In the competitive world of B2B Sales today, it is often the difference between getting a deal or not that comes down to execution and accountability. Traditional sales methods center around shoving people down a funnel, but the best salespeople of today recognize that the modern buyer doesn’t want to be at the other end of a funnel. This is where Mutual Action Plans (MAPs) come into the picture and flips the traditional seller-buyer relationship on its head as it morphs the partnership into a collaborative match that speeds up deal motion, shortens sales cycles, and significantly increases win rates. For sales reps working complex multi-stakeholder deals, MAPs have become indispensable to their day-to-day sales process to keep deals moving forward and out of the “thinking it over” stage of the sales process.
What is a mutual action plan (MAP)?
A Mutual Action Plan is simply a timeline and checklist, co-authored by the buyer and seller working in unison, that includes everything that needs to be done, the order in which things need to be done, and who’s responsible for what in order to purchase successfully. Unlike traditional sales documents, which are engineered by salespeople in house, MAPs are transparent, shared documents that both sides collaborate on and use as the north star of the sales process. A MAP serves as the formal plan to remove ambiguity from various open items of what must be done or when it must be done, and who will perform each. This collaborative strategy establishes trust with the seller and invites buyer collaboration, and creates a feeling of joint ownership in the result, these serve as of communication to help control expectations, keep all of the parties in it, especially in challenging B2B transactions involving multiple decision makers.
How a Mutual Action Plan differs from a standard close plan The difference between a MAP and a standard close plan is a key one to understanding just why MAPs work better in selling today. Close plans are usually an internal sales document developed by the sales team to track what the team needs to do to close the deal, specifically focusing on everything the seller needs to do to actually close business. MAPs, on the other hand, are customer-centric documents that focus on the buyer’s journey and needs and embed the seller’s requisite tasks in a single structure. Close plans are internal tracking, but MAPs are collaborative progress tools that both sides in the process use and maintain. The fact that MAPs are transparent in nature contributes to building trust, as the prospective buyer is able to discern exactly what is required to them and what the seller will provide at every single stage.
Why MAPs Accelerate Deals
The potential to bring clarity to complex sales processes is why MAPs help deals move forward. Traditional sales methods involve friction, with final steps that are not clear, responsibilities that are not designated, and dates that are too vague and which extend the process so long that the deal dies of its own inertia. MAPs tackle this problem head on by defining specific ownership to every task, responsiblity and deadline in the sales process. The innate momentum across the sales cycle is then propagated — everyone knows what’s next, who’s doing what, and when tasks need to be accomplished. This sort of transparency can eliminate the all-too-familiar case where a deal dies because people knew what other people needed to do but were not taking action, or simply didn’t know how to contribute.
MAPs are especially potent in that they turn passive prospects into active contributors to the sales process, creating a kind of buyer accountability that makes it much more likely a deal will close. When buyers build the action plan themselves and agree to deliverables and timeline, they own the push to finish vs.wait and see. This psychological step from passive curiosity to active engagement is key, as it shifts buyers from “I’m being sold to” to “I’m working towards a solution”. The collaborative nature of MAPs also allows early detection of deal risk; because buyers who won’t agree to reasonably targeted next steps or timelines are much more likely to demonstrate a lack of substantive buying intent. Cops can easily be trained to recognize red flags when the suspect misses deadline after deadline, doesn’t provide the requested information or doesn’t schedule those scheduled calls and meetings from the MAP.
In B2B sales of complex offerings, securing the initial engagement of executives and staying visible throughout the company are frequently key to a deal’s success, and MAPs do a nice job of enabling this. “If a buying customer shows its internal stakeholders a good, agreed-upon action plan, then it gives the impression that a clear roadmap forward is in place and that they’ve really done their homework on the solution.” MAPs look professional and thorough, and this helps them instill confidence in buyers with the buyer’s colleagues and, in many instances, his/her superiors; since it speaks very clearly to the purchasing process being an organized, well thought out one and not one that’s been impromptu or half-baked. This heightened executive visibility often results in quicker internal approvals, since decision-makers can easily see the remaining steps and more-efficiently allocate resources and attention as needed.
Developing an Effective Mutual Action Plan
When you present the Mutual Action Plan is crucial, it can also make or break the plan’s effectiveness, so make sure it fits the time in your sales cycle. The best time to suggest a MAP is usually following the discovery stage, when you have a clear idea of the buyer’s needs, pain points, and purchasing process or post target solution match, when the prospect has demonstrated actual interest in proceeding. If you try to force a MAP down your prospects’ throats at the very beginning, you risk coming off as presumptuous and risking pushing away chance customers still reading the fine print. The secret is to frame the MAP as something mutually valuable to both yourself and the prospect, rather than a sales technique to try and force the buyer into making a quick decision. When necessary to introduce this concept, position the buyer as someone who is looking for a structured approach to evaluation and implementation, detailing how the MAP will help the buyer remain organized, and make sure a single critical step is not forgotten.
The creation of goals and milestones is where the real value of a MAP comes into play once both parties agree on success criteria and expectations for achieve these. To get started, you’d first work with the buyer to identify what are their “end-all-be-all” criteria for success (e.g. the go-live target date, specific pilot program goals, integration goals, or other business outcomes). These buyer-driven objectives become the north star around which all other activities and decisions align within the sale. Then collaborate to develop critical milestones that you need to jointly hit along the journey, like: technology assessments, security vetting, demoing to top management, legal sign-offs, and implementation planning. Every step in the process must also be well-defined with clear deliverables, from both sides, and success criteria for so that the expectations are clear. This kind of collaborative process makes sure the buyer feels some ownership over it as well as helps them think through all the things they may not have initially thought through.
Once goals and milestones are set, the equally important next step is not only assigning clear ownership but also realistic deadlines for each part of the MAP. It should also be a joint ownership so the account team on the buyer side (or on your side) has clear defined roles and responsibilities and deliverables throughout the process. For every milestone and task, make it explicit who from each firm is the lead on completion, the resources they may need access to, and at whom they can point of contact for support or questions. When communicating due dates, try to make the buyer part of this process regarding what is real for their internal procedures, holidays, resourcing instead of stating a date that can be pointless. Be open about cross-functional involvement on both sides – educate the buyer about when they will eventually need the IT, legal, or procurement teams to get involved, and on your side of the table, communicate when technical resources, legal, or implementation gurus will need to be brought in.
Mutual Action Plan Best Practices
The Look and Access of your MAP can greatly effect how effective and how often it will be used by real busy stakeholders who may not have time to go through a lengthy document. Simple, clean timelines are much more productive than complex Gantt charts that can intimidate non-project-management professionals and put up unnecessary walls between understanding and involvement. With clear status indicators (checkmarks for completed tasks, progress bars for ongoing activities and warning symbols for things at risk or late), deals can be visually monitored at a glance. Color coding can be a boon as well, for example, using green for stuff that is complete, yellow for the stuff that’s in progress and red for the stuff that needs to be addressed most immediately (or that’s way behind schedule). Add explanations below each milestone, to avoid the assumption that everyone already knows what a “security review” or “stakeholder alignment” are.
A MAP is only as useful as it is accurate and current, and the only way to keep a MAP current is to actively maintain and update it each step through the sales cycle – not just populate once and forget. Set up a weekly check-in to check progress, revising statuses and timelines as necessary, and discussing any roadblocks that have come up. They also serve several functions: to remind both parties that the deal is still top-of-mind, to provide opportunities to course-correct before minor hiccups escalate into major problems and to show continued commitment to the partnership. When you reach a milestone, don’t forget to visibly celebrate these points together – that kind of positive reinforcement keeps spirits high, leads the way and lets you both own your partnership. Do not hesitate to change the MAP if the situation evolves; flexibility in response to new information or shifting priorities enhances, rather than reduces, the credibility of the document.
A successful MAP becomes a workable piece that you can tweak and customize to fit your buyer’s internal processes and culture, not the other way around. Do some research around how the buyer’s org generally makes purchasing decisions, what approvals are necessary, and what language and terms they use internally to discuss projects and initiatives. Integrate their legacy systems, stage-gate methods and governance structures into the MAP rather than adding new unknowns which could be perceived to confuse or contradict their current reality. Use the language they prefer rather than native sales speak – if they call their evaluation phase “technical validation” instead of “proof of concept,” get in on it in the MAP. Respect cultural nuances for timing, communication and meeting formats when exploring the MAP’s configuration and scope.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Sales people often make the mistake of treating MAPs like static documents that are created once, saved via a doc admin tool, and then are banished to the nether when really they are living, breathing documents that grow stronger, faster, smarter over time with your deal. Such an approach counters the fundamental purpose of the MAP and far too often results in lost deals and missed opportunities when the situation changes but the plan does not. And a fourth mistake is making the MAP too “seller” driven where it is evident that the document solely favors the seller and is not, in fact, coming to agreement. This misalignment of interest breaks trust and can lead buyers to see the MAP as a sleazy sales technique instead of a useful way to keep things organized. And probably the worst of them all, neglecting internal buyer enablement, failing to instruct the champion or our primary contact on how to socialize the map within their organization and get buy-in from others. More often than not a deal doesn’t stagnate because of some outside force – but rather the person at the vendor buying the lunch has no political or economic power to drive the process internally to the customer organization.
Mutual Action Plans are a catalyst for change in B2B sales methodology, transitioning the old-school vendor-buyer relationship to a partnership that reaps mutual rewards at every stage of the sale. MAPs solve for much of the confusion and friction that bring deals to a screeching halt or force them to be abandoned such as unclear next steps, nonexistent buyer engagement and poor internal alignment. MAPs’ strategic value is much more than just filling deals – they make better relationships, improve customer satisfaction and set a material foundation for long-term partnerships that that deliver sustained value for both parties. What happens when MAPs are done rightWatching the buyer place the purchase order on timeFor buyers, MAPs enable them to buy more consistently and effectively as they know what happens next, what they are doing, and what to expect when at each stage. Salespeople who are able to hone the skill of generating and managing high octane MAPs will continually outperform their contemporaries, not only in close rates and deal velocity but also relationship depth with their customers. Now is the time to start using MAP in all of your sales engagements – start with your next qualified opportunity and see for yourself how this effective and easy-to-use tool will help you towards sales success.
