If you’re a VC-backed SaaS founder somewhere between seed and Series A, there’s a good chance your pipeline has a problem you haven’t fully diagnosed yet. You’ve got deals in there. Some of them looked really promising a few weeks ago. But now they’ve gone quiet. Prospects have stopped replying. Follow-ups go unanswered. And you’re left wondering what went wrong.
I see this constantly when I work with founders on their sales pipelines. And the second biggest reason founder-led pipelines don’t progress (right behind poor discovery) is a lack of multi-threading. It’s the one thing enterprise sales teams do as standard that most early-stage founders don’t do at all.
And it’s costing you deals, revenue, and time you can’t afford to waste.
What is multi-threading?
Multi-threading simply means building relationships with multiple people in a target account, rather than relying on one single contact. But one person doesn’t equal a company. And if your entire deal hangs on one relationship, you’re carrying far more risk than you realise.
Why single-threaded deals die
You’ve got a deal in the pipeline. Your contact is enthusiastic, engaged, saying all the right things. You progress through demo, discovery, proposal. Everything’s great. Then they go quiet. You chase once, twice, three times and you eventually give up.
What actually happened is that they went to their manager internally and told them about your product but their manager said no. Conversation over.
Now that person is in an impossible position. They don’t want to tell you they didn’t have the authority. They don’t want to admit they couldn’t sell it internally. And they definitely can’t go back to their manager and ask again. So, the easiest thing to do is ghost you. That’s the clearest signal of a single-threaded deal and there’s probably a few of them in your pipeline right now.
The real benefits of multi-threading
When you build relationships with multiple stakeholders in an account, four things happen:
- You reduce risk. Anyone can leave a company, even the CEO, if they’re not the founder. If your single contact walks out the door, your deal walks out with them. Multiple relationships mean your opportunity survives personnel changes.
- You get internal alignment. When multiple people in a business understand your product and its value, they start doing the selling for you internally. At that point, the deal is done. No competitor is getting a look in.
- You speed up the sales cycle. Deals stall when one person must go away and internally convince everyone else. Multi-threading removes that bottleneck because the key stakeholders are already bought in.
- You increase your ACV. This is the one most founders miss. You might be selling a £10K deal to one person, but there could be three other teams or departments who’d benefit from your product. Multi-thread into those teams and that £10K deal becomes £30K because they can all see the value.
How to multi-thread without burning your champion
The instinct might be to go above someone’s head but anyone will block you if they sense that’s what you’re doing. The key is to frame it as helping them, not bypassing them. Here’s what that sounds like in practice:
“Prospect, I know what it’s like working with complex organisations like yours. Typically, when I work with a business like yours, the CFO or head of operations needs to be involved at some point. I want to make your job really easy and I don’t want you to have to go internally and do loads of selling on my behalf. I see that as my job. In your opinion, who else would need to be involved in this process?”
Once you’ve got names, dig deeper.
- What does each of those people care about?
- What would you need to show them to get them on board?
- Would your contact be happy for you to reach out directly and bring them up to speed?
This language shows you’re partnering with your champion, not undermining them. You’re making the buying process frictionless.
Top-down and bottom-up
A common misconception is that more senior always equals better. That’s not true. Senior stakeholders are often disconnected from the day-to-day pain your product solves. They might not see the problem because they’re not living it.
Sometimes the best move is bottom-up. Say you’re talking to a CFO who can see the strategic value but doesn’t fully understand the operational pain. You might say: “I think I can help your business, but I don’t fully know yet. Could you introduce me to someone in your accounts receivable team? I’ll run a quick diagnostic and report back with what I find.” Now you’re acting like a consultant. You’re uncovering real problems across the organisation and bringing those insights back to the decision-maker.
The most impactful selling happens when you’ve worked your way into the account from multiple angles and the people inside are talking about you to each other. That’s when deals close themselves.
What a good stakeholder map looks like
If you want to sell well at this stage, you need to act like an expert within each account. You should know their priorities, their business pain points, what each department is trying to achieve, and the company’s wider objectives. You should be able to rattle off the key people and know what each of them cares about.
Map every deal against three categories:
- Users: The people who’ll use your product day-to-day and feel the pain most acutely
- Champions: The people who believe in your solution and will advocate for it internally
- Economic buyers: The people who sign off on the budget and make the final call
Once you’ve mapped those three groups, you approach each one differently.
Understand what matters to each, tailor your message, and build individual relationships. And when you can lay out all of their problems on the table and show you understand them better than they do, the selling happens almost automatically.
Start flagging single-threaded deals
Here’s something you can do right now. Go through your pipeline and look at every open opportunity.
For each one, ask yourself how many people in the account you have a genuine relationship with. If the answer is one, flag it as high risk. Then ask who else could you be speaking to, and what would you need to do to get in front of them.
This is exactly what I do with founders in pipeline reviews.
We identify the single-threaded deals, treat them as the risk they are, and build a plan to multi-thread into each account before it’s too late.
The best enterprise sales teams in the world do this instinctively. As a founder selling at seed or Series A, it might not come naturally yet, but it’s one of the highest-leverage changes you can make to your pipeline right now. Start multi-threading, and you’ll close more, close faster, and close bigger.
If you want to schedule a pipeline review with me, and I’ll help you identify those single threaded prospects, get in touch.
Author Bio: Matthew Codd
Matthew has 15 years of commercial leadership experience, helping VC-backed B2B technology companies scale revenue and transition from founder-led sales.
He now uses his experience to help early-stage start-ups with GTM expertise, sales best practice, and hiring insights.
Matthew co-founded Cosmic Partners in 2022, a SaaS sales recruitment specialists for VC backed B2B tech companies.
