The One GTM Mistake That Quietly Kills Enterprise Deals

Your sales team is deep in a promising enterprise deal. They have a champion who loves the product, the demo went perfectly, and the verbal feedback is all positive. The deal is in the final stages, forecasted to close this quarter. Then, suddenly, it goes dark. Your champion stops responding to emails. The deal stalls and eventually dies. The reason given in the CRM is "no decision." This is the most common and painful way enterprise deals are lost, and it is almost always caused by a single, fundamental GTM mistake: single-threading.

A single thread holding up a large enterprise building, representing a fragile single-threaded deal.

What is Single-Threading?

Single-threading is the practice of relying on a single point of contact, your "champion," within a target account. You pour all your energy into this one relationship, assuming they will navigate their complex internal organization and sell the deal on your behalf. This is a high-risk gamble. If your champion leaves the company, gets reassigned, loses internal political capital, or simply gets busy, your deal is dead. You have placed the fate of a massive opportunity in the hands of one person who is not on your team.

The Solution: Aggressive Multi-Threading

Multi-threading is the discipline of systematically building relationships with multiple stakeholders across the buying committee. It is about creating a web of influence within the account, so that if one contact disappears, the deal still has momentum. An enterprise buying decision is rarely made by one person. It requires sign-off from the economic buyer (the one with the budget), the technical buyer (who assesses feasibility), the end-users, and often legal and procurement. You need to identify and engage all of them.

A Framework for Multi-Threading:

• Map the Buying Committee: Immediately after the first call with your champion, work with them to map out the key players. Ask directly: "Besides yourself, who else would be involved in evaluating and approving a solution like this?"
• Ask for Introductions: Leverage your champion's credibility. Ask them to introduce you to the other stakeholders. "To ensure we address any security concerns upfront, would it make sense for us to have a brief chat with your Head of IT?"
• Reach Out with Relevance: If you cannot get a warm introduction, reach out to other stakeholders directly, but with extreme relevance. Reference your ongoing conversation with the champion to provide context. Send them content specifically tailored to their role. The CFO gets the ROI case study; the Head of Engineering gets the technical documentation.

If you have one contact in an account, you have a hope. If you have three or more, you have a deal.

De-Risking Your Pipeline

Multi-threading is fundamentally a risk management strategy. It de-risks your pipeline by diversifying your reliance on any single individual. It also accelerates the deal cycle by building consensus concurrently rather than sequentially. A deal with multiple internal champions is far more likely to get the momentum it needs to cross the finish line.

Stop leaving your biggest deals to chance. Make multi-threading a non-negotiable part of your enterprise sales process. It is the difference between a pipeline full of hope and a pipeline full of predictable revenue.