| Book details | |
|---|---|
| Author | Andy Whyte |
| Release Date | 28 Nov 2020 |
| Pages | 266 |
| Homepage | --- |
| Amazon | https://www.amazon.co.uk/MEDDICC-Powerful-Enterprise-Framework-High-Value-ebook/dp/B08NZYBRQN/ref=sr_1_1 |
| ISBN-10 | 1838239707 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1838239701 |
Nov 2021 read.
Table of Contents
Review
I read MEDDICC late in the game (ie 20 years into my Sales career), as part of a sales engagement in 2021 where we implemented this framework internally.
MEDDICC is a Qualification Methodology covering:
M = Metrics
E = Economic Buyer
D = Decision Criteria
D = Decision Process
I = Impact Pain
C = Champion
C = Competitors
also known as MEDDPICC where:
P = Paper Process
I don't agree with some aspects - eg disqualify when no Champion - but it is a robust qualification framework overall.
Every book/framework has benefits & downsides anyway - and the ultimate framework is a custom one (ie tailored to the specifics of your business).
If you don't have a methodology in place for Sales qualification at the moment, it's a good choice to implement this one.
Though as always devil is in the implementation 😄
A good complementary read for (VP) Sales people to cover the entire Sales process (and not just the Qualification aspect):
"The Qualified Sales Leader", by John McMahon
[Nic Note: ]
My highlights
Disclaimer: highlight does not mean agreement. I highlight things as reminders of:
- new learnings
- confirmation of existing approaches
- disagreement with a specific point
During this class, we conducted an exercise (that I still do today with various sales teams) called: Why Do We Win? Why Do We Lose? Why Do Deals Slip?
page 11
Mis for Metrics: The Metrics are the quantifiable measures of value that your solution can provide. Eis for Economic Buyer: The Economic Buyer is the person with the overall authority in the buying decision.
page 25
Dis for Decision Criteria: The Decision Criteria are the various criteria in which a decision to process your
page 25
MEDDICC is a Qualification Methodology.
page 31
In enterprise sales, the sales methodology is Batman leading the attack, and MEDDICC is Robin, the trusty sidekick keeping everything on track and in check.
page 32
There are several different types sales methodologies and providers, a few that you may be familiar with are below: Sales MEDDIC Group Force Management SPIN Selling The Sandler Selling Method The Challenger Sale Target Account Selling Value Selling Miller Heiman
page 32
Individual vs company wide
page 33
the majority of sales methodologies will work for your organization.
page 33
It helps Sellers qualify if they should be in a deal at the start, but it also allows Sellers to continuously qualify, not just whether they should be in the deal but whether they are on top or behind.
page 36
“The art of persuasion is a paradox. The more we attempt to persuade people, the more they tend to resist us. But the more we attempt to understand and create value for them, the more they tend to persuade themselves.”
page 38
“People rarely argue with their own conclusions.”
page 38
When you combine all of the resources you have at your disposal, it is almost like you have a franchise within the organization you work for, only you didn't have to buy it, and they pay you a salary. If you take this franchise mindset into qualification, you'll quickly realize that the only resource you truly have is time.
page 39
No Pain/Willingness to Change If you haven't been able to uncover enough pain or a willingness to change the pain you have discovered, then this is a pretty strong signal that you should qualify out.
page 41
An exception may be where you feel these circumstances may be limited to the person or department you are talking to, and via working with other stakeholders, you may find more pain/willingness to change.
page 41
Your Solution Doesn't Fit A common qualification error is when Sellers identify that their solution doesn't fit the solution's requirements or may solve some elements of the requirement. Still, it isn't a good fit, and yet they persevere with the opportunity trying to make their square peg solution fit through the customer's round hole problem. Usually, this is because the Seller can't stand to lose,
page 42
Your Contacts Have No Influence
page 42
If the Customer Refuses to Allow You to do Discovery Much rarer is the inexperienced buyer who refuses the Seller the opportunity to do any kind of discovery. Their favorite phrase is, "We are not here to tell you about us, we are here for you to tell us about your solution." Of course, Sellers should politely push back and try to persevere with discovery, but if the customer remains uncooperative, you should qualify out of the opportunity. I have never met a customer who does this and has enough seniority to get a deal done, and I doubt you will either. Regardless, without being able to do discovery, you are selling blind and most likely wasting your time.
page 42
If You are in Doubt, Qualify Out It is my firm belief that if you have any concerns about the qualification of your deal after applying MEDDICC to it, you should qualify out. Qualifying out because of doubt will commonly have one of two effects: Your customer will accept your position and rationale for not pursuing the opportunity with them further. Your customer will disagree with your position and try to convince you why you should pursue the opportunity with them.
page 43
Metrics and Implicate the Pain - Have you found enough pain that when it is quantified, it makes a compelling case for an evaluation of your solution?
page 44
Champion and Economic Buyer - Do you have a good understanding of who your Champion is or is likely to be? Do you have a good understanding of the stakeholders and who the Economic Buyer is?
page 44
Metrics and Implicate the Pain - Have you been building robust Metrics that portray the value in which your solution will be measured?
page 44
Decision Criteria and Decision Process - Do you have a full understanding of the Criteria in which the customer will decide and the process they will undergo to come to that decision?
page 45
Champion and Economic Buyer - Have you tested your Champion? Do they have power and influence? Are they actively selling internally for you? Do they have a personal win?
page 45
Competition - Do you have sight of who your Competition is? Have you been able to lay effective traps for them? Do you have a plan in place to counter?
page 45
By causing the customer to consider this negative scenario, we were forcing them to feel Implicated by the pain, which is the final step of the Three I's transition: Identify pain> Indicate pain> Implicate pain.
page 49
It took us threatening to walk away for them to show their hand.
page 53
Elite Sellers value their time, and therefore, they relentlessly qualify their deals to make sure they are worth their time.
page 54
Having a focus on efficiency will increase your productivity because you will be focusing your time on good deals. It also means you exude an air of confidence that your customers will recognize as you valuing your time, perhaps because you have so many customers queuing up to do business with you.
page 54
Many factors equate to intelligence in Sellers, but it predominantly comes down to ICE: IQ Curiosity EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
page 55
Missing TQ
page 55
For a presentation, in the book The Art of The Start by Guy Kawasaki, he states that a business pitch only begins to sound truly solid after 25 deliveries.
page 60
Ahead of every sales engagement, ask yourself questions like: What outcome do I want from this engagement? Who else do I want to speak to? Have I set the expectation ahead of time? Agenda, etc.? What objections could be raised? What messages do I need to reinforce?
page 60
I once knew a sales leader who wanted a deal stage to be added to their CRM called 'Closed Lost with Hope.'
page 61
Good idea to add prospect to nurture list but take out of forecast
page 61
If you have a low EQ, it is likely to make dealing with you a terrible experience for your customer.
page 62
WTF
page 62
Discovery is the most critical part of any enterprise sale. No other element will have such a significant impact on the success of your deal.
page 63
by approaching your customer in a thoughtful and well-researched manner, you can demonstrate at the earliest opportunity that you have a credible point of view that may open up their mind to knowledge and challenges they have not yet considered.
page 63
Discovery is a mindset. Always Be Curious
page 63
“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is that we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.”
page 64
To actively listen in your discovery process, you need to: Truly listen to what your customer is saying. Don’t just be looking for angles to sell against. Play back what you have heard. Whether you paraphrase or use your own words depends on your style and the situation.
page 64
When the customer feels that you care and value their thoughts, they are more likely to elaborate upon them, thus opening the conversation to more in-depth discovery.
page 65
There are seven types of big questions that are super starting points for uncovering valuable information early in your deal cycle. They can come in many forms, but they generally sound like: What is working? What is not working? When it works, what good things happen? When it does not work, what bad things happen? Whom does that affect? How much does that cost? Why haven’t you tried to solve it yet?
page 65
These Sellers approach their customers with a bank of questions intended to uncover pains that they can then sell against. This experience is awful for the customer; they sit there while the Seller bluntly digs for pain that they know will be used against them to try and make them buy the Seller’s solution.
page 67
As the saying goes, “If you assume, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.”
page 71
The Deal Sheet You can use your format to do this, but if you want to use The Deal Sheet, you can find a copy in the downloads section of www.meddicc.com.
page 72
An excellent hack to keep your questions open-ended is to use the TED Acronym: Could you please Tell me about it… Can you please Explain to me... Would you please Describe how...
page 74
Hunt the Negatives
page 74
Discovery is About Them, Not You
page 74
A significant benefit of having done the level of research and planning discussed earlier in this chapter is that you can do discovery in such a relevant manner that the customer is unlikely to feel like they are being taken through a discovery process. When done correctly, it will feel more like a conversation between two people about the organization’s goals and challenges. It will instantly elevate you to a position of trust that permits you to do the level of discovery required to uncover the pains that could progress your deal.
page 74
switch from pain discovery mode to deal qualification mode. Switching from Pain Mode to Qualification Mode Sellers frequently make the mistake of switching too quickly.
page 75
Implicating the pain means you make your customer feel the severity of the pain they have,
page 75
The more you dig deep into the pain, the causes, and the repercussions, the more your customer will feel implicated by it, and the greater their appetite will be to solve it.
page 77
string of open questions
page 77
Instead, try using this hack from former FBI Negotiator Chris Voss, who says that you should simply say: “It seems like you might have some next steps in mind?”
page 78
Talk like a business person - When you talk like a business person trying to solve business problems, a business Champion will emerge. By contrast, if you talk like a technology salesperson, you won’t attract a business Champion.
page 83
Trap-Setting Questions Trap-Setting Questions are questions that you ask your customer to uncover or highlight a point of differentiation around your solution that, by proxy, goes on to highlight a shortfall of your competition.
page 88
It is important to remember that Trap-Setting Questions are not intended to trap your customer; they are intended to trap your competition.
page 89
PRICE CONDITIONING
page 93
The Reference-Based Price Condition When you refer to a customer and the successful results they have had from your solution, then use this to price condition by saying something along the lines of: “When ACME INC implemented our solution, they saw the lifetime value of their customers rise by 25%, which meant an additional $20m of annual revenue. The size of their deployment of our solution is similar to yours, and I am sure you wouldn’t mind paying us $500,000 a year if it meant you, too, could get an additional
page 94
The Casual Drop Price Condition When you have the opportunity to drop a number into the conversation subtly, you do so;
page 95
”Do you have any varying authorization levels based on different cost amounts? For example, if our solution was to cost over $500,000, does it need to go through any additional decision-makers first?”
page 95
The Pricing Model Price Condition When you are starting to work on the scope of the deal with your customer, you can use the process of explaining your pricing model as a price conditioning exercise. For example: “Our pricing model works via the number of calls you make on our servers. Based on your numbers, if you continue to grow as you have over the last 12 months, the price could be as much as $500,000 more than it would be on last year’s volumes.”
page 95
THE GO-LIVE PLAN
page 97
It
page 98
1. It is customer-focused:
page 98
2. Go-Live Plan Inspires Urgency:
page 99
This improves the selling experience for the customer who now has just one place to go to find all important information and documentation, but it also has one major added bonus which is that it means the Go-Live Plan is more likely to be visited by the customer to obtain the information and links it contains, subsequently bringing them to the Go-Live Plan where they are likely to digest any updates and potentially even make their own updates.
page 100
3. Go Live is the best place for stuff:
page 100
4. Go-Live Plan is Collaborative:
page 100
5. Make it the Home for Questions:
page 101
How to Build Your Go-Live Plan Personalization Goes Far The less this looks like the selling organization’s document, the better. My advice is at the least to make the colors neutral. Elite Sellers may alter the styling to make it fall in line with the branding of the customer. This will help them see it as their document and not yours and could increase their likelihood to participate in collaborating within it.
page 102
The Information Header
page 103
The Brief Summary
page 103
The Teams
page 104
Planned Steps and Key Events
page 105
1. The Stage
page 106
2. The Action
page 106
3. The Owner
page 106
4. By When
page 107
5. The Status
page 107
Metrics 1 (M1's) - Metrics Proof Points These are the business outcomes you have delivered for your existing customers.
page 112
Metrics 2 (M2's) - Return on Investment
page 112
Salespeople often raise the concern that if they don't start selling soon enough, the opportunity may not progress. My response to this is straightforward—don't engage in opportunities where you feel as though you are walking a tight rope of engagement from the customer. It is always hard for salespeople to qualify out, especially when they think they have genuine value to offer. Still, if you are being forced to sell before uncovering real pains, goals, or challenges, then you are wasting your time. The only way to solve this situation is to find Pain, and if you aren't being given a chance to do that, go and work with a customer who deserves your expertise.
page 114
psychologist Jerome Bruner's research suggests that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they're part of a story.
page 115
As legendary Sales trainer and President of Force Management, John Kaplan, would say: "Small problems receive big discounts, and big problems receive small discounts."
page 121
ECONOMIC BUYER The Economic Buyer is the person with the overall authority in the buying decision. An Economic Buyer is usually one person within an organization who is the overall authority in which the budget for your project rolls up to, however, occasionally, the Economic Buyer can consist of more than one person and, in some instances, is a committee of people.
page 123
A fear Sellers often have if they have been blocked by their Champion from engaging with the Economic Buyer is that the Champion will be upset if they engage directly. John Kaplan at Force Management has an ace way of circumnavigating this issue and that is to write what he calls ‘The Champion Letter’. This is a letter written to the Economic Buyer that introduces yourself and your solution whilst, at the same time, praising your Champion for what an outstanding job they are doing on the project. You can even call out all of the value they have helped you to uncover.
page 128
Using a Senior Executive to Engage Aligning your senior executive team with their peers within the customer’s organization is good practice. One of the secrets to the success of organizations like Salesforce.com is their ability to engage senior executives on a consistent basis.
page 128
For example, imagine you have just landed a meeting with your number one prospective customer within your territory. You are excited and begin planning for the first meeting. In your research, you uncover an article written by their Chief Digital Officer talking about an initiative that your solution will support. You ask one of your senior execs to reach out to the CDO and mention that she has heard that her team is meeting with the CDO’s team. She also references the article and how she feels your solution can provide value to help her with her initiative. The message doesn’t contain any ask, it simply just introduces your senior exec and positions her executive support on the project. It is often good to close with a promise to update the CDO following the meeting on how you heard it went, which leaves the door open for a follow-up.
page 129
Talk in the Language of the Economic Buyer “You get delegated to who you sound like.”
page 130
Behave like a Consultant, not a Seller:
page 131
When Economic Buyers make decisions, they focus on three Cs: Cost - How much will it cost? Completion - How long until we can realize the value? Confidence - How confident is everyone around your solution?
page 134
Elite Sellers know that keeping the Economic Buyer informed on the progress of the implementation of the solution will reap rewards later on for the Seller, when they want to re-engage in a renewal or upsell conversation. Not forgetting the likelihood that the Economic Buyer could become an invaluable reference for your future deals if you deliver on your promises to them.
page 140
Influencing the Decision Criteria is where Elite Sellers really come into their own.
page 149
If You Don’t Influence the Decision Criteria, Your Competition Will
page 151
Rarely Less, Always More! No matter how you obtain the Decision Process, whether it is clearly articulated to you via a formal document or you have it from a thorough discovery process, it is likely that more parts will be added to it that you are yet to uncover or that don’t exist yet. For this reason, you need to stay in discovery mode to hunt down any changes as well as seek confirmation of the process and where you stand against it at every opportunity.
page 160
Killer-Questions To your Champion: “Have you worked through these stages with a solution of similar complexity/cost to mine before?” “What things should we look out for?” “What have you seen go wrong?” “What things should we be doing to be on the front foot?”
page 171
The 3 Key Elements of any Paper Process There are always three key elements of any Paper Process. They are as follows: The Process The People The Timing
page 172
Elite Sellers introduce documents early - Asking to engage in the Paper Process stages early allows Sellers to test their Champion's commitment to progressing the deal.
page 177
IMPLICATE THE PAIN Implicating the Pain means you have both Identified, Indicated, and Implicated the Pain your solution solves upon your customer.
page 178
The higher the pain, the higher the value, the higher the priority. With so many innovative technology solutions available today, Sellers often have solutions to problems that customers didn’t know they had or that could be solved. This puts extra importance on the Implication of Pain as, unlike a perceived pain, you will be responsible for uncovering, articulating, and quantifying the pain.
page 179
The 3 Types of Pain There are many types of pain, but they generally roll up into three categories of pain. Financial Pain: This relates to where the organization is either missing out on revenue or has higher costs relating to the pain. The quantification of Financial Pain is likely to be dollars. Either dollars missed out on being earned or less profitable dollars being earned. Efficiency Pain: This relates to a Pain that is occurring because something prohibits the organization from being efficient or effective. The quantification of Efficiency Pain is usually time: the time it takes or the number of resources required for a process to occur. People Pain: This relates to pain that impacts the People in the organization either by productivity, morale, skill, or ability. The quantification of People Pain is often measured in the output of individuals
page 179
Tactics to Implicate the Pain Show a glimpse into the future Utopian state that your solution can provide. Use two-sided discovery to make the customer live in the moment of their pain
page 182
“A Champion without Power and Influence
page 189
Killer-Question: Ask your Champion about the last time they worked on a deal like yours. Ask them about the steps they took to get the deal done and what obstacles they had to overcome. Their answers to these questions will help you quickly identify the level of power and influence they are operating have.
page 199
Check your network Do you have mutual connections to your Champion?
page 199
The quickest and most efficient way of testing your Champion on whether they have been selling internally for you is to ask them the following question: “In the conversations you’ve been having about my solution internally, has anyone raised any
page 200
By contrast, if you notice that your Champion isn’t leaning on you for any help, the chances are they aren’t doing much selling for you internally.
page 200
Your Champion should be open to your help. If they are not, then they have failed the test of a Champion.
page 200
My advice is to ask your Champion outright: “What happens if we don’t win?”
page 200
A good Champion knows that the Seller is the best person to pitch the Economic Buyer, and having them engaged will be positive for their deal.
page 201
A Champion should share confidential information, good, bad, and ugly. Useful areas of information they can share is how you are scoring against the Decision Criteria, and critically how you compare to your competitors.
page 202
At a high level, you should be looking to uncover the following information within the early stages: Metrics - Your Champion should help you confirm the Metrics you have identified are applicable. Economic Buyer - Your Champion should help you identify who the Economic Buyer is, and you should discuss an introduction. Decision Criteria - Your Champion should be able to explain the Decision Criteria to you if they have one, or work closely with you to define one if they don’t. Decision Process - Your Champion should take you through the Decision Process if they have one or help you understand how the Decision Process flows. Implicate Pain - Your Champion should be open to you, discovering where their pain is and helping you quantify it. Competition - Your Champion should be able to give you some information about who your competition is
page 205
However, if you are consistently failing to find or build a Champion in your deal, qualify out. Put simply, it is better to qualify out if you can’t identify a Champion than to try and persevere without one.
page 209
Disagree
page 209
Types of Competition A list of possible Competition could be: Rival solutions - Your natural competitors Other projects/initiatives that require the same funds or resources The organization’s internal team building their own solution Inertia - The organization opting to do nothing
page 212
Examples of Risks A Risk is anything that stands to threaten your deal’s progression and just like Competition; they can fall into three categories: Political Risk Technical Risk Commercial Risk
page 231
Or you could have a scenario where the customer’s legal team has raised a requirement that you know your company will have trouble accepting.
page 231
Risk and The Go-Live Plan There is a specific section within the Go-Live Plan which is devoted to highlighting any Risks. The purpose of having this section within the Go-Live Plan is that it surfaces the Risks to the awareness of the customer.
page 232
but you are likely to highlight a Risk that the customer’s legal team has created by demanding a term that you cannot accept.
page 232
Use MEDDICC Confidence Scoring to Focus on Progression I found it useful to score each part of MEDDICC from one to ten based on each part’s confidence level when reviewing a deal.
page 239
Don’t Forget the Value While MEDDICC is an outstanding qualification framework, it is not a replacement for a value selling framework.
page 242
You know about the value of doing the things listed above, but do you do them every time? If not, why not?
page 245
Checklists are not about being robots; they are to help trigger a routine and formalize attention to detail instead of relying on your memory.
page 247