Mutual Action Plan

---
name: mutual-action-plan
description: Builds a mutual action plan (MAP) with shared milestones, named owners, and buffer-padded dates that drives a qualified deal from verbal intent to signature and go-live. Use when someone asks "build a mutual action plan for this deal", "how do I keep this deal from stalling", "the buyer said yes but nothing is moving", or once a prospect is qualified and has expressed intent to move forward. Do NOT use for preparing the qualification call itself - use discovery-call-prep instead. Do NOT use for scripting the negotiation and close conversation - use closer-sales-script instead.
metadata:
  title: "Mutual Action Plan"
---

# Mutual Action Plan

A mutual action plan is a shared document that aligns buyer and seller on every step between "we want to move forward" and "the contract is signed and live." The word mutual matters: if the buyer has not contributed to and agreed on the plan, it is a vendor's wishlist, and the deal it was supposed to protect will stall in legal, procurement, or a budget cycle nobody mentioned. The costly mistake this skill prevents is discovering a six-week security review three weeks before the quarter ends.

## Operating procedure

Steps run in this order because dates cannot be set before milestones are known, and milestones cannot be known before the buyer has contributed theirs.

### Step 1: Gather inputs

Collect before drafting anything. Label guesses as guesses.

1. Deal stage and evidence of intent - a MAP before clear evaluation intent is premature. Default assumption: qualified with verbal intent.
2. Buyer's desired go-live date, or the business event driving urgency. If neither exists, that absence is a finding (see Step 3).
3. Known buyer-side steps: security review, legal, procurement, budget approval, board sign-off. Default: unknown, to be elicited from the buyer.
4. Deal size and cycle length. A sub-30-day, low-complexity deal gets the lightweight variant (see Escape hatch).
5. Names or roles for owners on both sides.

### Step 2: Introduce the MAP to the buyer

Introduce it only after the buyer has expressed clear intent to evaluate seriously - never on the first call. Framing: "A lot of our customers find it helpful to build a shared timeline so nothing gets stuck waiting on anyone. Would you be open to putting one together?" Present it as a coordination tool, never a closing tool; buyers who smell a closing device disengage from it.

### Step 3: Anchor on the go-live date and work backward

Start from the buyer's desired go-live date and schedule backward. If the buyer has no date, ask: "Is there a business outcome or event this needs to be live before?" The answer either surfaces real urgency or reveals that urgency does not yet exist - in which case the MAP's first milestone is establishing the compelling event, not exchanging redlines.

### Step 4: Build the milestone table

Use exactly these columns: milestone, owner (buyer or seller, by name or role), due date, status. Keep it in a shared document the buyer can edit - a MAP only the vendor can update is not mutual.

Seed with the typical mid-market SaaS milestones, then ask the buyer to add every step on their side the rep might not know about - budget approval cycles, procurement reviews, board sign-offs:

- Technical review / security questionnaire completed
- Legal review started
- Reference calls completed
- Final business case signed off internally
- Contract redlines exchanged
- Signatures collected
- Kickoff scheduled

### Step 5: Date the milestones with buffer

Dating rules:

- Pad every third-party-dependent step by 50%: if legal typically takes two weeks, put three on the plan. Slipping a MAP date by a day looks sloppy; finishing early is fine.
- Every milestone gets a single named owner. "Both teams" is not an owner - split the milestone until each piece has one name.
- No two consecutive milestones due on the same date; sequence forces honesty about dependencies.
- The gap between signature and go-live must reflect real onboarding time, not zero.
- Confirm each buyer-side date with the buyer out loud. A date the buyer never agreed to is a seller fantasy.

### Step 6: Keep it alive

Open every subsequent call with the MAP: "Before we dive in, let me pull up our plan - we have three items due this week." This maintains momentum and makes silent slippage uncomfortable. When a milestone slips, update the date and record why in the status column. A MAP showing perfect on-time completion is a red flag that nobody is tracking honestly.

## Template: MAP skeleton

```
MUTUAL ACTION PLAN - [FILL: buyer company] + [FILL: seller company]
Target go-live: [FILL: date]   Driving event: [FILL: business outcome/event, or "none identified - establish"]
Shared doc, editable by both sides. Reviewed at the start of every call.

| # | Milestone                                    | Owner (name/role)     | Due date | Status / notes |
|---|----------------------------------------------|-----------------------|----------|----------------|
| 1 | Success criteria for evaluation agreed        | [FILL: buyer name]    | [FILL]   |                |
| 2 | Technical review / security questionnaire done| [FILL: buyer name]    | [FILL]   |                |
| 3 | Reference calls completed                     | [FILL: seller name]   | [FILL]   |                |
| 4 | Business case signed off internally           | [FILL: buyer name]    | [FILL]   |                |
| 5 | [FILL: buyer-added step, e.g. procurement]    | [FILL]                | [FILL]   |                |
| 6 | Legal review started                          | [FILL: buyer name]    | [FILL]   |                |
| 7 | Contract redlines exchanged                   | both - split: [FILL]  | [FILL]   |                |
| 8 | Signatures collected                          | [FILL]                | [FILL]   |                |
| 9 | Kickoff scheduled                             | [FILL: seller name]   | [FILL]   |                |

Slipped items log: [date, milestone, reason, new date]
```

Bad date-setting: "Legal review - Owner: both teams - Due: end of month." No single owner, no buffer, a vague date nobody committed to.

Good date-setting: "Legal review started - Owner: Dana Reyes (buyer, legal ops) - Due: May 9 (typical turnaround 2 weeks; padded to 3). Confirmed with Dana on the Apr 14 call."

## Deliverable

Produce a shared MAP document containing the target go-live date and driving event, a milestone table with single named owners and buffer-padded dates for every row, buyer-contributed milestones explicitly included, and a slipped-items log - plus the introduction framing script and the standing agenda line for reviewing it each call.

## Do NOT

- Do not introduce the MAP on the first call - before intent exists it reads as pushy process and gets ignored.
- Do not build the MAP alone and send it for signature; a plan the buyer did not shape carries no buyer accountability.
- Do not set dates without buffer - one publicly slipped date erodes the plan's authority for every date after it.
- Do not assign milestones to "both teams"; diffuse ownership is how milestones silently die.
- Do not treat a fully green MAP as good news without checking - perfect status usually means it stopped being tracked.
- Do not use the MAP to pressure-close ("per our plan, you owe me a signature Friday"); it is a coordination instrument, and weaponizing it destroys the mutuality that makes it work.

## Quality bar

Ship only when: every milestone has one named owner and a dated deadline; buyer-side steps came from the buyer's mouth, not the rep's assumptions; third-party steps carry 50% buffer; the go-live date traces to a business event or the plan's first milestone is finding one; the document lives somewhere the buyer can edit; and the rep has a standing habit of opening calls with it.

## Escape hatch

For a simple or short-cycle deal (under 30 days, no procurement or security review), skip the table: send a bullet list in the follow-up email - three to five actions, one owner each, one deadline each. The goal is shared accountability, not administrative overhead. If the deal keeps stalling despite a healthy MAP, the problem is usually qualification, not coordination - revisit with discovery-call-prep.