Welcome back to Dominating Sales!
Continuing the series on how to get paid more in sales, today, we will discuss the MEDDICC qualification framework.
MEDDICC is a powerful tool for identifying and qualifying sales leads. This framework is designed to help sales professionals understand a potential sale's key components and identify the key players and decision-making processes involved.
This is something that changed my own sales career in unbelievable ways, from increasing my close rate, increasing ACV, even opening doors to jobs I wouldn’t have been able to get previously.
As mentioned in our first issue of this series, “The Challenger Sales”, several sales methodologies and frameworks are seen with respect in the industry. The ability to talk about them brings you closer to alignment to what hiring managers for Enterprise AEs are looking for - remember to make more, learn to fit the mould of someone who makes more.
As you can see here in the image below, challenger sale, MEDDICC (With one C, we will discuss the discrepancy), and Sandler are the three clear winners here.
From Bravado’s “State of Sales Compensation 2022”
Let’s get into it…
The acronym MEDDICC stands for Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion, and Competition. By understanding and utilizing these elements, salespeople can more effectively qualify leads and close deals. Keep reading to learn more about the MEDDICC framework and how it can help you achieve success in sales.
We will go through each of these points in order, then discuss how to implement this framework into your own sales practice.
Intro To MEDDICC
First a quick note - difference between MEDDICC, MEDDIC, and MEDDPICC. These are all based on the same framework, but add or remove focus on certain aspects of the deal. MEDDIC is the most straight forward and assumes competitors should fit within metrics. I choose to put emphasis on the competitive element of a deal, because it allows you to be more strategic with how to lay traps as discussed in The Challenger Sale (This is also the topic of an upcoming post). MEDDPICC is usually used in industries with a longer procurement / legal element of the deal cycle, P standing for Paper process. Other implementations include R - Risks, P - Partners, C - Compelling Event. All of these are useful and if they are important for you, do some research; if you like reading books, a great resource is MEDDICC by Andy Whyte, or there are a lot of free resources online.
Let’s get into it.
M - Metrics: The first step in the MEDDICC qualification framework is to identify the key metrics that will indicate success for the potential customer. This could include revenue targets, cost savings, or other key performance indicators. Understanding the customer's metrics allows you to tailor your pitch to align with their goals and demonstrate how your product or service can help them succeed.
E - Economic Buyer: The economic buyer is the person or group responsible for making financial decisions within an organization - concerning YOUR product. Depending on company size, this could be a CFO, CEO, or other high-level executives, or maybe a VP, Head Of -, or Director who has a discretionary budget available. Identifying the economic buyer is important because they will decide whether to purchase your product or service - often new sales reps mistake their champion for the economic buyer. This is DEATH to your deals. Sometimes, the contact even says they’re the EB, DON’T FALL INTO THIS TRAP. By understanding the economic buyer's goals, you can tailor your pitch to align with their priorities and demonstrate the financial benefits of your product.
D - Decision Criteria: The next step in the MEDDICC framework is to identify the decision criteria that the customer will use to evaluate your product or service. This could include things like price, quality, or service level. By understanding the customer's decision criteria, you can tailor your pitch to address their specific concerns and demonstrate how your product or service meets their needs. This is also where you can take a moment to control the sale and use what you learnt from the Challenger Sale to influence extra decision criteria to cut out your competition.
D - Decision Process: The decision process refers to the steps the customer will take to evaluate and purchase your product or service. This could include a formal RFP process, a series of meetings with stakeholders, or a trial period. By understanding the customer's decision process, you can tailor your sales strategy to align with their process and increase the chances of closing the deal.
I - Identify Pain: Identifying pain points or problems that the customer is facing is crucial to understand before proposing a solution. By understanding the customer's pain points, you can tailor your pitch to show how your product or service can solve their problems and improve their business, as well as play on your prospect’s emotions, ensuring they don’t just logically want to get your solution, they would FEEL pain if they don’t. This step is important to build credibility and trust with the customer.
C - Champion: A champion is an internal advocate within the customer's organization who can help you navigate the decision-making process and advocate for your product or service. Champions are key players in the sales process and can give valuable insight into the customer's needs and priorities. By identifying and building relationships with champions, you can increase your chances of success.
C - Competition: Knowing the competition is important for any sales process. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the competition can help you tailor your pitch to show how your product or service is superior. It also allows you to anticipate and address any objections the customer may have about the competition or set traps for your competition, highlighting points of strength in your product that will lead your prospect to question other vendors on the same, showing their weakness.
Implementing MEDDICC
If you try and tick off everything from this list in a single call, you’ll lose the deal. Assuming the prospect is so interested in your product that they would offer everything here in-depth, you should send them the fucking contract already, don’t waste time and frustrate them with endless questions. MEDDICC is intended to be built over time, constantly trying to DISqualify your deals. Keep having them prove that they’re worth your time.
With each call, meeting, and email, try and get a little bit more from this list, and whenever you get pushback on something that they’re unable to answer or won’t answer, this is now a RISK in your sale.
This is also a dynamic thing. Someone’s priorities might shift due to a black swan event. Constantly updating your MEDDICC sheet (We’ll be releasing our version next week, Follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss the update! @bowtieddingo) will allow you to discover this long before you lose the deal despite having everything the prospect ORIGINALLY wanted.
At the beginning of each sales process, start by trying to guess some of the answers here - who is the (E)conomic buyer, (I)identify pain, etc. Your industry should have reoccurring themes, use them to your advantage. Rather than starting from scratch you can start by challenging your assumptions - find out WHO the economic buyer is by asking if John Smith (CRO) would be signing. Identify the pain by asking loaded questions designed to both keep your prospect in your winning zone (Area where your product usually wins) while not over committing and seeming inexperienced.
One example: “Usually, when I speak to a CRO, they tell me that they are frustrated with ABC, but I guess that’s something you’re not worried about, right?”
This should be the process every time you talk with your customer - you should be deciding what the most important thing for you to learn next is, planning how you’re going to find out, and implementing. If anything stops aligning with what you expect from previous answers, go back and look at your sheet. Based on previous answers, what has likely changed, this is your new top priority as it will uncover unknown objections in the sales cycle.
What MEDDICC won’t do
MEDDICC is powerful for qualifying and disqualifying, it is designed so that you focus on only the prospects with the MOST potential and can cut out the low potential prospects - stay in your winning zone.
There is also a lot that it doesn’t do, MEDDICC is NOT a sales methodology it is a framework for qualification/disqualification, it finds information for you to use when implementing your own sales methodology - Challenger/Sandler/SPIN etc.
It doesn’t work as well for SMB - Where speed is key, you should throw out the long acronyms and focus on PAIN, EMOTION, NEED. Move fast, solve their pain in smaller faster deals.
Change your life overnight - this is something you will need to practice, what it does is keep top of mind all of the things sales reps forget because they’re so focused on selling they miss the basics.
Conclusion
MEDDICC is a powerful tool to add to your arsenal and is a large part of the sales methodology I am preparing to teach all of you. It alone does nothing, you aren’t a question-asker. You’re a Sales Pro, do something with it.
Start using MEDDICC in your deals, and when we drop our full sales methodology, you’ll be a step closer to closing massive deals quickly in the modern tech economic environment - More on that coming soon ;)
Keep killing it.
Bow Tied Dingo
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