The phrase "it's who you know, not what you know" has been relevant forever, but it's hard to understand that in real practice until you experience it.

We’re seeing it now play in the brutal recruiting landscape -

I’m speaking with so many qualified candidates not getting through b/c their former manager/someone they previously worked with doesn’t work at that company (the way most ppl get jobs is through someone internally to vouch for them).

It's even more true for larger enterprise software deals. Not only is it "who you know," but it's also important to know which people you should know and how to get introductions to them.

You don’t win deals at the account level - you win them at the individual level.

Deals are getting increasingly complex, with more people being in the mix for decisions.

From The Challenger Customer, it takes over five people to say "yes" in an org to decide. This increases to 10-15 for larger enterprise/strat deals, and all of this becomes a headache to manage, looking like something like the photo below:

This is where the skill of multithreading comes in, to wrangle this mess above.

Enterprise selling means navigating messy org charts, competing agendas, and internal politics.

There are a ton of things AEs need to quarterback to get this all right, and it’s mostly manual:

1. Understand who you know

2. Understand who you need to know that you don’t already

3. Understand what they've previously talked about and connect that to the broader deal context

4. Be able to present all of this daily/weekly to your broader team so you know you have you stuff together in pipeline meetings

You would think a CRM would have already figured this out, but the “R” in your CRM is fundamentally broken.

They’re record keepers, not relationship systems. They don’t tell you who you’re really connected to, who’s missing from your deal, or how strong your coverage is.

I personally used to do this in static PowerPoint screenshots, and it was always hard to wrangle correctly, but super important to get it right (not only for the deal, but making sure my manager didn’t think I was an idiot).

The Value of Multithreading

This might be obvious, but I thought it’d be helpful to quickly outline why multithreading is a no brainer:

• Better intel: Talking to different people gives you the full picture of what's really going on. You'll spot patterns, understand politics, and craft solutions that actually solve their problems - not just what one person thinks they need

• More pull: Getting to the folks who control the budget changes everything. Multithreading helps you climb the ladder to reach decision-makers who can actually greenlight your deal instead of saying "I need to check with my boss."

• Deal insurance: We've all been there - your champion suddenly quits or goes on leave. With multiple relationships, your deal doesn't die when one person disappears. You've got backup routes to keep things moving

• Spread your bets: In big companies, you'll always find some skeptics. Multithreading means you're not putting all your chips on one supporter. If someone's hesitant, you've got other fans who can help push your deal through

Top sellers get more people involved in their deals, according to Gong Labs:

But how does this actually get done in enterprise deals?

3 Components To Actually Multithread

Know the Players

• Use LinkedIn Sales Nav to sketch the landscape

• Validate with your contacts: “Am I seeing your team correctly?”

• Always be asking: “Who else should be in this conversation?”

• Update constantly - this isn’t a one-and-done step, but it is a little time-consuming, static, clunky, etc.

Play Nice With Your Champion

• When asking for an intro, frame it as helping them: “this might help us move faster”

• Make your contact look good internally

• Transparency builds trust - sneaking around burns it

Speak Everyone's Language & Align Level

• Talk to each person about what they actually care about

• The CTO wants tech talk/architecture; the CFO wants ROI numbers

• Match level: VP to VP, Director to Director, etc.

  • Get your execs talking to their execs (people like talking to their equals)

• Reference internal language (words/acronyms they use internally) as much as possible

The best AEs do this right, but it takes them so much time. Thankfully, there’s a tool out there now that’s operationalizing this with AI.

A Tool That’s Solving This With Tech: Centralize

If your CRM doesn’t help you multithread, you’re not alone. That’s exactly the gap a new crop of tools is starting to address.

Centralize is one of the more interesting ones in the space.

It helps sellers map stakeholder relationships, visualize coverage gaps, and get warm intro suggestions - all in one place. Think of it like relationship intelligence layered on top of your CRM (so you never have to worry about updating SFDC).

They’re backed by Salesforce Ventures, which makes sense: even the CRM giant sees the need for a new layer built for how modern enterprise selling actually works.

See a video below of a walkthrough of the platform:

How Centralize Brings AI To Multithreading

Centralize combines relationship intelligence with AI to help you:

1. Understand who’s who/what they care about: Understand who you should be talking to and past engagements/what people care about (by integrating common systems like Gong and Slack)

2. Track engagement depth: Visualize exactly how deeply multithreaded you are in each account with intuitive heatmaps that show where you're strong and where you need more connections

3. Leverage warm introductions: Identify which of your colleagues, executives, or investors have existing relationships with key decision-makers at your target accounts

4. Streamline deal collaboration: Bring your entire go-to-market team together in one platform to coordinate outreach, share insights, and maintain relationship context

5. Receive AI-powered recommendations: Get suggested next actions based on relationship patterns and successful deals, taking the guesswork out of multithreading strategy

It’s not just companies like Sendoso, Navattic, and a few others that are using it, but some sales influencers (like Brendon Cassidy, who was the first advisor to Gong and first sales leader at LinkedIn) said last week:

Sendoso, one of their first customers, is loving them:

Even Jason Lemkin, the king of SaaS - knows this is a huge problem, but curious how it gets solved.

Bottom Line

Multithreading isn’t a nice-to-have anymore- it’s how deals get done. You need a dynamic map.

Awesome to see a company using AI to help make multithreading a little easier.

Shoot me a DM or reply here if you want to learn more about how others are using it. Centralize and embed AI to multithread and relationship map their largest deals.

More resources on multithreading:

• Gong webinar on multithreading

• Selling With book by Nate Nasralla

• Pclub.io multithreading course

• Pclub.io multithreading best practices