The Mutual Action Plan as a Lie Detector (with Kaveh Pazzoki from Surfe)

The fastest way to find out whether a deal is real is to ask the prospect for homework.

Most mutual action plans get built because middle management wants one in place, which makes them a formality. On this episode of Pipeline, Joseph Lewin talks with Kaveh Pazooki, Founding Account Executive at Surfe, about running one as a lie detector instead. Kaveh has sold at Datadog, Rippling, and Salesforce, and he builds the plan with the prospect rather than presenting it at them. After a large demo where most people just nod along, he books five-minute one-on-ones with the end users and asks what’s working well enough with the incumbent to make them hesitate. That surfaces pain the original champion never had, and it’s what feeds the ROI analysis for the economic buyer at the end.

What you can use by Monday:

• Take your top three active deals and check whether each one actually has a mutual action plan attached to it.
• Look at whether the prospect has deliverables on that plan, not just you, and whether they’ve executed on them.
• If the answer is no across the board, park the deal outside the quarter instead of forecasting it.
• Bring those gaps to your forecast meeting and ask your manager to strategize on how to mitigate the risk.
• After a group demo, book five-minute one-on-ones with the end users and keep doing discovery on what they like about their current tool.

Pipeline is short conversations with GTM peers who are actually filling pipeline right now, so you leave with something you can use by Monday. New episodes weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen. Produced by Podcast 2 Pipeline.