Close Plans are Good for Your Sellers. They're Good For Your Buyers, Too.

At the end of the last quarter, I talked with a number of sales peers who’ve been struggling with deals slipping from one quarter to the next. While it often doesn’t make a big difference when a Q2 deal actually closes in the beginning of Q3, it becomes much more fraught in the second half of the year – when a “slipped Q4 deal” closes in January … and in a completely different fiscal year.

This is why I’ve always emphasized the importance of a “close plan” with my sellers. It’s a simple tool that keeps everyone involved in a deal on the same page regarding what is happening when, and ensures that deals close when they are supposed to. Even better – it’s not just a tool for the sales team – it’s something that helps the buyer in their journey too.

Here’s how it works.

1.??????Understand the steps involved in selling your product.

I just bought a new house, and there were a hundred little details that had the potential to derail the timing of our close date. Home inspections, appraisals, title searches, and many other boxes?that the various banks needed?to check before we could actually turn over the keys. It’s a process I had gone through only once before … 18 years ago.

Fortunately, my realtor had sold many houses and could recite the steps in her sleep. So early on, she was able to give me a task list that showed me everything we'd need to do to get from beginning to end.

As a seller of SaaS software, I see the same issues at play. We’ve signed up hundreds of customers this year – but for many of them, it was the first time they’ve made a purchase of this type, and they really didn’t know how to make it happen. As a result, even the best-intentioned buyer may not be able to get the deal done without relying on you to show them the path.

At Motus, we use a flavor of MEDDIC as our sales process – which helps us to make sure our customers have decision criteria, a process, a person identified who can spend the money, and so on. But whatever process you use, spend some time documenting all of the things that you know must take place to get from start to finish – and make sure your sellers know them all as well.

Once they're documented, make sure that your sellers don’t skip steps. Our methodology has 10 steps for a reason – we started with MEDDIC, and then added checkpoints for each item that has derailed sellers in the past. So when we saw deal after deal gets stalled because we didn’t get buy-in from the Head of Sales (a key persona for us) we added “meet Head of Sales” right alongside the economic buyer and champion – and we don’t ignore this critical checkpoint just because everything else in a deal feels like it’s going along ok.

2.??????Explain the process to your buyer.

We’ve trained our sellers to have a conversation on the first day – after the very first demonstration – which lets the buyer know what each of the checkpoints in our process are.?

The talk track sounds a lot like “in our experience, here are the 10 things we know would need to happen for you to fully evaluate our solution … and whether you decide to buy it from us or not, we want to be sure each of our interactions is helping us advance your process. We may not answer all of them today – in fact we certainly won’t – and you may not even know the answers to all of these questions. But I want to get them out on the table so we’re all proceeding forward on the same page together. Is there anything else about your company’s process that we need to be sure we accomplish as part of our evaluation?”

It’s a lot to ask a buyer – and it may make some of them nervous. They may realize that they don’t actually know how to get approval to buy something. They may worry that they don’t have the relationships to get all the decisionmakers to the table. They may feel like it’s too much pressure to buy right now.

Deal with each of these objections – letting them know you don’t care if the process ultimately winds up with them selecting you or not, but that you want to make sure their time is being used effectively and productively, and that you want to be sure you have a shared understanding of the way the evaluation process will proceed.

The best time to begin the conversation is on the very first sales call. Challenger, Inc. studied thousands of deals across a wide variety of products and industries, and found that buyers tend to move through a typical emotional journey in their evaluation. They are most excited about your solution right after the demonstration is completed?- and then go through all sorts of doubts and anxieties , never getting back to that high level of enthusiasm until contract signing day.

As a result, they’ll be most open to mapping the way forward right at that emotional highpoint - so save ten minutes at the end of your first call to let them know you’re excited, too, and want to be sure you map out your best next steps together.

If you’re reading this and realizing that you’re already well down a sales path and haven’t talked about the buying process, the second best time for you to have the conversation is today.

You can start the conversation by saying something like “we’ve spent a few days (or weeks, or months, or years) talking with each other about this, and so I wanted to make sure I understand what your evaluation process looks like.?In my experience with other customers, we’ve found that we don’t get to an agreement until the following list of things has happened. I want to be sure we’re using your time respectfully, so also wanted to check to see if there are other things in your process that we don’t know about.”

3.??????Write it down.

As you walk through the checklist of all of the things that need to happen – get fiancne approval, check references, test drive the car, etc. – write them down and share them with your customer. I like to have a powerpoint slide that includes them all, which I then send to the prospect after our meeting is over, but it could just as easily be free text in an email message or a paper you print and hand to them in person.

What’s most important is that you not only have the list of tasks to do – but you also have assigned responsibility (on your side or the prospect's side) for who will accomplish it, and on what time frame.

On some tasks, they prospect may not yet know who will get something done. Perhaps they know “someone in legal reviews the contract” but they don’t know who it is, or what the turnaround time is for their legal department. That’s ok. Don’t try to force an unrealistic date in there because it suits your own hopes or wishes for the project. Instead, create a task for “find out how the legal review process happens” and assign a date to get THAT done, after which you can go ahead and assign out the actual legal review itself.

An example might look like this:

The plan is likely to have holes in it – but resist the temptation to just say “contract signing will happen April 30th” because it’s the end of your sales month.

Recognize the dependencies amongst tasks, and – if the customer has a compelling event like “we have to go live by May 15th” use those as incentives to start clearing the dependencies out ahead of it.

4.??????Revisit the plan every time you meet with your prospect.

Let the customer know that you’re going to treat this as a project plan for working through their evaluation. Internally, we call this a “close plan,” but something like “evaluation project plan” or “sequence of events” will sound less “salesy” to your prospects.

Make sure you save 10 minutes at the end of every meeting to pull it up again, check in to make sure the various tasks are getting done, make adjustments to timing and responsible parties for future tasks, and keep checking to make sure both sides are in agreement about what happens next and whether you’re still marching towards the same goal.

The dates on the list also provide a great reason to reach out to your prospect - a quick call or email saying "according to our plan, you're supposed to have your budget approval meeting later this week. I wanted to quicky check in to see if there's anything you need to prepare for it, if that meeting is still happening, or if there's anything else I can be helping you to do." Similarly, it's a good reason to follow up after the fact - "I know our project plan said that legal would be reviewing the contract yesterday - I'm just checking in to see how that went, and if there's any follow up from there?"

5.??????Use the plan to inform your sales forecast.

At Motus, we’ve built reporting on the close plan into our salesforce.com opportunity screens – and they’re front and center every time anyone looks at a deal.

It makes it easy for forecast reviews, giving managers insights like “there’s no way you should be forecasting this deal for June 30th because your sequence of events says their Board doesn’t meet to approve the budget until June 28th – and the one-week legal process can’t start until after that.”

It also makes it easy to bring other people into your deals – you invite the CEO for a ride-along on your next call, and they can quickly look at the close plan to see what has happened so far, what is supposed to happen next, and what their job should be in the meeting they’re going to today.

So whether you're using salesforce.com or some other system to store them all - be sure there's a consistent place that everyone in your company looks to to see all deals' plans.

Summary

The best part about using close plans is they’re not just helpful to sellers. Like my own experience buying a house, a great close plan helps buyers to keep track of the big picture of where they are in the process – what’s been done, what's left to do, and what they’re ultimately trying to accomplish – so it’s win/win.

Does your sales team have a similar tool and process? If so, what’s working best about it? Let me know what might I be missing that could be improved on?

Happy selling (and timely closing),