A mutual action plan is a shared record of the decisions a buyer and seller need to make, who owns each one, what must happen first, and which dates both sides have actually confirmed. Start with the customer's desired outcome, not your quarter-end close date. A plan becomes mutual when the buyer can correct its assumptions and accept their part of the work.
Use the template below to build a small, working plan for an active B2B opportunity. It includes a blank version, a completed fictional example, a confirmation message and rules for changing the sequence when new information arrives. It is not a contract, a substitute for procurement, or a list of tasks you assign to a buyer without their agreement.
What belongs in a mutual action plan?
Every milestone should resolve a real decision or produce something both teams can inspect. “Follow up with procurement” describes seller activity. “Procurement confirms the required vendor-onboarding documents” describes a useful result. The difference matters when a busy buyer asks why another meeting is necessary.
GitLab's public deal-closure handbook provides a primary example of jointly planning tasks, participants and deadlines. The original worksheet here adds explicit fields for confirmation evidence and unmet dependencies, so a proposed deadline cannot quietly become a commitment.
- Outcome: the business change the customer is evaluating.
- Decision: what the next milestone needs to settle.
- Dependency: the fact, document or approval needed first.
- Owner on each side: a named participant who has accepted responsibility, not an assumed approver.
- Proposed date: a planning suggestion until confirmed.
- Confirmed date and evidence: the actual agreement, linked to a permitted message or meeting note.
- State: proposed, confirmed, blocked, complete or paused.
Build the plan backward from a useful outcome
Ask what the customer wants to achieve and why that timing matters. If their target is only an aspiration, say so. A launch tied to a contractual obligation has different evidence and owners from a seller's preferred signing date. Do not turn your understanding of urgency into a statement the buyer never made.
- Define the evaluation: record the current problem and the result a test could demonstrate.
- Identify the next decision: determine whether the buyer is deciding to test, select, contract or implement. These are different milestones.
- Map prerequisites: ask which security, operational, budget and procurement steps apply to this purchase.
- Invite corrections: send a short proposal and ask the buyer to change its order, owners and dates.
- Confirm only what is agreed: preserve an unanswered milestone as proposed.
- Review changes together: move dependent work when an upstream decision changes.
A customer can confirm an evaluation meeting without confirming a purchase. Someone who helps with security review may not have authority to approve the contract. Keep those roles distinct. If you need a wider view of everyone involved, use the existing multi-threaded sales guide rather than expanding this plan into a second stakeholder directory.
Mutual action plan
Copy this into a shared document and replace every bracketed field. Remove irrelevant rows rather than pretending every purchase follows the same process. Dates may remain blank until an owner confirms them.
Plan
ID: [identifier]
Version: [version]
Customer outcome: [change the customer wants]
Current decision: [evaluate, select, contract or implement]
Customer coordinator: [confirmed name and role]
Seller coordinator: [name and role]
Target outcome date: [date or unknown]
Date basis: [confirmed, proposed or unknown]
Permitted evidence location: [shared document or approved reference]
Milestone
Repeat this section for each decision or inspectable output.
Milestone: [decision or output]
Acceptance evidence: [what proves completion]
Dependency: [prerequisite, none or unknown]
Customer owner: [name]
Customer owner acceptance: [accepted or unconfirmed]
Seller owner: [name]
Seller owner acceptance: [accepted or unconfirmed]
Proposed date: [date or not proposed]
Confirmed date: [date or not confirmed]
Confirmation source: [evidence or not confirmed]
State: [proposed, confirmed, blocked, complete or paused]
Next review: [date or trigger]
Change log
Repeat for each change.
Version: [version]
Changed item: [item]
Reason: [reason]
Confirmed by: [person]
Evidence: [reference]
Pause rule
[Unresolved prerequisite, permission or owner that stops dependent work]Keep sensitive records in their authorized systems. The plan can reference a security review without copying confidential findings into a broadly shared document. A link is useful only if the intended participants have permission to open it.
Worked example: the Friday deadline nobody confirmed
Illustrative example: Harbor Analytics, a fictional seller, is discussing a reporting tool with Northline, a fictional operations company. Harbor proposes completing legal review on Friday. Northline has agreed only to a procurement intake meeting. The intake reveals that a security owner has not yet been assigned. These are invented names and planning events, not Finta customer results.
| Milestone | Dependency and owners | Proposed versus confirmed | State and evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirm evaluation success criteria | Customer operations lead and seller solution lead | Tuesday proposed; Tuesday confirmed in shared recap | Complete: agreed example report and acceptance notes |
| Identify procurement requirements | Customer procurement coordinator; seller account owner supplies requested overview | Wednesday confirmed for intake only | Complete: intake checklist identifies security prerequisite |
| Assign security reviewer and agree scope | Customer coordinator must identify authorized security owner | Thursday proposed; no confirmation | Blocked: no accepted security owner |
| Review contract | Required security step and authorized legal participants | Friday was seller proposal; confirmed date unknown | Paused: remove Friday from any committed timeline |
The useful correction is not to send a more forceful Friday reminder. It is to record the missing owner, ask who can resolve that dependency, and re-plan the downstream milestone. The customer may decide the project should wait. That is better information than a tidy but imaginary close plan.
Confirm the plan without creating false agreement
Send a short message that makes correction easy. Do not treat silence, a read receipt or a calendar acceptance as agreement to every line of a plan.
Subject: Proposed next decisions for [initiative]
Hi [name],
Thanks for clarifying [customer outcome]. I have updated the shared plan to distinguish what we agreed from what still needs a decision.
Confirmed: [decision, owner and date supported by the conversation].
Still proposed: [milestone or date that needs agreement].
Blocked: [dependency and the question needed to resolve it].
Could you correct the sequence and confirm who should own [specific open item]? I have not treated [unconfirmed date] as a commitment.
If the timing or priority has changed, we can revise or pause the plan.When a buyer corrects a date, preserve the change record. A version label and one confirmation reference are more useful than an apparently current spreadsheet with no explanation of who changed it.
Run a review that changes the work
Review only the milestones that need a decision. For each, ask whether the dependency is satisfied, whether the owner still accepts the work, and whether the evidence supports completion. “We discussed it” may mean the issue is understood; it does not necessarily mean the approval was granted.
| New information | Plan change | What not to do |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer owner leaves the project | Mark affected tasks unconfirmed until a replacement accepts them | Assign their successor automatically |
| Security scope expands | Record new prerequisites and reconsider dependent dates | Leave the old close date as committed |
| Budget decision is deferred | Pause commercial milestones; agree whether a later review is useful | Invent urgency or continue an unwanted cadence |
| Evaluation fails its success criteria | Document the gap and decide whether to revise, stop or test a narrower case | Mark the evaluation complete as a win |
Use Aurora, Claude or Codex to check the plan
Give an AI assistant only information you are permitted to share. This prompt produces a review draft, not buyer approval or an authoritative contract schedule.
Task
Review my mutual action plan using only the material below. Prepare a proposed correction for human review.
Tool: [Aurora AI in Finta, Claude or Codex]
Inputs
Permitted notes and source references: [paste approved notes]
Current plan: [paste the plan]
Output
For each milestone, separate proposed dates from dates that were explicitly confirmed. Identify missing owners, unmet dependencies and missing acceptance evidence. Quote or reference the supplied evidence for each claimed commitment.
Return the proposed corrected plan and one concise clarification question for each blocker.
Constraints
Mark unsupported commitments as unknown. Do not infer agreement from silence. Keep contract, pricing and security approvals with the authorized people. Use no private sources beyond the supplied material, and do not send messages or change records. A person must check the evidence and approve any later use.Keep the evidence connected to the relationship
Finta can help keep relevant relationship context and working next steps connected to the people involved. Use the plan as a reviewable working document, and confirm the available tools and permissions before asking Aurora to act. A specialist procurement system may remain the authority for a formal approval; do not imply a CRM note replaces it.
At handoff, ask who owns implementation, what the customer has actually accepted, which dependencies remain open, and where commitments are recorded. Share only the approved version. Start with one active opportunity and check whether another person can understand its next decision without an oral explanation.
Informational note: This is general operational education, not legal, tax or accounting advice. Finta is not a law or accounting firm. Consult your attorney or accountant about contracts, obligations, confidentiality or accounting treatment.