Mutual Action Plans are awkward
Mutual Action Plans are awkward
...when they're not mutual and pressure your prospects. Use them to enhance collaboration.
One recommended sales tactic that makes Founders typically cringe is the introduction of a Mutual Action Plan. One, it can be…awkward. Two, nothing about it feels mutual. If not done correctly, that is.
Mutual Action Plans can feel awkward when the prospect feels like they're being given homework or micromanaged by you. They don’t want this, and they're probably micromanaged enough already. You don't need to make them feel even more uncomfortable in their day-to-day work. The Mutual Action Plan becomes effective when it is collaborative and brings clarity to the prospect. This happens when they understand one of two things: how your line of questioning justifies or explains the process in which companies successfully buy from you, or how your line of questioning uncovers gaps in things they didn’t realize they needed to know to buy software at their company.
Regardless of stage, every company and Founder have experienced the following at some point:
Deals take 1-2 months longer than usual
Security always takes forever
Legal always takes forever
Prospect(s) really keen on working with you ghost you
You think maybe the price was too high and you scared them away but you’re not sure
You can’t get access to someone in a more authoritative seat
Prospect is guarded and says they are “responsible for making the decision” but you know they can’t
If that’s you, the Mutual Action Plan can help.
Disclaimer: This post is a bit long, and it was longer than I anticipated. Those with more sales experience will know, there’s a general approach to this, but the nuance comes from how much you uncover from prospects along the way. What I want to be exceptionally clear is that every company has unique aspects of its GTM and why we as a team prioritize “obsessing over your business” before helping on definite approaches. The key takeaway on this post should be learning how to derisk and improve the clarity of your sales process by leveraging a Mutual Action Plan.
You can use a Mutual Action Plan in your sales cycle regardless of how technical or non-technical your product is. Regardless of deal size, it can be an effective tool. What you want to avoid is making it too long or too pedantic.
This breakdown will focus more on a scenario where a prospect is much more guarded and doesn’t share much information. It’s highly likely that they will need internal approvals but are claiming “I’m the decision maker,” or “whatever I tell my boss we’ve decided on will be what we choose.” These claims can be true, but you can use this as the vehicle to validate or uncover the steps needed to secure the deal.
To clarify, these are not the only ways to leverage a Mutual Action Plan, but you should walk away with:
Knowing how to use this as a reference tool to ask questions and get clarifying answers on how to move the deal forward
Using the Mutual Action Plan to keep deals on the rails and close much closer to the mutually agreed upon close date
Starting with a generalized table, we recommend having completion dates filled out ahead of time to set slightly aggressive timelines so the prospect can react and clarify how the timelines need to be adjusted, or explain to you why your timelines work. This example changes as the deal size increases and the complexity of the sales cycle ramps. The person on this call’s name will be Priya.
How to introduce a Mutual Action Plan before onboarding a prospect
When you’re ready to pull this up, have it in a collaborative Google Doc, or a slide in the deck you’ve been using. Your process and conversation should start to look like this:
“Thanks again for your collaboration so far and really excited to get you all in the product. We’ll be onboarding on 7/15, and you and I have spent a ton of time together already. There were a few things I was hoping to get your input on to make sure the work we put in doesn’t go to waste assuming we can successfully execute on your evaluation needs.”
Topic: Onboarding
“You mentioned ‘your team’ will be joining the call. Who are they and how do you plan to enroll them in the process during the evaluation?”
The above allows you to learn who else is involved, why they are included, and who else you can engage with throughout the evaluation process rather than a single person or point of contact you hope can execute the deal.
“Remind me, you mentioned that your manager is the one who would sign off on this, but they are taking your recommendation, correct? One thing I’d like to avoid is making the cost of your solution a surprise. Do they actually sign the agreement, or do they need to make an internal request?” “Interesting, so everything needs to be run by Finance. Have you had a chance to do this yet?”
We learn Priya is not sure. This is great because we learned an additional step that will be required on their end. What we want to do is make an action item and make sure to get this clarified as we continue the process.
Highlighted sections show the changes made as we introduce each topic.
Topic: Slack Channel
“Usually we launch a Slack channel [or you may already have] to unblock any technical needs throughout the evaluation. Now that you mentioned the other stakeholders involved in onboarding, should I send them an invite directly, or do you plan to loop them in?”
This can give them less work to do, but the step is still completed. You’ll see along the way we are offering to take work off their plate, but not just offering to do so with an empty gesture like “let me know how I can help make this easy for you.”
Topic: Security Review
“Usually since we’re touching your infra, we need to go through a security review. Do you happen to know the process on your side?” “Okay, so you need to get approval from Susan in Security. Does she know that you’re planning to do this evaluation?” “Great. And it sounds like we should schedule a call with her soon. Should I reach her directly, or can you facilitate that introduction? You’ll schedule? Excellent.”
What you are aiming to avoid is the scenario where you’re constantly following up over email/Slack with “hey, Priya, just checking in on Security. Have you had a chance to get any additional information?”
You want clarity on:
Who makes the final decision
What are the steps
And aiming to have direct access to that stakeholder, or clarity on what the outstanding items are so you can run the rest of the sales cycle in parallel
The below is an example of how you are starting to scope more information. This is not the only way to run, but you’re seeing we’re learning a lot more than when we started.
Note: The nuance we just uncovered here is that the Prospect knew who in Security needed to be involved and who needed to be involved in the evaluation, but had a blind spot on a very key part of getting the deal done (I.e. Finance). This is an example of what you need to listen for and how to mitigate risk in sales opportunities.
Topic: Legal Review
“It sounded like your team would want to redline an agreement. Have you had a chance to show them our Terms of Service? No problem that you haven’t but who would you need to share that with?”
“From your experience, how long does this typically take?” “Okay, so what I’ll do today is share our Terms of Service for reference and would love Laura from Legal’s quick pass on what’s most important for us to flag to simplify the process once her team starts to review.
Note: Especially in a tighter market, companies and organizations are requiring a technical win first and to have clarity on economics before leveraging legal resources. If this is the case, it’s an even more important reason to use a Mutual Action Plan and define success criteria early in the process to avoid an even longer sales cycle.
Topic: Validate POC (Proof of Concept)
Especially because we want to have absolute trust in people who want to evaluate our solutions, we assume the person evaluating our tool will do the work. That said, they’re busy too and sometimes need to achieve consensus around your solution being the ideal one for their company.
For the sake of the Mutual Action Plan exercise, we’re going to assume you have created formal Success Criteria and have a concrete Business Case.
“So we typically do Proof of Concepts for 14 days and we mapped out your Success Criteria on the last call. Does this seem like enough time?”
“Okay, so Jessica, one of the SRE’s who is a key factor in the decision is out on vacation next week, but can do work this week? Great, so we should uncover what she needs to see in the solution and keep it above board on what we’ll do while she’s out. It sounds like you won’t be able to make a final decision until she returns. We’re okay adjusting the timeline, but my ask here is that we continue the other parts of the process we’re walking through today. Does that work for you? Else, we should pause until we’re ready to run this.”
“We should also schedule a call with her this week and a check in call next. When works best for you?”
Topic: Contract Signature
“We talked about Finance Review, but we’ll need to figure out their approval and who signs the agreement. Given we are extending the evaluation timelines and we’ll want to find out the signing process, can we find time to review what we’ve put together today to make sure if we can deliver the results we’ve discussed that we’ll be ready to move forward by 8/6?”
“It sounds like a good next step is to share this with Marissa, your Manager, and we can figure out the way to best run this in parallel and make sure we can execute on an agreement assuming we can deliver on our promise technically.”
This feels like a scary step, but you’re now making this more real and de-risking wasting valuable time on an evaluation if there is a limited chance it will close.
There are tons of nuances and edge-cases in building a Mutual Action Plan, but the key takeaway here should be to know how much information you can, should, and benefit from gathering to reduce wasted time on POCs that don’t close. As a Founder your time is extremely limited, so focus on getting clarity early and often.
In future posts we’ll focus on some of the nuances and formalities associated with closing the deal. If you aren’t doing the above consistently, get started and reach out with any questions. Our team is always here to help.