Strategic account planning and execution for enterprise deals. Use when planning complex sales cycles, managing multiple stakeholders, applying MEDDICC qualification, tracking deal health, or building mutual action plans. Includes the "stale MAP equals dead deal" pattern.
Strategic account planning and execution for enterprise deals. Turn complex sales cycles into systematic wins — or at least know when they're dying before you waste months.
Triggers:
Context:
The Pattern I've Seen:
The Mutual Action Plan (MAP) is the single best indicator of deal health. Not pipeline stage. Not verbal commitments. Not "they love the product."
The MAP tells you everything:
Healthy deal:
Dying deal:
Why This Happens:
When a deal is real, the customer wants it to happen. They're doing work. They're involving stakeholders. They're moving through their process.
When a deal is dying, you're doing all the work. They're "too busy." They'll "get back to you next week." The economic buyer is "traveling."
The 3-Week Rule:
If your MAP hasn't been updated in 3 weeks, the deal is dead — you just don't know it yet. I've never seen a deal close with a stale MAP. Not once in 11 years.
What to Do:
Week 1 of silence: Send MAP update: "Here's what we've completed. What's your status on [specific customer action]?"
Week 2 of silence: Escalate to champion: "Haven't heard back on MAP. Are we still on track for [date]? If priorities shifted, let me know."
Week 3 of silence: Qualify out or reset: "It seems like timing might not be right. Should we pause and reconnect in [timeframe], or is there a blocker I can help with?"
Common Mistake:
Keeping deals in pipeline because "they said they want it." Verbal interest ≠ action. If they're not doing work, they're not buying.
The Pattern:
You're 8 weeks into a deal. POC went great. Champion loves you. Technical validation complete. You send the proposal.
Then: radio silence.
What happened? You never met the Economic Buyer.
The Economic Buyer (EB) is the person who:
Not:
Why Deals Die Without EB Access:
You built the business case with your champion's assumptions. But the EB has different priorities:
When you send proposal to EB through the champion, EB sees:
Result: Deal stalls or dies.
The Framework: EB Validation Checklist
Before sending proposal, validate:
If you answered "no" to any, don't send the proposal yet.
How to Get EB Access:
Ask your champion: "Before we finalize pricing, I'd love 15 minutes with [EB name] to make sure we're aligned on outcomes and timeline. Can you intro us?"
If champion blocks: "I can handle that, you don't need to talk to them" → This is a red flag. Either champion doesn't have access (not a real champion) or they're afraid EB will kill the deal (which means deal is weak).
Push back: "I totally understand. At the same time, I want to make sure [EB] sees the full value before seeing the price. In my experience, when economic buyers aren't involved early, deals get delayed in procurement. Can we do a quick alignment call?"
Common Mistake:
Treating EB meeting as "nice to have." It's mandatory for any deal >$50K. No EB access = no deal.
The Pattern:
Enterprise software purchases are made by committees. But committees don't buy. People buy.
And people buy for personal reasons:
Framework: Personal Win Identification
For each stakeholder, map:
Professional Win:
Professional Risk:
Personal Motivations:
Example: VP of Engineering
Professional Win:
Professional Risk:
Personal Motivations:
How This Changes Your Pitch:
Generic pitch: "Our platform improves incident response time by 40%."
Personal win pitch: "You mentioned the on-call burden is burning out your team. We've seen teams reduce on-call pages by 40% in the first month, which helps with retention. And since you're focused on uptime metrics for the board, the improved response time shows up immediately in your QBR dashboards."
The Difference:
Generic = business case Personal = career case
Both matter. But personal wins close deals.
Common Mistake:
Selling only to the business problem. "This saves money. This improves efficiency." That's necessary but not sufficient. People need to see what's in it for them personally.
A complete account plan has four interconnected pieces. Each feeds the others.
Component 1: Account Summary
Component 2: Org Chart
Component 3: Opportunity Plan (MEDDICC)
Plus: Issues/Risks table with mitigation plans, help needed, responsible parties
Component 4: Mutual Action Plan (MAP)
Decision Criteria:
Full account plans worth investment for top 10-20% of accounts by potential deal size. For rest, use simplified version (summary + MEDDICC + next steps).
Common Mistakes:
Before engaging strategic account, quantify their investment in your domain via LinkedIn.
How to Execute:
Why This Works:
If a company has 50 employees with "SRE" in their profile, they're mature in site reliability. If they have 2, they're not ready for advanced observability tools.
This tells you:
Example:
Searching "[Company] + DevOps":
Searching "[Company] + SRE":
Common Mistakes:
Enterprise sales follows defined stages with clear exit criteria. Don't advance stages without meeting criteria.
Stage 0 — Pipeline Generation: Prospecting → Qualified interest confirmed Stage 1 — Discovery: Environment/pain/requirements → Pain identified, stakeholders mapped Stage 2 — Demonstrating: Product demo, champion building → Champion identified Stage 3 — Proving Value: POC/trial → Technical validation complete Stage 4 — Proposal: Pricing, terms, scope → Proposal delivered, EB aligned Stage 5 — Paper Process: Legal, procurement, security → Approvals secured Stage 6 — Closed Won: Deal signed → Customer success handoff
Exit Criteria Matter:
Don't move from Stage 2 → Stage 3 until you have a champion. Don't move from Stage 3 → Stage 4 until POC success criteria are met. Don't move from Stage 4 → Stage 5 until EB has approved.
Common Mistake:
Advancing stages based on activity, not criteria. "We demoed, so we're in Stage 3" — but if they haven't agreed to POC, you're still in Stage 2.
Is deal size above average ACV?
├─ No → Simplified plan (summary + MEDDICC)
└─ Yes → Continue...
│
Sales cycle >60 days?
├─ Yes → Full account plan
└─ No → Simplified plan
Is MAP being updated weekly?
├─ Yes → Healthy
└─ No → Continue...
│
Has it been >3 weeks since last MAP update?
├─ Yes → Dead deal (qualify out or reset)
└─ No → At risk (escalate to champion)
Have you met the Economic Buyer?
├─ No → Don't send yet (get EB access first)
└─ Yes → Continue...
│
Does EB agree on problem and success metrics?
├─ Yes → Send proposal
└─ No → Align with EB before sending
1. Creating account plan too late
2. MEDDICC filled with assumptions
3. Stale Mutual Action Plan
4. Mapping only the buyer
5. Ignoring personal wins
6. Not tracking deal health
7. Skipping champion validation
MAP Health Check:
MEDDICC Validation:
Personal Win Questions:
Account Plan Checklist:
Based on enterprise sales at a platform company during hypergrowth, with patterns from closing strategic accounts, navigating complex procurement processes, and learning the hard way that stale MAPs = dead deals. Not theory — lessons from watching deals die because we didn't track health metrics and closing deals because we validated EB alignment early.