Also known as joint action plans or milestone plans, mutual action plans are absolutely essential to progressing and closing more complex enterprise deals. They create and help to maintain control over the deal and also serve to keep the relationship balanced. In far too many deals that I am exposed to the seller loses power and ends up in the horrible world of chasing updates. Not a good place to be.
In my experience, most enterprise buying teams need help to navigate their own processes, and genuinely value the insight you can provide to help them with this. Most of these deals follow a very similar pattern, so you can often be quite process-driven and use learning from one deal to take to the next. Presenting the mutual action plan at the right time in the process signifies to the buyer that you understand what they need to do and that you have experience in helping other buyers. Even more importantly - by laying out the journey to becoming a customer you also get to smoke out any remaining doubts or tire kickers. The plan brings in their stakeholders and their economic buyer to the conversation, so it's unlikely that they will waste time.
There are three secrets to a good mutual action plan.
So let's take a look at each one in turn.
A good mutual action plan should make the value you are delivering very clear. Link this value back to the pain that you have identified during discovery and the solution you pitched in your proposal. Ideally, you should tie this value delivery to a compelling event for the customer (a date that they must meet) and work back from that date in your mutual action plan. Reaffirming the value here constantly reminds the buyer of WHY they are buying.
This is where you call out the key individuals involved in the decision-making process on the buyer's side, and in delivering the value to the customer on your side (seller side). If you have not yet spoken to the economic buyer or one of the technical decision makers then this is an opportunity to gather their details and bring them into the conversation. It is a killer discovery tool. 😀
| Seller Team | Name | |
| Account Executive | ||
| Legal Support | ||
| IT Support | ||
| Customer Success | ||
| Buyer Team | ||
| Project champion | ||
| Project sponsor (signatory) | ||
| Legal advisor | ||
| IT security advisor | ||
| Finance advisor |
As you can see from the above example by laying out the stakeholders involved you are already teaching the buyer (usually the champion) that they will have work to do too and that they will need to involve others. Importantly you may well get the name and contact details of a key stakeholder that so far you have been unable to connect with. 👍
this is the crux of the mutual action plan, it is where you lay out the journey for your buyer, first to become a customer and then to receive the value that relieves their pain. It is very important to keep the buyer's eyes on the prize and that prize is always the value you have sold based on. It helps to call this out in the milestones. The contract signature which allows you to move your deal to closed won should be in the middle of the milestones, it is a part of the journey to value, it is not the end goal for your customer, even if it is what you are primarily focused on as a seller. Never lose sight of this.
| Target Date | Milestone | Days to complete | Owner (seller) | Owner (buyer) | Outcomes /Notes | Done |
| Intros and Fit | 1 | Angus | Pete (champion) | Yes | ||
| Use case discovery | 7 | Angus | etc | Yes | ||
| Business case | 7 | Angus | etc | No | ||
| Proposal | 3 | Angus | ||||
| Negotiation | 7 | Angus / Legal | ||||
| Signature | 1 | Legal | ||||
| Implementation | 14 | Success | ||||
| Integrations | 7 | IT | ||||
| Onboarding | 1 | Success | ||||
| Go Live | 1 | Success | ||||
| VALUE Delivered | 30 | Angus / Success | ||||
| Key ROI date | 60 | Success / Finance | ||||
| Quarterly Review | 90 | Success |
As you can see from the above example, the table clearly sets out to the buyer the steps necessary to gain the value that they have decided they need. It clearly positions the buyer that they have work to do too and that they will be held responsible for parts of the process, they are not passengers here. It also signals to the buyer that you know how to manage the process, and have clearly done so before. It makes it much easier for them to trust you. It makes it much more likely that they will introduce you more broadly into their business as their risk is reduced.
Most importantly, the mutual action plan means you retain control of the deal. This means that you can accurately forecast its likelihood to close, and significantly increase your own win rates. Good salespeople need 3 or 4 x coverage usually, elite salespeople need far less as they are ruthless in qualification (discussed another time), and then manage any deals that make it through like a million-dollar project.
If you would like to learn more about implementing mutual action plans into your sales process to increase your win rates, then get in touch. I can help.