From Close Plans to Mutual Success Plans: Elevating B2B Sales Outcomes

Find out why Mutual Success Plans are far more effective than "close plans" by registering for my webinar with the Institute of Sales Professionals on the 13th Nov.

High-performing B2B sales organisations have often regarded “close plans” as a best practice. These plans typically identify a series of seller-defined steps designed to move an opportunity from an early stage to contract signature. But in today’s complex B2B buying environments - characterised by an ever-growing number of stakeholders, non-linear decision paths, and heightened buyer risk sensitivity - these traditional close plans are no longer fit for purpose. In fact, in many cases, they reinforce the wrong sales behaviours: linear thinking, seller-centric activity, and an obsession with closing the deal rather than ensuring the customer subsequently achieves their intended outcomes.

A better approach is emerging: Mutual Success Plans. These plans replace the “seller milestone checklist” with a co-created roadmap that aligns all the key stakeholders across both the customer and the vendor around a shared definition of success. Instead of being solely designed to make the salesperson successful, they are also focused on making the customer successful - and in doing so, creating the most reliable path to a profitable, long-term relationship.

Why Close Plans Fall Short in Today’s Environment

Traditional close plans reflect a world that no longer exists. They are typically:

• Internally focused: Created by sellers, for sellers, and often never shared with the customer
• Linear and process-driven: Based on the vendor’s sales stages, not the buyer’s decision dynamics
• Centred on contract signature: They end when the paperwork is signed, ignoring the reality that in an “as a service” economy, the vendor’s profitability depends on long-term customer adoption, renewal and expansion
• Detached from customer value: They rarely clarify why the customer needs to act, what outcome they must achieve, or how success will be measured

In Summary: Traditional close plans focus on winning the deal - but today’s complex business environments require plans that help the customer to achieve their desired outcomes.

The Complex, Non-Linear Reality of Modern B2B Buying

Rigidly defined, stage-based sales processes that assume a linear buyer journey fail to reflect today’s reality. Research consistently shows that B2B buying is messy - more like navigating a bowl of spaghetti than following a clean, sequenced path.

This should be no surprise, given that:

• B2B buying groups are larger and more diverse
• Stakeholders join, leave, or re-enter discussions at any time
• Priorities and pressures shift during the buying decision journey
• Buyers frequently revisit early-stage considerations late in the process

Even more importantly, late-stage deals now typically don’t fail because the vendor couldn’t demonstrate value. They typically fail because buyers have become increasingly risk-averse. As the moment of commitment approaches, their FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) gives way to their FOMU (Fear of Messing Up). This shift has profound implications: buyers need stronger reassurance, clearer alignment, and higher confidence that the initiative will succeed.

Traditional close plans do nothing to address this. Mutual Success Plans do.

Enter Mutual Success Plans

A Mutual Success Plan is a co-created roadmap that helps both buyer and seller navigate the journey from the customer’s current situation to their desired outcomes.

Where a “close plan” prioritises getting an order, an effective Mutual Success Plan focuses on enabling the customer to make the best possible buying decision and on ensuring that they succeed in their objectives after buying.

An effective Mutual Success Plan:

• Clearly defines the customer’s desired outcomes
• Identifies the key business issue that makes action necessary
• Makes the costs and consequences of inaction explicit
• Aligns on the timeframe in which the customer needs to achieve success
• Establishes roles and responsibilities across both organisations
• Maps out phases, steps, milestones and dependencies
• Remains active well beyond contract signature - until the agreed outcomes are achieved

This shift is highly strategic. In an “as a service” world, vendors of complex solutions typically only become meaningfully profitable when customers renew and expand. Therefore, unless the customer makes money - or realises meaningful value - the vendor won’t either.

Mutual Success Plans hard-wire this reality into the sales process.

Starting With the End in Mind

The foundation of any Mutual Success Plan is clarity about what the customer's success looks like and when it must be achieved. This is the “north star” for all subsequent planning.

Sellers must help the customer:

• Define the current situation and who is affected
• Identify the key business issue or trigger
• Articulate the desired future state
• Quantify the benefits of acting and the risks of delaying
• Determine the latest possible date by which the outcome must be delivered

This creates what can be described as the “outcome gap” - the distance between where they are today and where they need to be. When this gap is small or stable, customers tend to stick with the status quo. When this gap is large or growing, they are far more likely to act.

Part of the seller’s value is helping the customer fully explore and stretch this outcome gap. Not through pressure or manipulation, but by helping them see both the full consequences of inaction and the full benefits of change.

Aligning Stakeholders on Both Sides

Modern buying decisions involve a broad network of stakeholders, each with their own priorities, risks and constraints. Mutual Success Plans ensure that sellers and buyers jointly identify the individuals involved in:

• Research
• Evaluation
• Decision-making
• Approval
• Implementation
• Post-purchase success

This includes legal, procurement, IT security and other specialists who often cause late-stage delays when they are introduced too late into the process.

By mapping all the key stakeholder roles early and aligning both teams around responsibilities, Mutual Succes Plans reduce friction and accelerate decisions.

Working Backwards to Build the Roadmap

Once the desired outcome and timeframe are agreed, the Mutual Success Plan helps both parties work backwards to identify:

• Phases of the buying and implementation journey
• Key steps and milestones within each phase
• Responsibilities and owners
• Start and end dates
• Indicators that the customer is ready to advance to the next stage

The goal is not to create a highly detailed project plan. Buyers do not want another complex document to manage. Instead, the focus is on:

• Critical path activities
• Mutually important milestones
• Joint accountability
• Transparency around progress and risk

Most importantly, many of these steps are primarily owned by the customer, not the vendor. This reinforces shared responsibility for success and helps avoid one-sided plans that collapse when the customer becomes passive.

A Living, Adaptive Plan

Unlike static close plans, Mutual Success Plans are inherently dynamic. They evolve as stakeholder groups change, events unfold, dependencies shift or new information emerges. Regular review is essential.

The plan becomes the single shared source of truth (and an early warning mechanism) for:

• Progress
• Risks and slippages
• Dependencies
• Decisions
• Accountability
• Alignment

Increasingly, sales teams are using digital tools to manage Mutual Success Plans - whether through shared spreadsheets or specialist platforms embedded in “digital sales rooms”. Whatever the format, the principle remains the same: the plan must be co-created, visible and current.

Why Mutual Success Plans Create Better Outcomes

Mutual Success Plans consistently create stronger deal outcomes because they:

• Align seller and buyer around a shared goal
• Reduce late-stage buyer anxiety
• Improve forecast accuracy
• Increase trust and transparency
• Surface risks early
• Strengthen qualification
• Build long-term, profitable relationships

In effect, Mutual Success Plans move the sales conversation from “How do we close this deal?” to “How do we ensure you succeed?”

That mindset shift is transformational.

Conclusion

Close plans may still have a role. They can help sales teams stay organised, but they do not help customers navigate complexity or build confidence. In high-value, high-stakes B2B environments, Mutual Success Plans are not merely a more customer-friendly alternative - they are a commercial necessity.

Companies that adopt Mutual Success Plans don’t just close more deals. They create deeper alignment, reduce friction, accelerate decisions and build the foundations for sustained customer success. They end up with more successful, more profitable customers, and fewer frustrated, unprofitable customers.

In an increasingly as-a-service world where maximising long-term profitability inevitably depends on renewal and expansion, Mutual Success Plans are not just invaluable - they are indispensable.

At least that’s what I think. What do you think, and what are your experiences of Mutual Success Plans?