The mutual action plan template your buyer will co-own.

What a mutual action plan is

A mutual action plan is a shared, dated list of every step both sides have to take between today and a signed contract, with a named owner for each step on each side. The seller drafts it. The buyer corrects it. Then both teams work from the same version until signature, and often past it into onboarding.

Don't confuse it with your forecast or your private close plan. A close plan answers "how do I win this?" and stays in your CRM. A mutual action plan answers "what do we both need to do, by when, to get your team what it wants?" and lives somewhere the buyer can see and edit.

The full definition is in the glossary: Mutual action plan

When to propose one

Too early and it reads as presumptuous. Too late and the buyer already has their own timeline, without you in it. Propose the plan when three things are true:

• The buyer has said the problem out loud, in their words. Not "it would be nice", but a cost, a deadline or a person who is unhappy.
• There is a date that matters to them. A go-live, a contract ending with the old vendor, a board meeting, the start of a fiscal year. No date, no plan: you'd be dating steps back from nothing.
• You have a champion who wants this to happen. Someone who will take the draft to their own team and come back with corrections.

In most deals that is the end of the first or second real conversation after discovery, and before the demo for the wider team. A useful test: if you are about to ask "what does your buying process look like?", propose the plan instead. It asks the same question and gets a better answer, because the buyer is correcting a draft instead of describing a process from memory.

When not to: a single decision-maker buying on a card with standard terms. The SMB template exists for small deals, but if the whole thing closes in a week, an email with three dates is enough.

How to date a plan backwards

Plans dated forwards fail in a predictable way: "demo next week, pilot the week after, and we'll see". Dated forwards, every delay pushes the end date and nobody notices. Dated backwards, every delay eats into a fixed date, and everyone can see what it costs.

Step 1. Start from the buyer's event, not your quarter.

Ask what has to be true on their side, and by when. "Live before the board meeting on 28 January" is an event. "Signed by end of quarter" is your problem, not theirs, and a buyer can tell.

Step 2. Subtract what happens after signature.

If the buyer needs to be live on 28 January and onboarding takes six weeks, signature has to happen in mid December. That is your target signature date. Say this sum out loud on the planning call. It is the most persuasive sentence in the whole process.

Step 3. Find the fixed constraints first.

Before you date a single row, ask about the calendar: holidays and shutdowns, board and budget dates, the days the signer signs, the day the security team takes new vendors into review, anyone on leave. In the filled example, the CFO only signs on Tuesdays and Fridays and the security lead is out for a week in November. Both are in the plan.

Step 4. Work back from the slowest track.

Security review, procurement and legal usually run in parallel with the evaluation, and one of them is the long pole. Ask each owner how long their step takes and write their answer down, not your guess. Then start that track far enough out that it finishes before the contract step that depends on it.

Step 5. Leave slack before signature.

The last week holds only routing and signing. If redlines are still open five days before signature, the date is already at risk, and the plan should say so in the Notes column.

Step 6. Recount when anything moves.

Dates will slip. What matters is that someone decides what gives. When a row moves, check what depends on it and either move those too or agree what to compress.

The planner above does the counting for you: pick a date and every row is dated back from it, with weekends moved to Friday.

How the templates count. Every row in every template carries a "Days before signature" number. The Core plan starts 60 days out, Enterprise 120, SMB 21. These are starting points for you to correct with your buyer's real lead times, not a benchmark.

The ten columns, explained

Every template uses the same columns. Each one is there because a plan without it breaks in a specific way.

Two rules that make the columns work:

• One owner per side per row. Two names means nobody. If a step needs a group, name the person who will tell you it's done.
• The lead is whoever does the work. Each row is led by one side and supported by the other. Most rows in a good plan are led by the buyer, because most of the work to buy is theirs. If yours are mostly led by you, you are writing a to-do list for yourself.

Who owns what on the buyer's side

The buyer owner column is the hard part. You know your own team. On their side you are guessing names from a LinkedIn search and the CC line of an email. Here is who usually owns which milestones, what they need from you, and the question that finds them when you don't know who they are.

Your champion is the one who fills the gaps. Bring them this list and ask, row by row, "who is this at your company?"

Champion

• Owns: the plan itself on their side. Agreeing the date, writing down the outcomes, mapping the approvers, booking the internal meetings.
• Needs from you: a draft they can forward without editing, and material that sells the deal in rooms you aren't in.
• Find them by asking: "If this stalls, who on your side will notice first?"
• Watch for: a champion who agrees to everything and owns nothing. If none of their rows move in two weeks, you have a fan, not a champion.
• Go deeper: What champion enablement is

Economic Buyer

• Owns: budget. Confirming which budget line pays and that it is released, approving the business case, usually the signature.
• Needs from you: a business case in their numbers, with payback stated plainly and the savings kept conservative.
• Find them by asking: "Whose budget does this come out of, and does it need anyone else's approval above a certain amount?"
• Watch for: the person with the title isn't always the one with the budget. In the filled example the money sits in a finance transformation line, not in sales ops.
• Go deeper: What an economic buyer is, Business case template

Executive Sponsor

• Owns: the decision to proceed and the reason it's urgent. The steering meeting, the go decision, and later the launch announcement.
• Needs from you: a short meeting with your own executive, and the business case in three sentences.
• Find them by asking: "Who will present this internally, and who are they presenting it to?"

Technical Evaluator

• Owns: the evaluation. Success criteria in technical terms, the demo agenda, the pilot scope and its scorecard.
• Needs from you: a sales engineer, real data in the demo, and straight answers to the awkward questions.
• Find them by asking: "Who will say whether it actually works for us?"

Security

• Owns: vendor risk intake, the questionnaire review, findings and the final sign-off.
• Needs from you: the SOC 2 report, a pen test summary and a completed questionnaire, early, and a person on your side who can answer follow-ups.
• Find them by asking: "Does a new vendor go through a security review, and how do we get into their queue?"
• Watch for: intake schedules. Some teams only take new vendors into review on set days. Ask, then date the plan around it.
• Go deeper: How to answer a security questionnaire

IT

• Owns: integrations, SSO and user provisioning, the architecture review.
• Needs from you: an integration diagram and a clear answer on what data goes where.
• Find them by asking: "Who approves new apps connecting to your CRM or your identity provider?"

Procurement

• Owns: vendor registration, the purchase requisition, commercial terms, routing the contract for signature.
• Needs from you: tax forms, bank details and insurance certificates the day they ask, and a deal desk contact.
• Find them by asking: "Once you've decided, what happens between yes and a signed contract?"
• Watch for: procurement is often brought in late and treated as a formality. Put them in the plan early, even if their first row is weeks away, so the date they need is on their calendar.

Legal

• Owns: whose paper the contract is on, redlines, the data processing addendum, final language.
• Needs from you: your agreement early, your own legal contact, and fallback language pre-approved for the clauses they always push on.
• Find them by asking: "Does legal review every new contract, or only above a certain value?"

Finance

• Owns: checking the savings model, payment terms, the purchase order.
• Needs from you: the business case's assumptions, written out so they can check them.
• Find them by asking: "Will finance check the numbers before this goes to [the Economic Buyer]?"

End Users

• Owns: the pilot, the honest verdict on whether people will use it, and later the training.
• Needs from you: a short pilot on their real work, and a way to tell you what's missing.
• Find them by asking: "Who will use this every day, and can two or three of them try it?"
• Watch for: a pilot nobody from the user group runs. If the scorecard comes from the evaluator alone, adoption is your next problem.

Small deal, small list. On a deal where one or two people decide, the Champion and the Economic Buyer are often the same person, and that's fine. Keep the rows, put the same name in them, and the plan still tells you what has to happen.

When you don't know the name yet, write the role and leave the name empty. A row owned by "Security: name to confirm" is a question you can ask on the next call. A row with no owner at all is a step nobody will do.

How to get your buyer to co-own it

A plan only the seller updates is a status report. The plan works when the buyer edits it, owns rows in it and quotes it to their own team. You can't demand that. You can make it the easy option.

The principle: draft it, then ask them to correct it

Never show up with a blank template and ask the buyer to fill it in. Never show up with a finished plan and ask them to sign off. Show up with a draft that is mostly right, with gaps you've left on purpose, and ask them to fix it. People will correct a wrong draft long before they'll write a first one, and every correction is a commitment they made themselves.

Leave these gaps for the buyer to fill: the names of their approvers, the lead times of their internal reviews, and the reason for the date. Those are the three things you can't know and they can't dispute once they've written them.

Step 1. Ask for the planning call

Say it at the end of a call where they've just told you the problem and the date. Something like:

"It sounds like having this live before the board meeting is what matters. I've seen these stall when nobody maps the steps on both sides. Can we take 30 minutes this week to sketch it out backwards from that date? I'll bring a draft so you're correcting, not starting from scratch."

Why it works: it's framed around their date, it names the risk without blaming anyone, and "correcting, not starting from scratch" removes the work.

Step 2. Send the draft before the call

Send it a day ahead with a short note:

Subject: Draft plan to [their event]

Hi [name],

Here's a first pass at the steps between now and [their event], counted back from a signature on [date]. I've guessed at a lot on your side, so please don't take any of it as decided. Three things I couldn't know:

1. Who needs to approve, and in what order
2. How long your security and legal reviews usually take
3. Anything on your calendar that blocks dates: holidays, board meetings, people out

We can go through it together on [day]. Mark it up as much as you like before then.

[your name]

Step 3. Run the call in this order

1. The date and why. Confirm the event and do the subtraction together: "you need to be live by X, onboarding takes Y, so we need signature by Z." Write the reason in the first row's notes.
2. The approvers. Go through the buyer owner column. For each blank, ask who it is. For each name you guessed, ask if it's right. This is where you find the people you didn't know about.
3. Their lead times. For security, procurement and legal, ask how long each step really takes and what starts it. Change the dates in front of them.
4. The first two weeks. Agree the next three or four rows in detail, with names on both sides. Leave the rest roughly right.
5. Where it lives. Agree one place you both edit, and who on their side shares it with the other approvers.

Finish with one question: "If we hit every date on here, is there anything that would still stop this being signed on [date]?" The answer is the risk that belongs in the Notes column.

Step 4. Hand the plan to their team, through them

Ask your champion to share the plan with their approvers themselves, not you. A plan forwarded by a colleague is an internal project. A plan sent by a vendor is a sales tactic. Offer to write the cover note for them:

"Team, [vendor] and I have mapped out what it takes to be live before [event]. Your part is marked with your name. Can you check your dates are realistic and tell me by Friday if anything is off?"

Step 5. Keep it alive every week

• Review it at the start of every call, even a short one. Five minutes: what moved, what's late, what's next.
• Update it in front of them. If you update it alone, it becomes yours again.
• Let them mark their own rows done. Ask for the evidence when they do.
• When a date slips, ask what gives. "Security is a week late. Do we move signature, or can legal start in parallel?" The buyer deciding is the buyer owning.

When the buyer pushes back

"We don't really do that kind of thing."

"Fair enough. It's less a process than a list of who needs to do what before [event]. If it's useless after one call, we'll drop it."

"Just send us the proposal."

"Happy to, I'll send it today. The thing I'd worry about is the steps after it: security, legal, procurement. Can I put the dates on one page so nothing surprises us in [month]?"

"Procurement handles all that."

"Great, then they should own those rows. Who's the right person there, and could they look at their part of the plan this week?"

"I can't commit for other people's dates."

"You don't have to. Put their names on the rows, and I'll write a note you can forward asking them to check their own dates."

"This feels like you're pushing for a close date."

"The date's yours, not mine: it's [their event] minus onboarding. If that date is wrong, let's change it. The point is that we both see the same one."

Signs it's working

• The buyer adds a row you didn't think of.
• Someone you've never met is named as an owner.
• Your champion quotes a date from the plan in a meeting you weren't in.
• A row is marked completed without you asking.

Signs it isn't

• Only you have ever edited it.
• Buyer owner cells are still empty after the planning call.
• The plan hasn't been opened since you sent it.
• Every date has slipped and nobody decided what gives.

Which template to use

Start with one base plan, then add a sub-plan when a track needs more detail than one milestone can hold.

Base plans (pick one):

• Core mutual action plan. Most B2B deals of 30 to 90 days. Six milestones from agreeing the date to kickoff. Start here if unsure.
• Enterprise mutual action plan. Five or more approvers, a pilot, an executive meeting, and security, procurement and legal each running their own review. Starts 120 days out.
• SMB mutual action plan. One or two decision-makers, standard terms, two to four weeks. Five milestones, eleven action items, and a trial on real work instead of a formal evaluation.

Sub-plans (add to a base plan):

• Security review sub-plan. When the buyer runs a formal vendor risk review. Covers the NDA, the evidence pack, findings and the hand-off of security commitments to legal.
• Procurement and legal sub-plan. When the decision is made and the contract is the bottleneck. Covers vendor onboarding, commercial terms, whose paper, redlines and approvals.

After signature:

• Onboarding handoff plan. Starts the day the contract is signed and runs 90 days to the first value review. Use it so the buyer doesn't repeat to your delivery team everything they told sales.
• Renewal and expansion plan. Starts four months before the renewal date. Proves the value delivered, then decides any expansion on those results.

Not sure? Use this:

Want to see one done properly first? Read the filled example.

Mistakes that turn a plan into a to-do list

1. Dating it forwards. "Demo, then pilot, then we'll see" has no end. Date every row back from a signature date tied to the buyer's event.
2. Leaving the buyer owner column empty. A plan with owners only on your side is your to-do list in a nicer font. Every row needs a name on each side, or a role with "name to confirm".
3. Sending it finished. A plan the buyer didn't help write is a plan the buyer doesn't own. Send a draft with deliberate gaps.
4. Using your quarter end as the date. Buyers can tell. If your only reason for the date is your forecast, find their reason or expect it to slip.
5. Forgetting procurement and legal until the end. These are the rows that move signature by weeks. Put them in from the first draft, even if they start a month out.
6. Marking rows done without evidence. "Sent the questionnaire" is not "security approved". Write what proves it in the Evidence column.
7. Writing the plan once. A plan nobody has touched in two weeks is decoration. Review it on every call.
8. Too many rows. If the plan is 80 rows long, nobody reads it. Keep each row to a step one person can finish, and move detail into a sub-plan.

A spreadsheet, or a live Deal Room

The templates on this page are free and they work. A shared spreadsheet is a fine place to run a mutual action plan, and plenty of deals close on one. It starts to strain in three places:

• Versions. The plan lives in an attachment, a shared drive and someone's downloads folder, and nobody is sure which is current.
• Context. The plan says "review the security questionnaire". The questionnaire is in an email thread somewhere else.
• Visibility. It's hard to tell whether the buyer opened it, or who on their team has seen their own rows.

In demoshake the plan lives inside a Deal Room: a shared space you prepare for one deal and open to the buyer's team. The action plan holds the same shape as these templates: milestones, each with action items, each assigned to someone on your team or theirs, with status everyone can see, from not started to completed. The content that goes with each step sits in the same room, split by stakeholder role, so security finds the security answers and the Economic Buyer finds the business case. AI can draft the first version of the plan from what the room already knows, and you edit it.