How Do I Multi-Thread an Account without Making It Awkward?
To multi-thread an account in customer success, build each new relationship through the contact you already have. Ask for introductions in a way that gives your contact something they want, at a moment when the introduction helps them. When your contact makes the introductions, the new relationships start with their support.
You know you should have more than one relationship in the account. You also know how it feels when a vendor starts emailing around you.
What Does It Mean to Multi-Thread an Account in Customer Success?
Multi-threading means having working relationships with several people in an account, each of whom would take your call and knows why the product is there. It protects the account when your main contact leaves, changes jobs, or loses interest.
A stakeholder map for the account shows you which people to start with, based on whose support the renewal needs.
Why Does Going around My Contact Backfire?
It costs you your contact's trust, and the new person has no reason to trust you yet.
Patricia Doney and Joseph Cannon, in a 1997 study in the Journal of Marketing, found that a buyer's trust in a salesperson and in the supplier company worked together, and that both raised the buyer's expectation of doing business again.
A colleague introduced by someone they trust starts with some of that trust. A colleague who gets a cold email from their peer's vendor starts out cautious, and your contact may trust you less.
Relationships that share contacts also last longer. Ronald Burt followed the networks of bankers and their colleagues in one financial organization for four years, for a 2000 study in Social Networks. Relationships between people connected indirectly through many third parties decayed more slowly. A relationship your contact started, and still takes part in, has one shared contact from its first day. Each colleague the three of you work with adds another.
How Do I Ask My Contact for an Introduction?
Ask in terms of something your contact cares about. Name a risk they own, such as a department still on the old process or a renewal that will need finance's approval, and propose working on it with the person who can help. The introduction becomes a way to solve their problem.
Then make sure it pays off for them. Robert Palmatier and colleagues, in a 2009 study in the Journal of Marketing, found that a seller's investment in a relationship produced gratitude in the customer, and that the gratitude turned into lasting behavior that repaid the seller. When the introduction leads to a result, make sure your contact gets the credit, in front of the person they report to.
When Is the Best Time to Ask for an Introduction?
Ask when the people are already in the room, or about to be. Emilia D'Anzica, in a 2024 conversation with ChurnZero on multi-threading, points to the final sales call and the kickoff, when the customer's signer is present and your executive can be introduced alongside your contact.
A business review is the next good moment, because there are results to show and your contact has something to present. Asking cold, in the middle of a quarter, with nothing to offer, is the version that feels awkward.
Ask before you need the relationship. An introduction requested in the middle of a renewal scare tells the new person the account is in trouble, and they start the relationship cautious.
How Do I Build a Second Champion before I Need One?
Look among the new relationships for the person with their own stake in the product working. It may be a manager whose team's results depend on it, or someone below the sponsor who pushed for the purchase and still talks about it.
Give that person a real part in the account. Ask them to own one team's switch to the product, or to review the results before the business review. Then let them present those results to their own leadership. A person who has put their name on the product's results inside their company has a reason to defend it when your main contact leaves.
Robert Cialdini, in a 2001 Harvard Business Review article, reviews research showing that people stick with commitments that are active, public, and voluntary. Active means spoken aloud or written down. Let the person choose which piece they take on, and ask them to put the result they expect in writing before the work starts. The presentation to their leadership makes it public.
How Do I Keep the Relationships Going without More Meetings?
Attach each relationship to something that already happens. The business review already includes the sponsor. Renewal planning already involves whoever controls the budget. A rollout checkpoint already involves the manager whose team is switching. Invite the right person to the meeting that is already on the calendar.
Between meetings, send each person one useful thing on a schedule you can keep, such as a result that matters to their team, an answer to something they asked, or an example from another customer. Gainsight's guidance on relationship multi-threading counts a relationship only when it goes both ways and is recent. Track each one by the date of its last real exchange, and treat any with no exchange in a quarter as lapsed.
Start that review with the newest relationships. In Burt's study, the chance that a relationship would decay fell the longer it had existed, and age protected a relationship only where the shared contacts around it had changed. Check first the new relationships where your original contact is no longer involved.
What if My Contact Won't Introduce Me to Anyone?
Ask why, directly and without pressure. Some contacts worry that a vendor talking to their manager will make them look like they can't handle the account. Some have had a vendor go around them before. Offer to keep them on every thread, and to share anything you send before you send it.
If they still decline, use settings where people meet you without an introduction, such as a customer event, a user group, or a training session their colleagues attend.
Look up the date of your last real exchange with each person in your largest account besides your main contact. Anyone past a quarter is the relationship to restart first.
If this account is already stalled, Unstick the Account walks you through who it's waiting on and what to do about each person.
If you're the founder still doing customer success yourself, or the sales lead who just got handed it, I do two-week consulting stretches on exactly this kind of thing. All async, no calls. Here's how that works.
References & Related Reading
- An Examination of the Nature of Trust in Buyer-Seller Relationships, Patricia M. Doney and Joseph P. Cannon, Journal of Marketing, 1997.
- The Role of Customer Gratitude in Relationship Marketing, Robert W. Palmatier, Cheryl Burke Jarvis, Jennifer R. Bechkoff, and Frank R. Kardes, Journal of Marketing, 2009.
- Decay Functions, Ronald S. Burt, Social Networks, 2000.
- Master the strategy of multithreading in customer success: Q&A with Emilia D'Anzica, ChurnZero, 2024.
- Relationship Multi-Threading, Gainsight, current page.
- Harnessing the Science of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001.
- The Power of Multi-Threaded Customer Relationships (And How to Build Them), Sumitra Narayanan, CS Insider, 2024.
