Empower your sales team with tech sales closing for planning

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today on Modern sales wisdom podcast we're going to be speaking about closing plans action plans or go live plans with none other than Johannes actually treat it as a product we need to convince him that it makes sense to use the mutual action plan to buy it's actually selling it and aligning the customer to it Mutual action plan we work with mutual action plans it looks like this and before we get going and into the conversation with johanes I want to say thank you for listening in if you're doing this on Spotify Apple music wherever it is you taking the time really means a lot to me so thank you and if you're watching this on YouTube then you are the special ones thank you as well and now as you still have the device in your hand probably please smash that subscribe button and leave me a like it makes a huge difference and the more engagement we have the better the show is going to get and this is what I do it for I do it out of passion for the sales community so thank you for being part of it now we have Johan on the show and Johannes is going to be the right person to talk about when it comes to building Mutual engagement plans or go life plans johanes is the go to market lead at Value case and he has an excessive history as well in coaching and building teams and and structuring them and Consulting in that area also working at winning with design he has the knowledge and we're going to share it so thank you and at the end there'll be a few nuggets which you could take with you thank you for being part of this enjoy johanes great to have you on the show today I'm really excited about this especially we're going to talk about something which all sales managers love to talk about that's join action plans joint uh uh mutual agreement plans with the customer to get across so I'm really excited to get your insights onto this but let's just to kick it off maybe at the beginning um how would you define a mutual action plan a mutual closing plan what is a terminology what are we going to be speaking about yeah yeah so um thanks for having me Henry basically uh you already we already started at at the definition uh step right so everybody calls it a little different so I we always call it Mutual action plans or action plans right you just call it mutual agreement plans I mean I think we all mean the same um but by um what it actually is and that's actually that's that's a tricky Point uh because I think that um it comes or at least I think that it comes from uh HubSpot Bas on that they use it for onboarding uh an action plan first and there's no like real definition for it so uh there's a lot of differents out there and for me um it's basically a a shared Dynamic and the importance is dynamic document between you and your prospects right so it's basically a plan you could also call it call it a project plan how to uh close or how to sell to a client from a client's perspective how to how they can go live with your solution like what's what are the steps what is the project plan from now to go live for your client I think you're saying one important thing which a lot of people in sales probably see a little bit uh uh different because for us in sales we like to see the close as the Finish but of course that's not the Finish because that's the beginning of uh of your partnership working together how would you say maybe these Mutual action plans closing plans are maybe a little bit different in the SAS industry as they are in other Industries I to be honest I cannot quite uh everything I'm saying is just from uh from when I compare to other Industries then it's just from uh from what I thick because I've never sold to other never sold in other Industries right I always been SAS seller um and since I think it's a quite New Concept and it's a concept that uh has quite come to mainstream uh adoption now um I think that uh in SAS the specific specifics of tion that are important because S software selling software selling technology is always something that is kind of new so um buyers don't know how to buy it right so how how do I how do I go live with uh I don't know with a software like software like Zoom a software like uh uh a software that is not like a one click login for an end user right how do I go live what do I need to do uh and uh since there's a lot of Technology uh in software out there that is new that solves a new problem that solves an Innovative New Concept um the buyer doesn't know buyers is is is new to this Innovative product and uh he has to learn and you have to as a seller you have to educate him on uh how he can actually do it done by swiping a credit card right so I think the main difference is that SAS and SAS meaning selling technology needs not only needs to educate uh buyers on the product what it does but also how to how to uh how to yeah how to gooll live with it how to use it how to uh buy it right so I think that's that's a main difference to in the traditional or non SAS markets buyers tend to have experience in buying I don't know buying cars buying uh Hardware buying machines right um I think that's big difference from the start and what would you say are critical elements that you have to have within that process or is there a defined process because every company I've worked in and every time we have external people joining our teams they come up with sometimes great sometimes Superior sometimes inferior uh processes uh but they're all very different is there a framework where you would say that really makes sense out of your experience for for M action plan you mean now um I think there's and that's that's that's an interesting question to be honest um I think there is no perfect system for a mutual action plan um I think it's very Dynamic it's very fluid depending on what you're selling and what to whom you're selling it to right um and this is like the core natureal a mutual action plan or like a project plans itself they are quite individual on um like when what what to start with what to do to go live with a solution um I I only see it like with core elements to it um that should be in every Mutual action plan um I've been working I've been training or doing M action workshops um when I have do done them um it's basically and how I remember it they are all uh individualized so everything was uh sometimes the main part was a little different sometimes the end part was a little different sometimes the introduction of the mital action plan to the champion was a little different or was at a different point in time um I think they're quite I think it's I think there's no best system that fits all I think it's very uh depending on your product and the uh uh the ICP the industry are selling it to and let's start at the beginning because when do you initiate because I think that's probably the first step which you start when uh when it comes I mean we have that in our processes when we look around and I've tried to introduce that in our teams where we say if we come to this stage we're going to start let's say a POC or something in that stage and then say now it's time we talk about mutual agreements going forward is there a time and how should those be implemented and who should Implement them from uh from Persona style yeah so when is is a very good question because when and how to introduce it is I made the experience that it's a a lot is uh depending on that point in time and how you do it um from my experience um it makes it made the most sense or it's like typically introduced very early in the process so if you say you are at Discovery stage you do a first touch first meeting with a customer and uh you qualify whatever qualification method you you you are using if it's medic ban or if it's Spice from winning by Design then uh and you say and in that qualification method you you think the the the prospect is qualified right so you move move them forward to custom demo whatever is the second meeting right or whatever you're doing with qualified leads that you have spoken to um between those so first first touch first call and second call there should be like this second in parallel stream of the mutual action planning um and uh I always train we always um try to uh implement this uh at as a second meeting with the champion so in plain words it's a meeting after the discovery that you uh schedule with your Champion so the one that needs to drrive the purchase purchasing process from the buyer side and this is a meeting just around the Mitchell action B it's not so much about product it's not so much about the result it's not so much about pricing it's just basically really laying out uh let's Let It Be an Excel sheet with a project plan step one two 34 five from today to go live with due dates with web packages with uh questions around who needs to be in involved in this um and actually it's a project meeting right it's a it's the it's the project plan meeting which your Champion just a quick reminder in the middle of the show if you haven't done so then please smash that subscribe button and leave me a like it makes a big difference because the more engagement we have the better the show is going to get and I do it for you so thank you for listening and being part of it and maybe you know somebody who this conversation might be interesting so feel free to share it now enjoy so you're suggesting you have your initial calls with a with a prospect um you kind of need to get them ready to feel what your product can offer and before you start evaluating and demoing what you have you try to get the commitment from your prospect to say well if I demo you this and if I do get my uh people involved which is obviously an invest from the company um then let's see do you do you put in like step out like if we don't deliver to what this is then we don't have a deal from our side or do you always have the goal live in in plan um so so you mean um do I do this before I demo the client or can you rephrase the question maybe no the question which I'm asking is if you're trying to at what stage do you uh position your Mutual action plan or your Mutual closing plan or go Life Plan um let's say you have a prospect and you get them ready you call them a champion well the Champions maybe uh hard definition again but let's say you have somebody who's eager to understand what you do they're going to their willingness is there to involve other people into the process in order to build something or to to look at something and um obviously if you start getting people from your company involved to demo to give a little a little bit more than just half an hour of their time but actually prepare a meeting that's an Avest from the company you can't do that at scale you have to do that very clearly and you have to do that wisely who you do that with um so you suggesting at that time you say well I'm going to come we're going to go do the demo this is what it's going to look like if we do this then what would be the next steps in order to go further and you bring out the piece of paper the Exel P piece uh where you say this is what we're suggesting the next steps could be because you don't know how to buy our product or how to go live and this is what we say we intend we need to check up on and then you also uh have but if we don't have then that uh then there is no go ey right so what I'm suggest what I'm asking you is the commitment from the customer has to be quite high in order to say I'm going to go and and and uh you know commit to delivering all of these things when first maybe he's not so committed but he's still interested and maybe there will be so the question is we as in sales we like to have happy ears um how much can we trust our happy ears um I think that's I think is it's a good point you're asking with Al I think the the main Cliff is uh depends on how your sales process structure like how how much you can demo without a lot of putting a lot of resources in right right maybe you maybe you're already demoing in the first call right so I have a lot of I've had a lot of clients as a consultant which had like U was always this question okay should we demo in the first call or not if we don't demo in the first call then the clients aren't happy if we demo it takes a lot of time um so I think um the resource part is very important so um before you deploy resources and by resources I mean maybe a sales engineer maybe someone who sets up a custom demo so an extended custom demo or maybe even something is prepared specifically for the client because you know that they have systems ABC um this is something that um yeah happens typically after you qualify the the the opportunity right so I guess the answer is uh or how how we do it and how how I did it with the companies I was engaging with is um we always would show um if we said okay this client in the call you already know in the discovery call that the client is qualified or not then you would draw up the mutual as plan on the on the screen which say this is our like this is how we work uh this is how our sales process works this is our mutual action plan we work with mutual action plans it looks like this Mr Klein it's basically a a project plan with uh we have to align on for you to make sure that we can go live in time and then you go in the high level run through of the main parts and then you introduce to them if we move forward then we would need a separate meeting with you to go through the details because we have to discuss with the technical uh uh uh yeah with with the technical contact that we need to talk with for apis or something who is your legal contact we need to send the legal documents to who is this who is this and then you align on uh uh uh and make the customer on understand that there's much more to it uh than just swiping a credit card or signing a document or uh purchasing over I if that's that makes sense how large would you recommend these documents are I mean if I look internally for the companies I've you worked in uh there can be excessive projects but then you don't want to overwhelm somebody so early in the process yeah yeah of course so at first just show a template right just show like like I don't know this is the six seven step plan of going live right so and it everything is templatized so you won't you won't have um like specifics in because you don't know them uh yet but if I say um for instance um uh talk to or or or make like we we're selling to sales right so Sal for integration the the sales of for integration always has to uh we always have to or our clients always have to check this with Sal Ops or sales enablement uh internally how they test it how to get a Sandbox in self course to integrate with um this is for instance a specific item I wouldn't show in uh the mutual action plan at the first the first meeting right the first meeting would just say uh except for the task in in introduce me to yourself ops manager it would it would say um um check for Integrations so like a high level topic of uh of what I'm going to do I'm not and maybe this we'll have three four five tasks coming with it uh but it's just like a like a milestone uh at first you only show Milestones first before uh you really go into detail go into tasks assign package work packages and that kind of stuff uh so it's not long at the first stage it's not long but it can get quite long if you go through a process because of course um different steps maybe emerge along the process which you couldn't anticipate in the first place M and if you're starting out and you've never done these action plans mutual agreement plans then where would you start for the people listening I would I would start with uh so the first exercise is always um like make actually treat it as a product treat it as why should I use or why should a customer customer buy a mutual action plan for me right so why should he agree to work with a mutual action plan uh uh um B for the purchase order um so what pain is solving um what uh uh uh what is the result right and then um the Practical exercise is um map back the last I don't know 10 deals that went quite well or five deals in your opinion however large you are if you're a start of a startup of course you might not have so many uh uh deals in the Enterprise motion that uh you can count or really draw back five or 10 of those but if you have like a bunch of deals I would reverse engineer them what's the happy path not the happy Earth what's the happy path for us sellers right what's the happy path for uh as for timeline as for uh steps we need to take as for what's the best case scenario uh what's our best case scenario uh um Prospect and how would he go through the sales process um from demo stage to uh go live not the close but the go live um and this is basically the exercise that I uh always that we always do when we do M AC workshops um and then as a second step and this is actually the now we're coming into how do we apply it um so you have reverse engineer the perfect self process for a specific customer segment uh and you have written it down in gun chart and Excel sheet just written it down in some form with timelines with time uh Deltas in it and the different streams you need to talk to um and then you have to sell it right so you have to sell the mutual action plan to the customer because the customer say oh wow what is this no I don't yeah yeah okay yeah we need to do this but uh I I'm not sure uh if I should do it this is real work right so um you need to convince him that it makes sense to use the mutual action plan to buy and um at that stage um I have the I I always coin the sentence uh typically when we work with customers like you we see problems emerging in that point of the sales process that point of the sales process that point of the sales process because um we haven't done this this this we are trying to solve these problems with anticipating them and with addressing them early so that's why defined this Mutual action plan and that's why you as a buyer will have a better buying Journey um when using and aligning on this that makes toal sense yeah now what do you think are like typical pit fault where the people step into yeah um yeah let me let me quickly gather some the pitfall um I think it's not the it's not the plan itself it's not the U mapping out the steps from demo to go live um it's not um like knowing whom you need to talk to um it's actually um selling it and aligning the customer to it and it's attaching some kind of go knife dat to it because the problem with every framework and the problem with a lot of framework is they always work perfectly on payer plan perfectly in theory but um if you don't have a go live date you can't I don't if you don't have a date for uh until the customer wants to go live then uh you can't quite map your Mutual action plan to it right Y and unfortunately a lot of customers don't have a go life date in mind so they will not tell you hey I need this by the 1 of January they will not tell you uh hey I need this next quarter otherwise something bad happens Al maybe maybe one in 20 deals uh works like this so the difficulty is for a self person for an account executive to uh kind of identify this go life date and what I mean is um you have to map a negative impact to this uh to to the to the client situation when he doesn't move with you when he doesn't go with your solution when he keeps doing what he's doing and when he keeps experiencing the pain that he's experiencing now so and giv an example for this the negative pain yeah so for instance if you're selling um for instance if you're selling let's say you're selling a CRM you're selling a CRM uh and you don't have a CRM yet so customer doesn't have a CRM head he has an ex sheet where he tracks all the uh all all the opportunities and um he's selling well he's growing he he tells you in the discovery I'm gonna I'm gonna um I'm gonna I'm gonna uh onboard three new sellers next month uh and then I think I'm going to grow to five more by the end of the quarter two4 this year then the negative impact is or the negative uh experiences that you will feel because you as an expert know 12 months from now when he has 10 sellers well it's five plus three eight he's also sell so seven so nine maybe or you have said nine say people um an Excel sheet has major pitfalls to track your customers with right so you need to kind of educate him on a future problem that he's going to run into if he won't change um yeah his process and Aline his process to Future changes and the future change in that scenario is he's not going to have one salesperson uh nine months from now he's going to have Nine salese and Nine sales people working from a CRM sheet has many documentation problems uh many uh false data entry problems uh which you will have a negative um yeah a negative uh impact from in nine months super interesting and I think the big takeaways for me is really working backwards and trying to go to that pain uh offering if you don't do this then this is the consequence to and uh I'm GNA get uh my guys to start selling the mutual action plan a little bit more what you what do you think I'm we're missing right now in this conversation um let me go through my notes not because I I've done some notes to this um yeah I think so so the main things um the main things we already talked about is the the critical events the go life date how do I orchestrate and that winning by Design we used to call that orchestrating a critical event right so you have to orchestrate a negative impact that the customer might not have feel or might not know yet that he's going to run into some kind of bad thing in the future um because in reality nobody will tell you I need a CRM by the 1 of January they will tell you hey I might I might need a CRM right that's what prospects tell you that's why I'm uh that's why I'm demoing with you because I think I might need it um I think yeah what we um might have missed and this is also um an important experience that I made is that you should show the wherever you are documenting or collaborating the mutual action plan on if it's an Excel sheet if it's a software if it's a PowerPoint um or if it's just a text a text file you should make it a um a main document of every meeting at least with a champion or with people of your core buyer group should always draw it back or put it up the screen share by the at the end of the meeting get into it collaborate on it maybe make the buyer edit it edit sells edit parts of it comment on it so make it a collaborative document and make it a central document of the whole buying Journey um that it's always Central that they always everything kind of uh what do they say like circles or gravit gravitates around uh the mitual action plan um and showing it in the screen share in every meeting at the end just a few minutes and then editing the stuff that you checked and editing the the things that have changed uh there's a big part of it I love that and um before I ask you the last question I want to say thank you for joining because I'm learning something here and uh I'm getting some inspiration because in my head I already know exactly where I'm going to implement exactly what you said because we' got five streams which we need to align on and we're having a bit of issue uh with that because there's many different stakeholders in this in this project um and I'm going to look forward to to bring uh bring this this conversation to live tomorrow when I go back to work so thank you so much for that Johannes it's been really inspirational and and and I'm getting a lot out of this so so thank you maybe uh to finish off something on the more personal side and um but work related uh what is one thing you wish you would have known about sales that you know now that you did not know when you started out which would have maybe made your life a little bit easier last changes the answer um the last part the last sentence the last half sentence changes my whole answer um well you give us two me answer without the last part the last the the the the thing that I didn't know when I started in yeah let's call it Sal because I always I didn't want to like beginning of my career I didn't want to go into sales right so I didn't I thought yeah that you don't want to be this SLE sales guy right so sales has a very bad reputation in at least in Germany right I don't know about whole Europe but uh and then everybody would tell me you should join to sales you're such a good sales person go to sales you you're so Dum why don't you join your sales Salesforce join as a sales team I would say yeah no I want to go in business development right so then I first my first job was business development manager and what I didn't know before that and it just clicked I don't know maybe quite quite late actually when I when somebody gave me the books of winning by design for instance if you um so sales is not um something that is or you is not anymore something that is very talent-based it's very um it's it's a very strong I would say it's a craft right it's it's not an art anymore it's art and craft but it's a craft if you think of a library then a sales library is packed with different Frameworks books and different like different things you can do and uh it's actually also teachable so that's what I uh what I find really interesting about it that you can actually really step bystep process oriented teach sales to uh yeah to new harest to people so this is the first question uh the first part of the question the second part that I didn't know uh before that made life easier now um repetitions so in sales you need repetitions you you can't just uh you can't just uh end the whole podcast for me now um is is is or what we do we're doing right now um the main part that I'm seeing that in Consulting and training in in my own teams every day and all the time the best framework won't cut it you have to do the rep recalibrate iterate get maybe get coached do it again and uh find your sweet spot in the framework or find like uh attach the framework to practical um knowledge or practical experience and this is the only thing you can do with repetition so um it's quite comparable to sports uh to the gym you can't just gain M by knowing how to do a biceps curl right and doing it once twice you have to do it I don't know 20 30 reps three three days or three days a week uh six 10 weeks and then you see muscle gain right so that's the thing that um uh maybe you maybe I kind of knew it or maybe somebody told me but I wouldn't listen to them right but there's no there's there's no shortcut you have to do the Reps you have to do the Reps and again and again and again and again uh that's the main the main thing that I uh that would have made life easier so repetition and of course patience stand put in the time and effort and uh uh yeah good things will come if you do the Reps I couldn't agree one uh uh I couldn't agree more uh it's definitely it's it's a good analogy with the gym because uh yeah you can lift uh uh weights but if you want to lift heavy that's like knowing how to craft a proper deal there's no cheating you have to do the Reps Johannes thank you so much for coming on the show we're at the end now um it's been a real pleasure and if people want to connect I think LinkedIn is probably the best way to reach out to you right yes link is link is good awesome I'll drop everything in the show notes thank you so much thank thank now we're at the end of the show and I want to say thank you for listening to the end it makes a huge difference you know getting the engagement and getting people to watch this makes me more than happy and if you haven't done so then smash that subscribe button leave me that like maybe share it with somebody who you think this conversation may be interesting for cuz that's what I do it for for us as a community of salespeople and uh thank you again I'm looking forward to meet you in the next episode if you want to engage or get a connect with me or with Johannes then LinkedIn or Instagram is probably the best place to find us I'll leave the links down in the show notes thank you guys take care see you next week bye-bye