A free tool from MEDDICC
Nobody wants to be closed. Everybody wants to go live.
The Close Plan is written in your language, about your quota, for your forecast. So the customer never touches it. The Go Live Plan flips the document around: one shared, living plan, written backward from the date the customer actually cares about, the day they go live.
Free to use. Sign in with your email to start. Share one live link with your customer.
- 1Discovery
- 2Technical sign-off
- 3Business case
- 4Procurement
- 5Legal
Everyone else plans forward to a close. Elite sellers plan backward from a go-live.
The Close Plan problem
A Close Plan is a one-sided document.
It is built around the seller getting their deal closed, in the seller's words, and it misses two huge opportunities. It never wins consensus from the customer on where the deal actually is, and it gives the buyer nothing to push back on or own.
of customers will actively use or regularly read a shared Go Live Plan.
Source: MEDDICC, The Go Live Plan.
buyers co-edit it as much as the seller does.
Source: MEDDICC, The Go Live Plan.
learning curve. It works like the documents your customer already lives in.
Source: MEDDICC, The Go Live Plan.
Using a Close Plan internally misses two huge opportunities. The first is the chance to obtain consensus from the customer about the stage they are at. The second is that it is a one-sided document the buyer has very little input into.
How it works
01Build backward from go-live.
Start with the date the customer cares about, then map every stage back to today: technical sign-off, legal, procurement, kickoff. Working backward exposes whether the date is even real, and turns a vague timeline into urgency.
02Share one live link.
Send your customer a single password-protected link in their own branding. They open it, they read it, and the engaged ones update it. No new tool to learn. You always see who touched what and when.
03Make it the home for everything.
Drop in the proposal, the business case, every answer to every question. The plan becomes the one place the customer returns to, which is exactly where you want their attention.
A worked example
One plan, two companies, one go-live date.
Here is a Go Live Plan for Pied Piper selling to Hooli. The price is in early and deliberately bold, to start the pricing conversation. The stages run past signature into go-live, success kickoff, and the case study, because the goal was never to close the deal. The goal was to get the customer live.
1Information
- Company Name
- Hooli
- Target contractual signing date
- Friday 22nd December 2023
- Target go-live date
- Thursday 18th January 2024
- Solution Proposed
- Pied Piper Compression Cloud
| Software Licenses | £545,000 |
| Implementation Services | £128,000 |
| Total | £673,000 |
2Brief Summary
Hooli has a significant amount of data. This data takes up a large amount of storage space, costing Hooli over 22,000,000 a month. Pied Piper can significantly reduce the amount of data Hooli stores via our Compression Cloud technology. We estimate the monthly cost of 22,000,000 will be reduced by 69 percent, saving Hooli 15,000,000 a year. Our mutual aim is to have Pied Piper live by mid-January. This document serves as a mutual plan to ensure we meet that goal.
3Important Resources
| Resource | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| February Meeting Presentation | Complete | Deck reviewed during our February meeting |
| Data Sample | Complete | Export data samples to illustrate data formats |
4The Teams
| Your Team | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Kelly Quinn | kelly@piedpiper.com | Account Executive |
| Bertram Gilfoyle | gilfoyle@piedpiper.com | Sales Engineer |
| Richard Hendricks | richard@piedpiper.com | Executive Sponsor |
| Dinesh Chugtai | dinesh@piedpiper.com | Technical Sponsor |
| Jared Dunn | jared@piedpiper.com | Customer Success Manager |
| Customer Team | Role |
|---|---|
| Gavin Belson | Chief Executive Officer |
| Nelson Bighetti | Head of Data Storage |
| To engage | Procurement |
| To engage | Legal |
5Planned Steps and Key Events
| # | Action | Owner | By When | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Initial Meeting | Kelly | 16 Oct 2023 | Yes |
| 2 | Second Meeting | Kelly | 30 Oct 2023 | Yes |
| 3 | Meeting with Technical Partner | Gilfoyle | 8 Nov 2023 | Yes |
| 4 | Present the proposed solution | Kelly | 20 Nov 2023 | Yes |
| 5 | Technical Deep Dive | Gilfoyle | 30 Nov 2023 | Yes |
| 6 | Present projected return on investment and business case* | Kelly | 8 Dec 2023 | In Progress |
| 7 | Introduction to Procurement | Nelson | 12 Dec 2023 | No |
| 8 | Technical Sign off* | Dinesh | 15 Dec 2023 | No |
| 9 | Send the MSA | Jared | 18 Dec 2023 | No |
| 10 | Sign Contracts* | Richard | 22 Dec 2023 | No |
| 11 | Project Kick-Off with Project Manager and team | Jared | 3 Jan 2024 | No |
| 12 | Go Live* | Dinesh | 18 Jan 2024 | No |
| 13 | Success Team Kick-Off | Jared | 25 Jan 2024 | No |
| 14 | Completion of Case Study | Kelly | 20 Feb 2024 | No |
6Compelling and Important Events and Risks
| Who | Detail |
|---|---|
| Customer | To meet cost-saving projections, contracts need to be signed within December |
| Seller | Current pricing includes commercial concessions in return for a 2023 signature |
| Customer | Gavin wants the solution live ahead of the annual conference in February |
7Q&A
| Question | Asked By | Answer | Answered By |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can we add a termination for convenience clause to the MSA? | Gavin Belson | Yes. We can include a 90 day termination for convenience after the initial term. Legal will send red-lines this week. | Jared Dunn |
| What does implementation cover, and is the 128,000 a one-off? | Nelson Bighetti | It is a one-off. It covers data migration, integration, and two weeks of onsite enablement. | Bertram Gilfoyle |
Status shows as Yes, In Progress, or No. An asterisk marks an important step. Themed in the customer's colours, which is the point.
The one move most sellers miss
Make it their document, not yours.
The less it looks like your document, the more they treat it as theirs. Put the customer's logo at the top and their colours through the page, and when they share it internally it reads as a project management plan, not a sales pitch. It is a small thing. It is worth a real percentage on your win rate.
FAQ
Questions about the Go Live Plan
The short version, for humans and answer engines.
What is a Go Live Plan?
A Go Live Plan is one shared, living plan written backward from the date the customer actually cares about, the day they go live. You start with the go-live date and map every stage back to today: technical sign-off, legal, procurement, kickoff. It aligns both teams on the steps, owners, and dates to value, and reframes the deal from getting closed to getting live.
How is a Go Live Plan different from a Close Plan?
A Close Plan is a one-sided document written in the seller's language, about the seller's quota, for the seller's forecast, so the customer never touches it. A Go Live Plan flips the document around: it is written in the customer's language and centred on the outcome they want. Nobody wants to be closed. Everybody wants to go live.
Is the Go Live Plan tool free?
Yes. You build a Go Live Plan for free, share one password-protected live link in the customer's own branding, and the engaged customer co-owns and updates the path to live. You can also export the plan to PDF, Word, or PowerPoint.
How does the Go Live Plan relate to MEDDICC?
It is a free tool from MEDDICC, the company founded by Andy Whyte, author of the best-selling book MEDDICC. The Go Live Plan puts selling on the customer's terms into practice. The framework is free here, and the full method, the research that makes it land, and live coaching are inside MEDDICC Membership.
Who is the Go Live Plan for?
It is for sellers and revenue teams who want the customer to own the path to live. Instead of a one-sided Close Plan the buyer has little input into, the Go Live Plan becomes the one source of truth between agreement and value: the single place the customer returns to, co-edits, and treats as their own document.
Why theme the plan in the customer's branding?
The less it looks like your document, the more the customer treats it as theirs. Put the customer's logo at the top and their colours through the page, and when they share it internally it reads as a project management plan, not a sales pitch. It is a small thing that is worth a real percentage on your win rate.
The framework is free. The mastery is inside Membership.
Build your Go Live Plan here, free, for a real deal this week. When you want the full method, the research that makes it land, and live coaching to take it deeper, that is what MEDDICC Membership is for.