In my time at Mediamath we were very much the underdog as an independent adtech up against Google and Facebook.  They owned 80% of the market spend and the rest of us squabbled over the remaining share, earning the nickname ‘the twenty percenters’.

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We had launched a new sales strategy to go big and develop custom solutions for clients. So in Singapore, we did exactly that for one of the world’s largest FMCG companies, which we will call ‘UnBeliever’ for the purposes of this story.  Now Unbeliever was a big deal, with 100M in global programmatic spend and 20M in APAC.

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Starting at the top we identified the chief decision maker in APAC and then leveraged our network to get the chance to pitch.  We nailed the pitch, using an approach of replicating their non-digital approach to marketing (ie leveraging their incredible spend to squeeze costs) in the digital world.  The decision-maker loved it, he was looking for a career-making hit and we were off to the races.

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Fast forward 4 months of gruelling work from the entire team and we were ready to go.  The agency team had been trained, the first campaigns were set up in the platform and scheduled to go live at 9am Monday morning.  We just needed the *final final* go-ahead and the button would be pushed.

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Monday morning.  *crickets*

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Not too worried at this stage, these things happen, and could be a hold up at the global level.

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Tuesday morning *crickets*.

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Starting to get concerned here, especially as our key points of contact were not available.  No mean feat when you are in the same building!

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Thursday morning *crickets*.  Ok now I was worried.  And annoyed.  And worried.

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Ten days later the UnBeliever client sent their agency lead in to tell us that the deal wasn’t going ahead.  (our fees were usage-based, so there was no contractual protection).  Turns out that Unbeleiver Global had put the kibosh on the deal because in the USA they worked with a competitor of ours.  oof.

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But the real kicker was that we had been gifted these decision-makers.  Normally you can run whole campaigns to try and find out who holds the keys in the background, but one of our internal champions had provided us names and that ‘you need to get them onside as they are very influential’.  We had run these up the flag with our European and American colleagues, but they dismissed the need to connect.  In my ignorance, I thought we could come back around once APAC was up and running and then show them the good work.

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Big oof.

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This deal would have changed the trajectory of the APAC team, my career and quite possibly the company (vale mediamath).

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So the lesson here people is *always* get air cover on your deals and make sure you have good relationships with multiple stakeholders.  In sales parlance this is called ‘multi-threading’.  Buying decisions at the enterprise level are made by committee so make sure you are talking to the whole committee!

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Steps to Multithread effectively:

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1.  Know the players.  If you don’t know who they are, ask! Who else would be involved in the purchasing process?  What do they care about most in making the decision? We should loop her in, can you set that up?
2. Get them involved.  Now you know who they are and what their focus is.  Quick update is that we have identified a framework to help improve sales and we are now preparing a presentation for the board.  Would love to loop you in and get your input to make sure you are getting what you need.  Next wednesday good?
3. Never let them go.  Once you have made contact, you never, ever, ever stop keeping them in the loop, even (especially!) if they remove themselves.  Planning Update: met with Jon to discuss pipeline-filling activity and zeroed in on six segments to focus on.  Meeting again on Wednesday to lock down the final plan.  I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop.

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So if you are an early-stage company selling into enterprise and feeling alone and want to brainstorm ideas on how to get air cover on your deals, hit me up.  I’m a very, very sympathetic audience.

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