Regardless of stage, prospects always fear what their usage of your product will cost at scale. They create hypotheticals, press you for "ballpark" pricing on a scenario where your company is wildly successful — and yet the first contract hasn't even been signed.
The most effective way we've seen to quell those concerns, after years of sales cycles, is a Partnership Onboarding Plan.
What the plan does
A Partnership Onboarding Plan helps you scope three things clearly:
- Currently being evaluated
- Validated, in-scope, but not now
- Future state — likely not yet approved, or aspirational
Getting these on paper, mutually agreed upon, changes how the rest of the cycle plays out.
What it lets you accomplish
- Anchor the conversation on what you're selling now. When the customer creates hypotheticals about "scale" or future state that are not in scope for this contract, you can point back to the plan you built together: "Last time we built this plan, you mentioned this was out of scope. Has something changed where we should address it now instead of after we start the partnership?"
- Lay the groundwork for the upsell. You now know the customer's desired future state if you succeed on the first use cases. That sets up a near-term expansion or a multi-year agreement based on validated demand.
- Avoid over-forecasting. You stop forecasting $100k+ deals that started smaller and leave you disappointed. And sometimes you find the opposite: an opportunity to convert a bigger deal now that the customer has shown you what it would take to get there.
There's a lot of upfront work to reach this phase in a sales cycle. The Partnership Onboarding Plan is what turns that work into a shared, honest view of what you're selling and what they're buying — now, and next.