Skill Drill: Multithreading Deals for Print and Packaging

Direct Answer

This drill builds multithreading — the skill of building active relationships with three or more buyers inside a single account so a deal survives when your champion leaves, goes quiet, or gets overruled. A sales manager runs it with a team of 4 to 12 print and packaging reps in 45 minutes (compressible to 5, extendable to 60).

The team walks away able to map every buying role on a folding-carton or label account and name the next two people they will reach into this week.

Why This Drill Matters in Print and Packaging

Print and packaging is the textbook single-threading trap. A rep lands a relationship with one production buyer at a CPG converter or a brand's packaging engineer, and the whole account rides on that one person. Then the brand re-bids the corrugated program, a procurement team gets installed above your contact, or a sustainability mandate pulls in an R&D group you have never met — and the deal dies because nobody else inside the account knows your name.

Packaging deals are inherently multi-stakeholder. A single flexible-film or folding-carton program touches a packaging engineer (specs, dielines, substrate), a procurement / strategic sourcing lead (price, supplier consolidation, payment terms), a brand or marketing manager (shelf appeal, color fidelity, launch dates), a plant or operations manager (line speed, changeover, fitment on existing fillers), and increasingly a sustainability lead (recyclability, PCR content, EPR compliance).

Miss any of them and your quote sits in legal or gets value-engineered out.

The methodologies here are well-established. Miller Heiman's Strategic Selling gives us the Buying Influences model — Economic Buyer, User Buyer, Technical Buyer, and Coach — which maps cleanly onto a packaging account. The Challenger Sale (CEB / Gartner) research found the average B2B purchase now involves 6 to 10 decision-makers, which is why single-threading is statistically a losing bet.

Gong's call-data analysis shows deals with three or more engaged contacts close at materially higher rates than single-threaded ones. This drill turns those frameworks into reps your team can run on real accounts tomorrow.

What You'll Need (5 min prep)

• Group size: 4 to 12 reps. Pair them up; odd numbers get one trio.
• Materials: One printed Account Threading Map handout per rep (a simple grid: columns for Buying Role, Name, Relationship Strength 1–5, Last Touch, Next Action). A whiteboard or flip chart. Sticky notes in two colors.
• Room setup: Tables for pairs facing each other for role-play. Whiteboard visible to all.
• Pre-work (optional): Ask each rep to bring one real, live print or packaging account that is currently single-threaded. This makes the drill produce real pipeline actions, not hypotheticals.
• Leader prep: Pick one anonymized example account to model the map on the whiteboard in Round 1.

Round 1 — Set the Scene & Map the Account (10 min)

Start by modeling the map on the whiteboard, then have reps build their own.

Leader reads aloud: "Pick one live print or packaging account. On your handout, write the name of the one person you actually talk to. Now I want you to fill in five rows — Packaging Engineer, Procurement, Brand/Marketing, Plant/Operations, Sustainability.

For each role, write the real person's name if you know it, or 'UNKNOWN' if you don't. Then rate your relationship strength one to five. Be honest — a five means they'd take your call on a Friday afternoon."

Exact steps:

1. Reps spend 4 minutes filling the grid on their real account.
2. Leader asks for a show of hands: "How many of you have a 'four or five' relationship in only ONE row?" Most hands go up. That is single-threading made visible.
3. Identify each rep's Coach — the insider who will tell you who else matters and how the decision really gets made.

What good looks like: Every rep can name at least one UNKNOWN role and one person rated 1 or 2 they need to develop. The gaps are the drill's raw material.

Round 2 — Run the Reps: The Lateral Referral (15 min)

This is the core rep: using your existing champion to get introduced laterally to a buying role you don't yet know.

Leader reads aloud: "The fastest path to a second thread is a warm lateral referral from the person who already trusts you. We're going to practice asking for one without sounding like you're going over their head."

Verbatim script the leader models, then reps run in pairs:

"Maria, you've been the one driving this carton redesign and I want to make sure we get it across the line cleanly. When this hits procurement for the re-bid, who owns that side — and would it help if I got them the cost-comparison sheet early so they're not surprised? Happy to do that with you on the line, or you can hand it off, whatever's easiest for you."

Role-play setup:

• Rep A plays the seller. Rep B plays the champion (packaging engineer) who is slightly protective of the relationship.
• The seller must (a) anchor on a shared goal, (b) make the referral feel like it protects the champion, not bypasses them, and (c) name the specific role they want to reach.
• Run it twice, then swap roles. Each rep does it as seller at least once.

What good looks like: The ask frames the new thread as *de-risking the champion's project*, never as "I need more contacts." The seller names a specific role (procurement, sustainability) rather than vaguely asking "who else is involved?"

Round 3 — Pressure Test: The Blocker and the New Power (10 min)

Now make it hard. Introduce the two scenarios that kill packaging deals.

Leader reads aloud: "Two things just happened on your account. One — your champion says 'just deal with me, I'll handle the others.' That's a blocking Coach. Two — a new VP of Procurement got hired above everyone and is consolidating suppliers. Practice keeping the deal alive."

Scenario A — The Blocking Champion: Rep B insists on being the only contact. Rep A must respect the relationship while still creating a second thread. Model line:

"Totally respect that, and I'm not trying to crowd the room. The only reason I ask is I've seen re-bids stall when sourcing sees our number for the first time at the finish line. Could we loop them in once, even just a five-minute intro, so there are no surprises in Q3?"

Scenario B — New Power Sponsor: A VP of Strategic Sourcing arrives mid-deal. Rep A must research and reach this person within 48 hours. Reps brainstorm the one-line value hypothesis they'd open with — tied to supplier consolidation, total landed cost, or on-time-in-full delivery, not print quality.

What good looks like: Reps handle the blocker without damaging trust and produce a credible, role-specific opener for the new economic buyer.

Round 4 — Debrief & Lock It In (10 min)

Convert practice into committed pipeline actions.

Exact steps:

1. Each rep writes two Next Actions on sticky notes: one new thread to open this week, one relationship to deepen.
2. Go around the room — each rep says the account, the role, and the specific action out loud. Saying it publicly creates commitment.
3. Leader logs commitments and sets a follow-up: at the next pipeline review, every rep reports whether the new thread is now a 3+ relationship.

Leader reads aloud: "Single-threaded deals aren't deals — they're hopes. By Friday I want every account in this room to have one new live thread. We'll check it Monday."

Scaling It: 5-Minute, 30-Minute, and 60-Minute Versions

• 5-minute version: Run Round 1 only. Every rep maps one account and names the single UNKNOWN buying role they'll research this week. Done in a stand-up.
• 30-minute version: Run Rounds 1, 2, and 4. Skip the pressure test. This still produces a real lateral-referral rep and committed next actions — the highest-leverage 30 minutes you can spend.
• 60-minute version: Run all four rounds, then have each rep map a second account and run one more role-play. Add a "wall of accounts" — every rep's single-threaded deals posted on the whiteboard so the team sees the collective exposure.

Common Mistakes & Coaching Cues

• Mistaking activity for threading. Emailing five people once is not multithreading. Cue: "A thread is a *relationship*, not a CC line. Rate it one to five."
• Going over the champion's head. Reps panic and reach around their contact, burning trust. Cue: "Always frame the new thread as protecting your champion's project, never as routing around them."
• Leading with print quality to procurement. Engineers care about dielines; sourcing cares about landed cost and supplier risk. Cue: "Change your value line for every role."
• Ignoring the sustainability lead. EPR rules and PCR mandates now move packaging decisions. Cue: "If you can't name the sustainability contact, you have a blind spot, not an account."
• Stopping at three threads and relaxing. Three is the floor, not the goal, on a large brand account. Cue: "Map the whole buying committee, then thread the gaps."

FAQ

How many threads do I actually need in a print or packaging account? At least three engaged relationships, and on large brand or CPG accounts, four to six. Research from Gartner shows the average B2B buying group is 6 to 10 people; you don't need all of them, but you need enough that one departure doesn't kill the deal.

Won't my champion feel betrayed if I talk to other people? Only if you do it behind their back. The Round 2 script is built to make the lateral referral feel like you're protecting their project. Done right, champions usually open doors gladly because surprises in procurement make *them* look bad too.

What if I genuinely only have access to one buyer? That's the highest-risk account in your pipeline, and it's exactly what this drill surfaces. Use the lateral-referral rep to ask your single contact who owns the re-bid, the spec, and the sustainability sign-off. If they won't introduce anyone, that's a yellow flag worth raising in your forecast.

How is this different from just having more contacts in the CRM? A contact record is not a thread. A thread is an active relationship you've rated 3 or higher — someone who'll take your call and share real information. The drill forces honest ratings precisely so reps stop confusing data entry with relationships.

Which methodology should I lean on most for packaging? Miller Heiman Strategic Selling's Buying Influences model maps best onto packaging's role mix (Economic Buyer = procurement/VP sourcing, User Buyer = plant ops, Technical Buyer = packaging engineer, Coach = your insider).

Pair it with Challenger insight-led messaging when you reach a new economic buyer cold.

How often should we re-run this drill? Run the full version quarterly and the 5-minute mapping version at every pipeline review. Threads decay — people change roles in CPG and converting constantly — so the map is never "finished."

Bottom Line

After this drill, every rep can map the full buying committee on a print or packaging account, run a lateral-referral ask without bruising their champion, and react fast when a new procurement power lands mid-deal. Re-run the 5-minute mapping at every pipeline review and the full 45-minute drill once a quarter.

The standard is simple: no single-threaded deals in the forecast.

Sources

• Miller Heiman Strategic Selling — Buying Influences
• The Challenger Sale (Gartner / CEB)
• Gong Labs — Multithreading and Win Rates
• RAIN Group — Multithreading and Account Strategy
• Harvard Business Review — The New Sales Imperative
• Association for Talent Development (ATD)
• Sandler Training — Account Management

*multithreading skill drill — a runnable team training exercise for print and packaging sales, with scripts, timing, and coaching cues.*