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In B2B sales today, too many deals are single-threaded, dependent on one internal contact, one decision-maker, or one champion.
This isn’t just risky. It’s inefficient, slow, and often unprofitable.
Single-threaded deals:
The result? More time spent per deal, lower win rates, and less revenue.
Watch and listen to How to Build More Champions on the Hit Your Numbers podcast page.
Top-performing sales teams in 2025 focus on multi-threading, building relationships across departments, functions, and levels to reduce risk, speed up buy-in, and drive consensus.
Most sellers still approach stakeholder involvement the wrong way. They ask vague, open-ended questions like: “Who else should be involved in this conversation?”
But that puts pressure on the buyer, especially early in the sales process, when they don’t fully understand your offering or how it maps to internal priorities.
Instead, high-performing reps do the work upfront. They come into discovery meetings with a point of view, backed by account research, to guide the conversation and expand access.
Before your discovery call, invest time mapping the account:
Example: If you’re selling conversation intelligence software (like Gong or Chorus), marketing could use the transcripts for campaign messaging. CS could use it for onboarding analysis. These teams may help fund the project, or at least advocate for it internally.
You’re not just looking for users, you’re looking for influencers, approvers, and beneficiaries.
Even when you find a champion, most deals fail because we don’t enable them to drive consensus.
Modern buying journeys are non-linear. Your champion will need to win over finance, legal, ops, IT, and leadership - all while protecting their own reputation. And most of the time, they’re doing it without your help.
That’s a mistake.
According to Gartner, the average B2B buying group now includes 6 to 11 stakeholders who must agree before a decision is made.
If you’re not doing this already, you’re leaving a massive gap in your sales process.
Once initial discovery is complete and the buyer signals interest, the best reps don’t immediately push for budget conversations. Instead, they ask: “How do we make this deal bigger, or at least safer?”
That means expanding access. You want to get multiple stakeholders involved in a collaborative session - ideally a workshop designed to align people around objectives and challenges.
1. Use Account Mapping Tools
2. Frame It as a Value-Add Session
Position the session as collaborative, not a pitch:
3. Run the Session Like a Consultant
Use whiteboards (in person) or Miro/Canva (virtually) to:
Keep the energy high, the content visual, and the tone collaborative, not salesy.
Workshops also help you identify internal blockers - the people who have competing priorities, existing vendor relationships, or conflicting incentives. It’s better to find out now than during procurement.
When a buyer gives you three hours of their team’s time, treat it with the respect of a consulting engagement.
This creates deal insurance. If your primary champion disappears, you now have 3–5 others who are informed and engaged.
Most sellers rely too heavily on 1:1 demos and hope their champion can drive the rest of the process internally. In reality, that’s setting them, and your deal, up to fail.
If you sell to mid-market or enterprise clients and you’re not running collaborative workshops, you’re missing one of the most powerful tools in your sales toolkit.
Done right, they:
If your current process doesn’t include:
You’re leaving revenue on the table.
We’ve developed a suite of training tools and frameworks to help. If you’re interested in improving your team’s performance in these areas, reach out.
We’ve just launched a completely free course on prospecting, plus free downloads, including:
And remember:
Apply what you’ve learned today, or nothing changes.
