Creating a Team Template in Align streamlines your sales process and ensures consistency across teams. This guide provides a concise step-by-step on building an effective Mutual Action Plan template.
Team Template Creation Steps
An admin can create a Team Template from the Template menu menu and start from scratch using the Create Template button (A), or use one of the existing starter templates loaded into your Align organization and making a copy of it (B).
Use any existing MAP templates as a basis to for the template creation process.
Welcome Message
Start with a general value proposition that addresses common pain points that you organization solves or create welcome message for your customer when they enter the shared workspace.
The message can later be customized by a Rep to meet their customer’s unique needs.
Objectives
Collaborate with key customer stakeholders to define core objectives and add them to your workspace. Objectives must first be created by an admin in Align settings where you can add placeholder text and map them back to fields on your Salesforce opportunities.
Refer to the our post on Objectives for more information on creating objectives.
Plan & Timeline
Target key milestones from discovery to value realized. Begin with a simple base template that consists of 4-5 milestones. You can also create smaller templates using template snippets and insert additional milestones into you plan as the deal progresses by using the Import from template feature on a live plan.
Align your milestone dates with your sales cycle (A)
Include a brief milestone description (B)
Add Team Roles to each milestone (C) view the article on Team Role creation
Add resources to each milestone (D) resources can also be added to the general library tab
Include action items from both the buying and selling team in each milestone (E)
Example template ideas:
Discovery & Solution Validation: Promote discovery, demos, and solution fit requirements into a few milestones.
Initial Buyer Conversation: Incorporate a Commercial Sales Cycle template when buyer interest increases.
Security & Technical Requirements: Craft milestone and actions from each team around typical engagements for your technical team.
Implementation Timeline Request: Add an implementation template with a high level overview of what post sales looks like and involve relevant teams.
Close Plan: Create a template with steps to close from a typical procurement cycle all the way through contract closure and commercials.
Additional Buyer Requirements: Insert a Proof of Value template as needed.