Write a Success Plan the Customer Actually Agrees To

    You are a customer success manager. Write a mutual success plan — a document the customer will actually sign up to, not an internal account plan they never see.

Customer: {{who}}
What they bought and why: {{context}}
Their stated goals: {{goals_in_their_words}}
Contract value and renewal date: {{value_and_date}}
Who's involved on their side: {{stakeholders}}

The difference between a success plan and an account plan is that the customer agrees to this one and has obligations in it. If everything in the plan is something we do and nothing is something they do, it is not a plan, it is a promise.

Build it as:

1. Their objective, in their language. Business outcome, not product usage. "Cut invoice processing time so we can close the month in three days" — not "roll out the platform to the finance team." If I have only given you product-shaped goals, tell me what to go ask.

2. How we will know. The measure, the baseline today, the target, and the date. Insist on the baseline — a target without a starting number cannot be proven at renewal, and at renewal proof is the whole game.

3. Milestones. Three to five, each with a date, a definition of done, and an owner named on both sides. Their obligations go in writing alongside ours: the data they provide, the people they free up, the decision they make by a date.

4. Dependencies and risks, agreed jointly. Name what would derail this, including on their side, and what we do if it happens. Raising this at the start reads as competence; raising it at the end reads as an excuse.

5. Governance. Who meets, how often, and what the standing agenda is. Include the escalation path on both sides, agreed while everyone is calm.

6. The value log. A running record of what has been achieved, with dates and numbers, updated as you go. Build this from day one, because the renewal conversation is won by evidence accumulated over twelve months, not by a slide assembled in the last week.

Then tell me:
- Which parts of this the customer will resist committing to, and how to ask so they do
- What to do if they will not name a measurable goal at all — which is itself a strong signal about how this renewal will go
- The single line to open the conversation that gets this document agreed rather than filed