Multi-threading beyond IT: plan the seats your CRM is missing
When SDRs only reach IT, design coverage: name the seats each account needs, give each an owner, a path and a date, then report engaged seats per account.
as many industrial production managers as IT managers at US manufacturing sites
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023SDRs book IT because their list and targets point there
SDRs book IT because IT is the seat their database holds and the meeting their target counts. IT people tend to sit at head office, carry standard titles and show up in contact databases. The person who owns the operational problem often sits at a site, under a title that changes from one company to the next. A list built from head-office records tends to miss them.
Meeting targets do the rest. A rep measured on meetings books whoever answers, and in this case that’s IT. Buying more contacts or more dials then returns more of the same seat. Better contact data helps you find a name. It doesn’t decide who approaches that person, through which introduction or by when.
Most purchases need more than that seat: 73% involve 3 or more departments.↗ An IT meeting fills 1 of them at most. So when the list holds only IT, the gap is in coverage design, and more volume won’t close it.
Name the seats each account tier needs before anyone dials
A seat map lists the 3–5 roles each account tier needs engaged, written down before the first touch.↗ A seat is a buying role, so 3 engaged IT managers fill 1 seat between them.↗
Start with the seat that owns the problem your product solves, then add the budget owner, IT or security and any seat that can veto.↗ Who owns the problem depends on what you sell. It might be a plant manager for a product on the line, a head of clinical operations for a trial system or a network operations lead for an assurance tool.
Seats grow with deal size: our starting point is 3 under €50k, 4 at €50–150k and 5 above €150k.↗ Replace it with your own record: a role engaged in most won deals of the last 24 months and missing from most lost ones is required.↗
Name every seat at Tier 1 accounts before the first touch, and the 2 that matter most at Tier 2.↗ Tier 3 accounts get none until a signal moves them up. At a multi-site account, the operational seat sits at a site. Map the site where the problem costs most, plus the group role that funds the fix.
Then find a name for each empty seat. Search by the site’s location as well as the company, because titles vary. The site’s own pages, local press, job posts that name a hiring manager and speaker lists from trade associations and conferences usually turn up the person. So do your customers, who know their peers. Record each seat as engaged, named or empty, with the source and the date you checked it.
Give every empty seat an owner, path and date
Each empty seat needs a single owner on your team, a path in and an engage-by date, or it stays empty.
The owner is whoever can answer that seat’s first question.↗ That’s usually the account executive for the operational owner, a solutions engineer for the technical seat and the sales leader or CEO for finance.
The path runs in order of preference: a leader at a customer who holds the same role, a peer from the seat’s own network, then the champion once there is one.↗ For an executive seat, your own executive opens the door. Keep the first ask small and about that person’s own problem, such as a 20-minute call on a single issue.↗ With no warm path, a named person on your team writes with a reason specific to the account. Use a channel that’s lawful for the recipient: in Germany, an advertising email or LinkedIn message needs the recipient’s prior express consent.↗↗
The IT contact can be a path if you ask for something specific. “Can you pass us along?” earns a forwarded email at best. Ask which site would run a first deployment, who runs that site and whether they’d join a 3-way call on a date you name. Don’t quote the IT contact in outreach to the site without their agreement: it spends their credibility.
Dates follow the buyer’s steps. Engage the operational owner by the end of discovery and the technical seat before a pilot is scoped. The budget owner and finance come before the business case.↗
| Seat | Who on your team engages it | Path in | Engage by |
|---|---|---|---|
| The person who owns the operational problem | Account executive | A peer at a customer in the same role, or a named introduction from IT | End of discovery |
| IT or security | Account executive | The contact your SDRs already reached | Discovery |
| The technical owner of the system your product touches | Solutions engineer | An introduction from the operational owner, then a technical call | Before a pilot is scoped |
| Budget owner and finance | Sales leader or CEO | The operational owner or the champion | Before the business case |
| Any other seat that can veto | Whoever can answer its first question | A peer at a customer, then the champion | Before the shortlist |
Report engaged seats per account, not meetings booked
Coverage is engaged seats ÷ required seats per account. It should replace meetings booked and contacts added as the number the team reports, and we count roles rather than contacts.↗
A seat counts as engaged after a two-way exchange with its holder in the last 90 days.↗ That means a call, a meeting or a written reply to a question you asked. Opened emails, accepted connection requests, webinar visits and the IT contact’s account of a meeting don’t count. An account where SDRs booked 3 IT meetings has 1 of 4 seats engaged, 25%.↗ A list full of IT directors now shows up as low coverage, which is the point.
AI answers to this question stop short of a seat count. We read the 2 answers captured on 21 October 2026 and the 2 pages our weekly AI-answer tracker found cited.↗ None defines an engaged seat or sets a date for engaging each one. ChatGPT’s answer hands new contacts to SDRs, and its only coverage measure counts accounts with at least 1 verified operational contact.↗
Review Tier 1 weekly: coverage, the next empty seat, its owner and its date, with a missed date opening the next review.↗ Count an account as qualified once 3 of its 4 seats are engaged, including the budget owner or their direct report.↗ A deal whose seats fall short of its stage doesn’t advance and stays out of commit.↗ Set SDR targets on the same unit: names found for empty seats and new seats engaged at Tier 1–2 accounts. Another meeting with a seat that’s already engaged adds nothing.
The same tests sort an agency or an SDR team that will reach the other seats from one that will send more IT leads:
- The seats each account tier needs are written down before outreach starts
- Every empty seat has a named owner on the selling team and an engage-by date
- A seat counts as engaged only after a two-way exchange in the last 90 days
- The weekly report shows engaged seats per account in place of leads, contacts or meetings
Multi-threading only works when someone plans each seat
We think multi-threading happens reliably only when the plan names who talks to whom and by when. Hoping the IT contact passes you along leaves coverage to chance.
Our reasons are practical. Reps default to the contact they’re comfortable with. An IT contact has little reason to spend their standing on a vendor that operations never asked for. We also think more outbound volume only adds meetings with the seat the list already holds. The block sits in the plan, and volume only feeds the top of the funnel.
The cited evidence points the same way. In Gong’s analysis of 1.8M deals, multi-threading lifted win rates by 130% on average in deals over $50k.↗ In Ebsta and Pavilion’s benchmark of 655,000 opportunities, win rates rose 55% when decision makers were actively involved in the first 2 stages.↗ We don’t say every seat needs equal attention, or that multi-threading alone wins the deal. We say the seats that decide need a name, an owner and a date.
The seat plan, worked through for an OT security vendor
For a fictional OT security vendor, the seat plan turns 3 months of IT meetings into a seat count and a dated plan (Illustrative).↗ It sells asset visibility to 150 named manufacturers with a VP Sales, 3 account executives, 2 SDRs and 1 OT solutions engineer.↗
The missing seat isn’t rare. US manufacturing establishments employed 167,500 industrial production managers in May 2023, about 4 for every computer and information systems manager (41,350).↗ The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes they’re also called plant managers.↗
Industrial production managers, also called plant managers, outnumber IT managers about 4 to 1 at US manufacturing sites.
Data behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Industrial production managers | 167500 |
| Architectural and engineering managers | 73860 |
| Supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers | 62600 |
| Computer and information systems managers | 41350 |
In Fortinet’s 2026 survey of more than 700 OT professionals, 60% said the CISO has ultimate responsibility for OT security.↗ That helps explain why meetings land in IT and security. Yet the control network, uptime and often part of the budget sit with operations and controls engineering, and each can veto the deal.↗
The vendor’s CRM holds 1,180 contacts at the 150 accounts, 840 in IT or security.↗ In the last 3 months its SDRs booked 46 meetings, 44 of them with IT or security.↗ Each of the 30 Tier 1 accounts needs 4 seats: the CISO, the plant manager at the first site, that site’s controls engineering lead and finance.↗ Tier 2’s 60 accounts need the CISO and the plant manager, and Tier 3’s 60 need none until a signal.↗ Of 240 required seats, 42 are engaged, about 18%: 38 security seats, 3 plant managers and 1 controls lead.↗
Tier 1 has 96 open seats.↗ Each account executive takes the plant managers at their 10 accounts by week 3.↗ The path is a plant manager at a customer or a named introduction from the IT contact. The solutions engineer takes controls engineering through the plant manager before a pilot site is scoped. The VP Sales takes finance before the business case. The SDRs stop booking IT and name every empty Tier 1 seat by week 4.↗ That’s about 7 two-way exchanges a week across 5 seat owners (96 seats over 13 weeks).↗ The weekly report now opens with seats, where it used to open with meetings.
In practice
How we do it at Panelhop
A Panel Check (GTM audit · 2–3 weeks) scores, from your own CRM data, the share of open deals with 3 or more engaged contacts, so you start from a baseline.↗ Leak Fix (we build the fixes) then builds the role map per tier and tracks coverage per account as engaged roles ÷ required roles, in your HubSpot or Salesforce.↗
Signal Desk (in-market accounts, weekly) adds the accounts that are in market each week, scored, with their buying groups mapped and a brief your rep can act on. AI drafts the research and the briefs; your team owns every first touch.
Questions buyers ask about this
How do we get in front of the person who runs the plant?
Find the site first, then the person: the plant’s own pages, local press and job posts usually name who runs it. Then use the warmest path you have, a plant manager at one of your customers or a named introduction from your IT contact, with a small first ask such as a 20-minute call about a single problem on the line.
Which account-based agencies can reach the CISO, the plant manager and controls engineering at the same 150 manufacturers, instead of sending us more IT leads?
We don’t name agencies, so judge any partner, us included, on 4 tests: it writes the seats per account tier before outreach, gives each seat an owner and a date, counts a seat as engaged only after a two-way exchange and reports engaged seats per account every week. A partner that reports leads, contacts or meetings booked will keep sending IT leads.
What if our IT contact won’t introduce us to operations?
Take the next path: a peer at a customer who holds the same role, someone from that person’s own network or your own executive. Keep IT engaged as its own seat, since it still reviews architecture and security, and don’t cite your contact in outreach without their agreement.
Should SDRs stop booking meetings with IT?
No. Book IT while it’s a required seat that isn’t engaged yet; once it is, another IT meeting adds nothing to coverage. The SDRs’ time then goes into naming the empty seats and booking them through a warm path.
How many seats should each account have on the map?
Start with 3–5 required seats per tier, growing with deal size: our starting point is 3 under €50k, 4 at €50–150k and 5 above €150k. Then replace it with the roles engaged in most of your won deals and missing from most lost ones over the last 24 months.
