Using Mutual Success Plans To Accelerate Deals

Mutual success plans are an absolute weapon. I'm going to detail today how I use mutual success plans at gong with nearly every single opportunity to help keep them on track, how to help guide the buyer throughout the process, which will ultimately help with both your win rates as well as your deal velocity as well. So the first way I'm going to use it is I'm going to use it pretty early on in the process, typically like the second or third call. So pretending as the second that we're on a demo being a second call, I might pull this up live at the beginning of call number two and say, like, hey, I know it's early on in the evaluation still. We had our initial meeting on the 15th. I marked that as complete. Today is the demo. I'll go ahead and mark that complete in advance of today. What I recommend as a next step is a deep dive demo, likely with Karen to get her perspective in addition to yours. And then from there. Right. I might actually have a second one to like, exact alignment or pricing call or whatever that looks like. Why I think it's really helpful is to always kind of have like the next one to three steps there so that it's on their roadmap and you can, like, plant that seed before the call even starts. Then you run this amazing demo, you leave 15 minutes at the end, you pull this up again, you say like, hey, Jim, like, are you open to a recommendation? Yes. Awesome. Given the demo today went great and I know you're really excited about, like, let's get Karen's perspective as well, in addition to yours to make sure, like, the entire team is aligned. Like, how can we get that scheduled? Right. And come in really, really confident. At least that way you're leading with a strong perspective. Maybe Jim tells you in that case, like, oh, no, Karen wouldn't need to be involved, but Lisa would. Great. Find time with Lisa. Right. Whatever that looks like. You also have an opportunity when you're pulling this up. Since it's less of just like face to face on zoom. It's kind of a nice backdrop to like, fill in some nodes, work along the way. And you can always ask, like, hey, like, what? Who else would need to be involved during this evaluation? Like, what else should be on my roadmap As I think about, like, making this a huge success and trying to get going in your hands, really consultative way to continue to lead with a point of view and then don't help them kind of open up around what their process looks like. Here are some steps. If you have Like a trial to kind of plant the seed early on. Like, hey, it's a really easy process. You know, it's a couple integrations, couple calls. I'll also use the MSP probably later, depending on, like, how long your average deal size is or sales cycle is, I should say. But I'll start to talk through, like, legal security signer. I think when you have a backdrop again, for these questions, it feels way less like an interrogation and more just like two people collaborating on the doc together. And again, you can make some edits live and be like, hey, I know, like, legal typically needs to review something like gong, like, do you have an internal council? Is that external? What does that look like? Great. In your experience, how long does that typically take? Hey, taking a step back, like, when's the last time you brought on technology? Like, what. What else has to happen from a procurement standpoint? So you can kind of run some discovery around these three questions. Identify really early on, like, who the owner is for all three. But I think just as important, like, how long that process takes, whether your champion has any experience going through it or not. And then any other, like, potential roadblocks to start to think about, like, oh, we have a second security review for AI, or we have a second person in procurement that that does the negotiation and like, starts to uncover that really early. That'll help make sure your deal, like, stays on track to close by the projected close date, help with your forecast accuracy, and ultimately, again, just being really consultative with them. The one thing I'd recommend here as well is like, share this early on with them, encourage them to make some edits, Be like, hey, if this process changes or like, you learn something new, like, feel free to make some edits. I'll also have this resources tab here and you can put in, like, your trust radius, your G2, review some case studies that are relevant, like, you know, anything else. You kind of want to plant the seed with that, like, you think would be beneficial if they checked it out. But overall it's a really great resource. Just continue to kind of add fields. And I'd say the one, like, pitfall to avoid is never give like 15 steps out of the gate, even if you're in enterprise sales. And typically an average cycle might be 25 steps. You don't want to show 25 steps on the second call. It's going to seem daunting, it's going to seem too much. So just kind of leave the next couple steps in front of them and collaborate on how to make that possible. If this is helpful, I will leave the mutual Success Plan template that I have in the comments or in like the info section under this video and please throw me a Like or throw me a comment if you found it useful. Thanks so much.