Mutual Action Plan Walkthrough
Who this template is for
Account executives, sales reps, sales teams, and their buyer champions who want to trade in spreadsheets and emails for a more streamlined and professional sales process.
What this template is for
This template is designed to help improve the buying experience, make more accurate sales predictions, and complete deals on schedule. Its goal is to streamline the sales process and make it smoother for both the buyer and seller.
How to use the template
Use this template as a single space to outline everything needed to complete the sales process. Use it to communicate and collaborate on tasks, resources, and goals and provide necessary resources.
What’s in this template?
Overview
Use the overview section to introduce the product or service, give a rough outline of the sales process with objectives and milestones, and provide information on stakeholders, contacts, and available resources.
Evaluation
Outline the steps required for the evaluation phase of the sale. This includes all the tasks and events involved in demonstrating the value of your product or service to the client. You can also add other types of media to each step, like demo videos, or a link to schedule a meeting.
Formalize Partnership
Once your product or service has been met with approval from relevant stakeholders, use another action plan to move through the formal and technical details of establishing a working relationship. These can include reviewing legal and security requirements, agreeing on project scope and timelines and signing initial agreements.
Proof of Concept
Here, you can use an action plan to move the process through the more practical, hands-on phases of the sales process. Assist buyers and clients in learning more about your product and its specific value proposition. Get pilot users up and running as quickly and easily as possible to move towards closing the deal.
Implementation
This section is for getting your client set up with your product. Use a mutual action plan to schedule a kickoff meeting and conduct onboarding with admin, managers, and employees. Create clear timelines for training and subsequent review and feedback sessions.
Demo Recordings
Dock’s easy-to-use interface allows you to share embedded content like training videos, product tours, and demos. Use this section as a catch-all for extra resources and information.
Customer Case Studies
Include information on well-known partners and relevant case studies to create peace of mind and further demonstrate the relevant value that your product provides.
Why use this mutual action plan template?
With Dock, you can create a single shared space that contains your mutual action plan plus supporting sales materials like demo videos and sales decks. The mutual action plan template offers more collaboration features than a spreadsheet, such as the ability to assign contacts, set due dates, and track the progress and risk status of milestones.
Your clients can leave comments on any aspect of your Dock workspace, streamlining communication and keeping everything in one place. Dock also allows you to embed videos, sales presentations, meeting notes, and any other relevant materials, providing your buyer with all the necessary context to make informed decisions.
Any client who joins the workspace, even if they are coming in later in the sales process, can quickly learn about your solution, the current status of the project, and what needs to happen next. This helps keep your value proposition at the forefront for all parties involved in the sale.
Here’s what else the mutual action plan template can do for you:
Keeping buyer and sales teams aligned
- Define the scope, steps, and goals within the purchasing process.
- Establish key dates and a timeline that stakeholders agree on.
- Clarify who is responsible for what stage or task in the sales process.
- Create transparency to hold stakeholders and decision-makers accountable.
- Define success to limit wasted time and resources by heading off potential scope creep.
Provide a better buying experience
- Display an organized and diligent demeanor at the outset of the sales process.
- Give context to tasks by sharing descriptions, links, and files for each step.
- Give prospects the ability to update mutual action plan tasks, add comments, and upload files.
- Reduce work and save time for the client during the sales process.
- Support the client at every step by sharing PDFs, images, links, embeds, and custom widgets.
Improve your long-term sales process
- Link with common CRMs to forecast deals accurately.
- Make your sales process consistent, repeatable, and scalable.
- Use Dock’s analytics to identify and assess key sales milestones and risk points.
- Streamline the sales process to improve throughput and retention.
- By completing tasks consistently and on time, and moving easily to onboarding and implementation phases, you can better ensure customer success through the sales process.
How Dock’s customers use this template
- Establish contact and clarify goals: Use the mutual action plan template to clearly establish objectives, contacts, resources, success criteria, and timing.
- Ease the buying process for potential clients: Reduce friction in the buying process by providing resources like FAQs, product tours and demonstrations, case studies, reviews, and training videos.
- Forecast revenue more accurately: Use Dock’s detailed analytics to highlight precise points in the sales process where the deal is likely to succeed or fail. Combine with timeline information to accurately forecast expected revenue from different sales efforts.
- Include next-steps and follow-up plans: Use the mutual action plan to move seamlessly from closing the deal to onboarding and beyond. Maintaining a convenient and useful line of communication with clients improves retention.
FAQ
What is a mutual action plan?
A mutual action plan (MAP) is a sales roadmap shared and used by both the sales account team and the buyer team during the purchasing process. It helps track the actions needed to achieve mutual success.
A mutual action plan may also be called a “mutually agreed action plan,” “joint executive plan,” “mutual success plan,” or “close plan,” among other terms.
Why use a mutual action plan?
Mutual action plans are helpful for keeping projects on track. Mutual action plans specify what needs to be done, who is responsible for what, what the timeline is, and what defines success. They hold sales teams and clients accountable while creating a sense of trust that all parties understand their roles and obligations.
What are the three parts of a mutual action plan?
Mutual action plans will typically contain three essential types of information:
- What needs to be done
- Who is doing it
- When it needs to be done
Make sure to include these three key pieces of information whenever you are completing a mutual action plan.
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