Multithreading/ how soon to multithread

Goulismp

Nick Mehta the CEO of Gainsight recently said something to the effect of "if you're working an account you should know 5 people there."

Let's say you're about to go into your first call with a client and the person on the other end is "the main user", the "power user".

Let's also say the org purchased online w/o much of a sales process and expanded itself PLG-style. IE, sales can't "hand off" multiple contacts.

Do you start suggesting other people join the next call? Do you just start looking on LI for other people and reach out to them?

I guess ultimately the question is how soon in your relationship do you start trying to multithread and how do you go about it?

Heather Wendt

Great question @Goulismp! Multi-threading is critical, and timing is important. Calling on our experts to share some insights here!

@Jason Moore @Emilia D'Anzica @Jan Young @Jeffrey Kushmerek @Jeff Heckler @Dan Ennis @Maranda Dziekonski @Sandyyu99 @Ed Powers

Ed Powers

In B2B, a group of people almost always assemble formally or informally to make purchase, renewal, and expansion decisions (the Decision Making Unit). Whether it's 3, 5, or 11 people will depend on context: the company, the type of purchase, the culture, the procurement process, etc. Ignoring the DMU definitely puts a CSM at risk of losing the account.

In your example, @Goulismp, it might make sense to gather information on a first call. Background questions like:

What triggered you to purchase our product?

Who, besides yourself, was involved in that decision?

What do they need to see in order to convince them that they made the right decision?

What do they need from me to demonstrate that?

How do you recommend I interface with them?

See where that takes you. Good luck!

llitton

In our initial onboarding, we explain the different roles in LiveSchool (teacher, administrator, and Site Leader) and the difference between them. We do this for two reasons:

1) To ask them, who else should serve as Site Leaders that drive the implementation of LiveSchool across your campus? And we help multi-thread them at that exact moment. We ask for their email addresses during the onboarding and get them upgraded to Site Leader in front of them.

2) To invite all of the (newly) named Site Leaders to their first webinar on how to get started as a Site Leader in LiveSchool. They may not attend, but if they do, they'll immediately be connected with other (new) Site Leaders to learn about the most important parts of what they (and others) are considering as they implement this platform in their schools.

So my advice would be: do it as part of your initial onboarding call and use that information to help them connect with their responsibilities/abilities in the product, as well as connect with other people outside of their company who are also taking on those responsibilities for the first time. 🤓

kwilliams0

@Goulismp , I believe you should always try for redundancy to reduce the risk when someone leaves an organization. I have also found that to be a desired outcome, and may be very difficult based on who are selling to, and how complex your solution is. I also believe that you should at a minimum understand the org chart, and mapping out the org chart should be something a CSM does during the onboarding process.

Some ways in which you can do this:
1. Similar to Ed's comment, ask who else was part of the decision making process.
2. Ask who else is part of their team, and what their responsibilities are compared to your contact's.
3. Ask if they can explain the org chart and where they are in regards to the org chart. This can come up organically, when you hear, "oh I need to pull in linda to help with this part."
4. Ask what metrics/results their boss cares about, and how their boss would like to see these results.
5. Ask who will be covering for them when they go on vacation and whether they need to be trained as well?