If you put all your eggs in one basket and it breaks, then you are fresh out of luck. Similarly, if you stake an entire deal on a relationship with just one key contact at a prospect’s company, then you are potentially dooming yourself. People leave their jobs or their jobs leave them. And you don’t want to have your potential deal vanish along with your contact. This is exactly the problem with the “single-threaded" relationship. When the entire deal is in the hands of one person, it’s in grave danger. Here’s how to solve that scenario with multi-threaded relationships.
Why Single-Threaded Relationships Happen
Sales reps have a lot on their plates. Not to mention having numerous plates spinning at once. But single-threaded relationships happen most often when reps don’t initially do a great job of mapping the various key players in the deal. There are many reasons why this could have happened, but large complex deals involve multiple departments and constituencies in typical purchase decisions. So limiting yourself to a single-threaded sales relationship is inherently risky.
Why You Should Avoid Single-Threaded Relationships
Decision makers are important contacts to have, but they should never be your only contact. Respecting your sales cycle is not a part of their job description. If they leave their job unexpectedly and didn’t leave you with the appropriate contact to continue with, then you could have to start the relationship from scratch with someone else from the company. In that same time, a competitor could have been chatting with numerous points of contact at the company and win the deal before you can re-establish a relationship. Don’t get locked out of deals because you fail to establish broad relationships from the get-go.
How to Implement a Multi-Threaded Relationship in Your Sales Cycle
The more contacts you have within a company, the better. Creating multi-threaded relationships needs to be part of the sales prospecting process. Next generation sales performance management platforms like People.ai encourage and help sales teams to establish multi-threaded relationships. People.ai can review all calls, emails and meetings, easily identifying new contacts and auto-syncing them into your CRM. People.ai even proactively alerts your salespeople to introduce themselves to these potential new allies.
If you’re ready to improve and broaden your relationships with prospects, get a personalized demo of People.ai.