A good meeting ends and the seller sends a note thanking the buyer for their time and summarizing the discussion. Two weeks pass. The buyer has meanwhile described the conversation to a manager from memory, forwarded nothing, and moved on to the four other things on their week. The seller's argument now exists only as one person's recollection of it.
A Plan Letter is the written follow up that carries the agreed steps between the meeting and the buyer's own deadline. It is built to be forwarded, because the decisions that matter are made by people the seller has never met, reading something the buyer passed along.
The Six Parts
- The problem, in the buyer's own words. Their phrases, kept as they said them. A colleague reading the letter recognizes the problem as the one their coworker described, which is the difference between a forwarded letter and a deleted one.
- The cost, in the buyer's own figures. What the current situation costs in labor, delay, risk, and money already sitting on a budget. The figures came from the buyer in the meeting, so the letter attributes them to the buyer, and a reviewer who questions them is questioning their own organization's numbers.
- The consequence, attached to the buyer's date. What happens, and to whom, if the situation is unchanged by the date the buyer named. This is what gives the letter a reason to be read this week.
- At least three Power Messages. A Power Message is a statement linking a capability you have to a problem the buyer carries that costs them money. Each one has to be provable and each one has to be something a competitor could not say word for word. A capability every vendor shares is parity, and parity written down earns nothing.
- The agreed steps, with dates and owners on both sides. Both sides is the part sellers drop. A list of what the seller will do is a service commitment. A list that includes what the buyer agreed to do, with their name against it, is a plan, and the buyer either corrects it or accepts it. Both responses are useful.
- One confirmation question. A single question the buyer can answer in one sentence, usually asking whether the account of the problem is right. One question gets answered. Four questions get set aside until the buyer has time, and that time does not arrive.
Six parts, and the discipline is holding the letter to them. Material beyond the six is almost always the seller's own content: the capability overview, the client list, the architecture diagram. Each addition gives a reader somewhere else to look, and the reader stops before the question at the end.
Why the Buyer's Language Carries It
The letter has two audiences and only one of them was in the meeting. The buyer reads it and checks whether they were heard accurately. Everyone after that reads it cold, and what they are deciding is whether the problem described is a real problem their organization has.
Vendor language fails that second test. A sentence about transforming revenue operations reads as marketing to a reader who has met no one from the company. The same situation stated as the buyer stated it, with the buyer's figure attached, reads as internal. Which is why the phrases get captured in the meeting and used unchanged: they are the only language in the letter that carries authority the seller does not have to earn.
Plan Letter: Common Questions
What is a Plan Letter?
A Plan Letter is the written follow up that carries the agreed steps between the meeting and the buyer's own deadline. It records what the buyer said the problem costs, the date they set, the people it affects, the steps both sides agreed to, and the capabilities that address it.
What does a Plan Letter contain?
Six parts: the problem in the buyer's own words, the cost in the buyer's own figures, the consequence attached to the buyer's date, at least three Power Messages, the agreed steps with dates and owners on both sides, and a single confirmation question. Anything beyond those six weakens it.
Why does the letter use the buyer's words?
Because the letter is forwarded to people the seller has never met. A problem described in the buyer's language reads to those people as their colleague's problem. The same problem in vendor language reads as a pitch, and a pitch gets discounted by everyone who did not attend the meeting.
What is a Power Message?
A Power Message is a statement linking a capability you have to a problem the buyer carries that costs them money. It has to be provable, and it has to be something a competitor could not say word for word. A capability every vendor shares is parity and earns nothing in writing.
When should a Plan Letter be sent?
Close enough to the meeting that the buyer still remembers the detail, and after enough thought that the figures and names are right. Same day is usually achievable. The letter is worth the hours because it is the artifact that moves between the meeting and the next decision.
How is a Plan Letter different from a recap email?
A recap email reports what was discussed and asks nothing. A Plan Letter establishes the cost of the current situation using the buyer's figures, attaches it to the buyer's deadline, names the capability that addresses it, lists the steps with owners on both sides, and closes with one question the buyer can answer in a sentence.
What is the difference between an intro call and a demonstration?
An introductory call exists to earn the next conversation. Its job is to establish credibility and surface which problems are worth exploring. A demonstration comes after discovery, once you understand the business problem and what it costs. Moving to a demonstration before that is one of the most common reasons a complex deal stalls, because the buyer sees how a product works without ever establishing why anyone should act this year.
What is pain amplification, and how is it different from a feature pitch?
Pain amplification makes a problem the buyer already has more focused and more visible, so its cost is undeniable to the person who owns that number. A feature pitch describes what a product does. Amplification describes what the problem costs. The Plan Letter is where that is written down, in the buyer's own figures.
How do you win when the products have similar features?
The sales process becomes the differentiator. A Plan Letter aligns to the buyer's own evaluation and approval sequence more closely than a competitor's follow up does, and it carries three Power Messages drawn from the meeting itself. Competitors can match a feature list. They rarely match a document the buyer can forward to a decision maker who was never in the conversation.
What belongs in a Plan Letter besides the problem and the cost?
Three Power Messages that came from that meeting, and the sequence of events both sides agreed to. The sequence names every step to a decision, with an owner against each one, including the buyer's internal steps the seller does not control.
Jeff Aragon, Founder, Jozu Revenue Systems