: If the sales rep leaves or is unavailable, the relationship and process could suffer.

• Potentially Limited Perspective: The sales strategy and solutions offered are based on the knowledge and capabilities of a single individual.

• Lower Scalability: As the company grows, this approach can become unsustainable due to the limited bandwidth of one person.

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Multi-threaded sales approach:

• Diverse Relationships and Expertise: Engages multiple points of contact, increasing the depth of the business relationship.

• Reduced Risk of Relationship Loss: If one contact leaves or is unavailable, the relationship is sustained by others.

• Complexity in Communication: Coordination among team members is required to ensure consistent messaging.

• Greater Resilience and Coverage: A team approach can quickly adapt to changes and cover for absent members.

• Higher Scalability: Easier to scale as the business grows, since multiple people can manage increased demand.

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Multithreading in Digital Sales Rooms

By now, you should be starting to see the potential of multi-threading. However, if you’re still on the fence, here are a few of its most significant benefits.

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More opportunities to get in front of decision-makers

Finding an excellent prospect is exciting. Things get even better when you can track down the perfect decision-maker. But how many times has your average SDR been in a position that looks great, only for it to fall apart for whatever reason? 

Multi-threading means your deal doesn’t hinge on a single contact. If someone gets too busy or their priorities change, you can still chase the deal with some of their colleagues.

In the episode Engaging with Stakeholders & Selling to Decision Makers of The Sales Soundcheck Podcast, sales leader Hannah Ajikawo explains;

“I always encourage teams to map out who we think will be involved [in a deal]. I love the concept of ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’ that has been nicely encapsulated in books now. But before, I used to wonder who makes decisions and who is impacted by them. You want to be doing that early on in the journey.”

“After that, we just poke a little bit. We send a message or a connection request to see who responds. We effectively want to see who's active and who will be the first person to give me something.”

By leveraging trumpet for multithreading in our digital sales room, Will Koning, Chief Commercial Officer‍ at eola, was able to achieve visibility with multiple stakeholders within one company by creating specific Pods that are personalised to each buyer which resulted in 4 closed won clients after just 8 weeks of using trumpet (2 major wins)!

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It accelerates the sales cycle

Complex deals take a lot of time. Getting buy-in from a prospect can take weeks or months. Too often, your contact will be fully onboard with your solution but lack the authority to push the deal over the line.

With trumpet Sophie Ellis, Account Executive at Lunio found a more efficient way to multithread through email-gated Digital Sales Rooms in trumpet.

"Trumpet has really helped me with multithreading, the sharing of emails is like gold! We can determine when people are interested and if they're sharing it with their team.” explains Sophie.

Sellers can choose how they share their trumpet Pod, including requiring an email entry. This provides the sales team with a comprehensive overview of when their Pod is being viewed and by whom, as well as buyer signals from that new viewer within the Pod.

Lunio has experienced firsthand the magic of multithreading by sharing trumpet Pods.

"I had an initial call with a big retail brand. After sharing the Pod with my prospect, they proceeded to internally share it with five or six other people. This gave me a good group of individuals to reach out to, as they had shared their email to access the Pod.”

This put Lunio on the radar of additional key contacts in the company who had interacted with her pitch. Sophie mentioned, "I now had the contact information of the e-commerce manager, digital marketing manager, and another marketing manager from a different department.”

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Use buyer insights for smarter personalisation

Analytics is an essential aspect of the modern sales approach. Multi-threading allows you to build more connections and have more conversations.

Leveraging buyer signals and insights in a trumpet digital sales room helped David Roddy, Head of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Haystack. He explains “Our deals are now larger and close faster, by creating customised proposals with robust data our statistics have improved significantly”.

They in fact they shortened their time to close by 40% on enterprise deals!

If you have enough data, you can start identifying which roles respond best to your offer. You’ll better grasp their priorities too, and with a digital sales room like trumpet you can even begin to tailor your follow-ups with a lot more targeted messaging based on how each stakeholder is interacting with the Pod

‍Trumpet’s insights into the customer's behaviour and interactions allowed Sophie Ellis, Account Executive at Lunio to send a more targeted follow-up, and move the conversation along quicker.

"I emailed the buyer and said, 'I noticed that you logged in on Friday. I saw that you were looking at this Widget. Do you need any clarification? Is it worth us jumping on a call?'”

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How to get started with Multithreading

1. Ask questions about the buying consensus

• Research: Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who's calling the shots in the company?

• Who else has a say in the big purchase decisions?

• What's their main concern (is it value, cost or something else)?

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2. Leverage the right tools

Digital Sales Room

A digital sales room is a virtual space where sales reps can engage with multiple stakeholders from the client's organisation. It allows the sharing of sales materials, presentations, proposals, and contracts in a single, centralised location.

With a digital sales room like trumpet, sellers can enjoy ample features that facilitate multithreading. 

• Centralised Communication: With all stakeholders having access to the same information, it ensures consistency in messaging and reduces the chance of miscommunication between the champion and their team.

• Collaboration: Team members can collaborate in real-time, regardless of their physical location, making it easier to address concerns and questions from different decision-makers.

• Tracking Engagement: Sales reps can monitor which stakeholders are engaging with the material, providing insights into who is most interested and potentially influencing the buying decision.

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Check out a live example of a trumpet digital sales room in action.

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Interactive Demo Software

Interactive demo software provides a dynamic and engaging way to showcase a product's features and benefits to potential clients.

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Sales Intelligence Platforms

Sales intelligence platforms provide data and insights on prospects, enabling sales teams to better understand and engage with multiple stakeholders within an organisation.

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CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

CRM systems help manage company interactions with current and potential customers by organising and analysing data throughout the customer lifecycle.

With trumpet, you can link up your CRM, Hubspot or Salesforce, to send those buyer signals straight back to your deals. Our two-way integration with Hubspot even auto-fills and auto-enriches new Pod viewers in your deals.

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3. Train your champion to be a superhero

Preparing your champion with the best resources is key to having them in your corner. Help them talk the talk and show off your product exactly how you would. How? Digital sales rooms are a great place to start. Share relevant resources, case studies, stats, product guides and more on in one digital space.

It’s also important to ask the right questions in those early stages to understand where they’re at in the buying journey. Hannah Ajikawo recommends asking questions like:

• Where are you at in your evaluation process? 

• Where are you in understanding this internally?

• What does a typical buying process look like for you?

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Then, explain how the journey with you will unfold. Sharing a collaborative mutual action plan in trumpet is a great way to provide the champion with a clear understanding of what the sales process will look like with you, and when it's time to introduce you to additional stakeholders.

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4. Keep tabs on progress

It's important to monitor how effective the multi-threaded selling strategy is. Observe the outcomes and be ready to make necessary adjustments for continuous improvement. Our customers leverage buyer signals to see exactly who is checking out their content, how many times and who it has been shared with.

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Top Tips for B2B Multi-Threading

You’re almost ready to get out there and start multi-threading. However, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of this B2B sales approach.

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Research is everything

If you’re doing any cold outreach, you’ll already know how important research is. But with multi-threading, it’s essential. There are many more people to contact, each of them having their own priorities. 

So put the work in to find out:

• Who these people are
• What are their objectives
• Why would your product appeal to them
• Why objections they might have

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Get buy-in from your whole team

Sales multi-threading is about getting buy-in from several prospects in your buyer’s organisation. But you also need commitment from your own team. Some team members, like C-suite execs and VPs, want to have conversations with their equivalents. So make sure they’re comfortable with reaching out.

It won’t always be necessary, but it will boost your chances of converting some challenging prospects.

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Prepare your team

One of the interesting things about multi-threading is that it could involve thrusting non-sales staff into a role outside their area of expertise. That can have advantages and disadvantages.

Sure, your VP might not be the slickest salesperson; however, they will have authenticity and authority. These qualities can be persuasive, especially when paired with good preparation. So make sure you give them the correct information and solid answers to the sort of objections they might face.

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Invest in tools that help you convert

The modern sales process has evolved alongside advances in technology. There is a range of different tools that allow you to keep track of each contact, like customer relationship management (CRM) tools. However, they’re so commonplace that they no longer offer a huge edge.

When it comes to effective multi-threading, you need something a bit different. trumpet offers sales teams a way to centralise their sales cycle. It's an especially powerful tool when you have multiple points of contact in the same organisation.

Instead of sending out sales emails with a few dull attachments and hoping to stand out from the crowd, trumpet can build slick, professional-looking, personalised sales room pods that will wow your prospects.

With the ability to add attachments and documents, host and schedule meetings, and deal with queries and objections from inside the pod, you can accelerate your sales cycle considerably. trumpet’s analytics tools can help you keep up to date with where each deal is and which prospects are most engaged.

What's more, you can use trumpet for onboarding new users in the right way. This process can do wonders for user retention as your users ease into their early days with your product.

If you want to unlock the power of multi-threading, trumpet can help elevate your outreach, get meetings, and close deals.

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Start Multithreading with trumpet

Ready to get started with multithreading?, sign up to trumpet for free to access:

• Share Pods highly personalises to each stakeholder, in a few clicks

• See exactly how each stakeholder is interacting with the Pod

• Collaborate with buying teams to maintain accountability

• Work together on tailored mutual action plans keep driving momentum

• One online space where the entire buyer journey can live

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Want to see a trumpet digital sales room in action? Check out our live examples.