Mutual Action Plan – After talking to 100 sales managers, we created a best practice template that you can use to interact with your customers
In the world of B2B sales, a mutual action plan is a shared document (usually a shared spreadsheet or document) that describes how the sales and buying organizations will work together to solve a problem.
Mutual Action Plan
First popularized by senior executives at SaaS companies, they have been adopted across industries to improve win rates and build better relationships.
Mutual Action Plans Are The Future Of Sales. Here’s How They’re Growing
Both teams use a common action plan or “MAP” as the source of truth for all steps, resources and requirements needed to validate, incorporate and display value from the vendor.
Sellers should provide a document or shared space with some structure to guide them, but they should be co-authored by both the buying and selling teams, so it’s really a two-way street.
Your champion will answer a series of questions to get their team’s input. This is almost impossible if they do not understand the process or do not have the right resources at the right time. A great joint action plan with the right actions and resources allows them to close the deal – and makes it as easy as possible.
More people are involved in the buying process than ever before. Assuming your champion even knows who to include (he doesn’t), these teams have their own set of competitive priorities. Failure to identify and engage these stakeholders is one of the main reasons why transactions are delayed or stopped altogether. A great collaboration action plan will identify the right people and engage them with the information they need to work with you.
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Your buyer can clearly understand the value you can bring and is very interested in working with you. Unfortunately, they often don’t even understand the technical elements or the effort that is needed to realize this dream. By communicating and identifying technical requirements early in the process, you can avoid roadblocks that only appear after months of hard work on the job.
Without a clear understanding of the evaluation process and the steps involved, you and your champion cannot meaningfully discuss a realistic timeline.
If you don’t match the timeline, you lose control of your business and simply hope for the best. Time kills all deals. The best reps co-create a plan and commit time.
Your champion will tell you that everything looks great; your rep gets “happy ears” and calls it a deal. Still, you work hard and adapt every quarter to exceed those bids and meet your commitment. If you want to make sure things go according to plan, you have to start with a (joint) plan. Knowing which trades are actually in play allows you to spend time and resources on the right trades.
One Page Mutual Action Plan Powerpoint Template
Each joint action plan varies in focus and level of detail, but any major MAP will include the key aspects listed below.
When you first present your joint action plan to a customer, it should be relatively blank, and you’ll start filling in the details during that call. He co-wrote and edited both sides, making it truly bipartisan.
Depending on the complexity of the deal and the relationship, salespeople spend the last 15 minutes of their call finalizing the plan—or have an entire meeting dedicated to it.
Your MAP should demonstrate that you understand what your customer is trying to solve and what is needed to solve it. Even buying teams don’t always agree on a problem. Make sure everyone is on the same page about what you’re trying to solve and how by including those details in your MAP and getting their team’s buy-in. Once you align with the problem, you can add to your MAP how you are helping to solve it. You can have a great product, but deals still get lost at the finish line if everyone can’t digest how you solve their problems and add value.
What Is A Mutual Action Plan (map) In The World Of B2b Sales?
Maps should include who your stakeholders are and also serve as a discovery aid to help you figure out who’s who when creating a map with your buyer. If you already know the general names of the people you need to talk to, these pre-populated on the map will help you start conversations with stakeholders.
Don’t set expectations and align until the next step. Have a set of steps and milestones designed to guide the buyer and align on time. Prepare a timeline and detect obstacles in time. When planning the journey, assign the appropriate stakeholders to each step to make it clear who is responsible for what to ensure accountability and win-win.
Make it easy for your customer to find the relevant documents they need in your map, from case studies, API documents to your W9. This article is part of our content series where we showcase how our team uses engagement and insights for our own revenue platform to help you succeed in your business. We share workflows and strategies backed by original research and data from our own experiments and customer base.
You will discover how your sales movement works. Your buyer will explain how their procurement process works. Together, you set expectations and monitor progress.
Mural For Sales And Customer Success
It’s a simple strategy. However, it improves the shopping experience, increases the closing rate and improves your forecasting. Some sellers even see a higher ACV because it builds trust!
Years ago, one of my clients came to me after a sale and shared her internal buying process. I can’t share the actual document, but it was similar to the 27-step B2B buying process that Gartner defined a few years ago:
We were in this weird situation where they had a process and we had a process… but we never shared the details with each other. I realized that most of my other prospects probably had similar processes.
Anyway, Manny Medina, one of our founders, heard about it from me and many other representatives. He said: “It keeps coming up. We need a way to guide our customers through the shopping journey.”
Marketing Plan Templates With Guide
The result was the Mutual Action Plan – or MAP. (It could also be called a shared success plan, startup plan, or shutdown plan.)
A MAP is simply a shared document that helps a buyer and seller work together in the buying process.
Seller wants to complete. Our first milestone is the initial call for eligibility. Next, we’ll explore the use cases. Then we visit their office (those were the days) and see how we can help.
Many interested parties do not think about deadlines. When presented with a suggested time frame, they are more likely to agree. This allows me to significantly shorten sales cycles and improve forecasting. I no longer wait for deals to close, I set my schedule.
Mutual Action Plan Platform To Drive Effective Deal Reviews
Other times, prospects will fight back and say my proposal isn’t feasible. That’s just as well. I can adjust the schedule until we both agree. Again, this improves my predictions.
All our maps start with a template. We have designs for each of our market sizes: enterprise, enterprise, SME, etc. Each template includes
Suppose Acme Corp. comes along. It is a medium-sized manufacturing company with 500 employees and $40 million in sales. I will create a new business using our business template, which is the basis of my MAP.
Let’s say they want to do internal testing. Well, it’s not in our standard corporate sales process, so I’ll either add it or step back and try to understand why. Maybe they want to talk to some of our existing customers? Great, I’ll add that too.
Outreach Deal Intelligence (part Ii)
Let’s just say my Wile E. Coyote economic buyer cares about nothing but return on investment (ROI). Well, I’ll throw it right into the Success Criteria section of my MAP along with all the standard stuff.
It’s a shared experience that sets timelines and brings the buyer and seller together in one place to work toward one common goal: creating a common buying process.
When we started experimenting with maps, we prototyped our system on a spreadsheet. We hit the ground running right away, but there are some downsides to this approach:
When Manny heard about it, he didn’t just want to copy the MAP tables. He wanted to do better.
Customer Onboarding Checklist
Now we and our customers have access to a common portal at . We see all milestones, due dates and balances. We can store/share documents and data. The experience is smooth and frictionless.
And the impact was great. To learn more about success plan best practices, check out our knowledge base article on the topic.
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