Your Champion Will Leave. Multithread Every Account.
One of the worst emails a CSM can get is a short one: an auto-reply saying your champion no longer works at the company, with a generic inbox to contact instead. If that person was your only real relationship at the account, the renewal just got a lot harder.
Champions leave. They get promoted, poached, reorganized or laid off. You can't stop that. What you can control is whether the account leaves with them.
Why single-threaded accounts are so risky
Most accounts start single-threaded because that's how they were sold. One person found the product, made the case internally and became the day-to-day contact. The CSM builds a good relationship with them, and everything feels healthy.
The trouble is that one relationship can hide a lot. The champion may love the product while their boss barely knows it exists. The budget owner may be a different person entirely. When the champion leaves, the new person inherits a tool they didn't choose and a vendor they've never met, often right before a renewal.
That's why I'd treat the number of engaged relationships as a health signal in its own right. If you're rebuilding your score, it belongs in the health score alongside usage and outcomes.
Who you need to know
Multithreading doesn't mean collecting business cards. It means having real relationships with the people who decide whether the customer renews and grows. For most accounts, that's four or five roles:
The champion, who uses the product and makes the case for it day to day.
The executive sponsor, who owns the goal the product supports.
The budget owner, who signs or approves the renewal.
The power users, who make the product part of how the team works.
Any skeptic, because it's better to hear the objection early than at renewal.
In a large account, the same map applies to each team or business unit.
How to build the relationships
Ask your champion for help early, while things are going well. Something like: "Who else should understand what your team is getting out of this?" Most champions are glad to be asked, because showing results to their leadership makes them look good.
Give executives a reason to show up. An executive won't come to a status meeting, but they will come to a conversation about their own goals. That's the case for business reviews built around the customer's results, not your product's features.
Meet people in their own context. Offer training to a new team, share a relevant insight with a department head, or invite a power user to a customer advisory group. Each of those creates a relationship that doesn't depend on the champion passing messages along.
Write it down. The relationship map should live in the CRM, not in the CSM's memory, so it survives when your own team changes too.
When the champion leaves anyway
Treat it as a risk event, not an admin update. Move quickly, before the new owner forms an opinion without you.
Reach out to the replacement within days, not weeks. Lead with what the team has achieved and what's still on the table, not with a product demo. Ask what they're measured on, because their priorities may be different from their predecessor's. And if the account is significant, bring in an executive from your side to match theirs.
It also helps to have this written into your churn-risk playbook, so the response doesn't depend on which CSM happens to own the account. And if the account churns anyway, run a proper post-mortem so the next one goes differently.
The upside
Multithreading is usually framed as defense, but it's also where growth comes from. The more people inside an account who see value, the more likely someone spots a new use case or a new team that needs the product. Many of the best expansion signals show up as a new name in a meeting.
A champion is a great place to start a relationship with a customer. It's a risky place to end it.
If you'd like help building a stakeholder-mapping habit on your team, let's talk.
