Whether selling to a new account or nurturing an existing one, multithreading can help you as an Account Manager to integrate with your client’s internal team and become an indispensable part of their success. And ultimately, this may help you achieve your goal of facilitating growth for your clients and minimizing churn in your book.

Multithreading is the act of building multiple relationships within one account. It goes beyond just convincing everyone on the buying committee to okay your product – a necessity these days to close almost any deal. It also means proactively seeking out new relationships within an account.

Multithreading to Avoid Churn

There are many reasons a client might churn. You can lose them to a competitor, or their business has a shift in priority or budget. Additionally, your product may not be performing for them, or maybe your point of contact (POC) leaves the company or becomes unresponsive. There’s no way to avoid churn completely, but by creating various relationships at the customer’s company, via multithreading, you have a greater opportunity to avoid it.

For example, if your product isn’t performing and isn’t hitting the customer’s goals, but you have multiple stakeholders, they may have additional perspectives that can make the case for keeping your product. In another instance where your main POC leaves the business – a more common occurrence these days as layoffs and reorganizations continue to trend. But the good news is in any of these situations if you’re multithreading, then you’ll have other POCs to engage.

You can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get a jumpstart on multithreading. The tool allows you to set your buyer persona, save leads, and map your account. The Relationship Explorer tool within the platform can also identify up to eight individuals at a company who would be potentially beneficial connections.

Alternatively, use your initial/main POC to help introduce you to others within the company. Ask for others to join regular calls and learn more about the other individuals there. You may have things in common that can serve as a great foundation for a new relationship – and another reason for that person to accept your LinkedIn connection or an invite to coffee. 

Multithreading to Upsell Existing Customers

When you have multiple points of contact, you also will have multiple streams of communication with the customer. This means you’re less likely to lose them in an upsell or renewal at any point. If one person ghosts you, you can go to your other POCs at any time.

At NextRoll, our AdRoll sales team has seen a higher win rate when there are more than four contacts involved. With one contact, we’ve seen a 23% win rate, while with four contacts, we’ve seen a 54% win rate. And the average win rate increases with each contact added. 

Multithreading to Win a New Account

Multithreading is also incredibly valuable when trying to win new business and new customers. Budgets have gotten tighter, and therefore buying cycles are now longer than in the past few years. By having multiple contacts at a prospective account, you’re able to integrate yourself within the team you’re selling to and keep the momentum going, even through a long sales cycle.

LinkedIn looked at the top sellers (those who hit at least 150% of quota) in 2021 and found these top performers were 13% more likely to multithread their accounts. By building a relationship with your main point of contact that is based on truth, authenticity, and the pursuit of shared wins, they’ll want to connect you with others on their team.

With all this in mind, what customers or prospects can you connect with today, and how can you meet the most people on their teams? Who can you connect with easily on LinkedIn with a simple intro message? Start multithreading and building personal relationships whenever and whenever possible to really make a difference in your accounts and their longevity.