Qualifying opportunities have a significant role in defining sales success. Current-day complex B2B buying brings challenges around qualifying deals consistently with conviction across the sales cycle.
Oversimplified summaries of deals, status is merely inadequate to identify new opportunities and progress through various sales cycle stages. The latest B2B buying behavior goes beyond the physical presence of the salesperson. This is precisely the reason why methodologies such as MEDDIC should evolve with changing times.
Top B2B sales firms especially with enterprise sales procedures employ MEDDIC as a means.
This is also addressed as MEDDIC sales process or MEDDIC scorecards, MEDDIC checklists.
Other variant of MEDDIC include MEDDPIC.
MEDDIC brings a holistic and completely systematic method. For a very long time, it has been particularly viewed as relevant to:
Metrics - Using data-driven facts educates the prospects by displaying the financial success of adopting your solution over competitors' solutions.
The foundation philosophy on which this methodology functions: "Show, Don't tell"
While sellers have been constantly trained to present a product/service as a complete solution, buyers need empirical evidence that it is indeed a complete solution as promised by the seller. A few use cases are below:
This is where metrics come into play. Here are a few scenarios that represent data points for opportunities:
Key takeaway: It is essential to provide precise and measurable outcomes instead of vague commitments.
Economic buyer - The E in MEDDIC. This helps in determining the key decision-makers, especially the person with the power to close the sale. It then becomes necessary to address critical questions such as:
The MEDDIC sales approach concentrates first and foremost on engaging with decision-makers. Sometimes this necessitates a direct approach, such as addressing qualifying questions like:
Decision criteria - This aspect of MEDDIC is focused on identifying criteria that facilitate purchase decisions. This includes and is not limited to: price points, critical features, competitor considerations.
More than 77% of B2B Buyers claim their recent experiences involving purchasing have been really complex. To top this, the experience is beyond linear and frequently needs to finish a series of "tasks" before buying such as research and validation. All of the above will then go through a competitive analysis before buying.
MEDDIC requires sellers to display the product/service fit within the buyer's decision realm during early discussions and demonstrations. The sellers need to have clarity in regards to buyer criteria and the pitch should be aligned to the prospect's objectives and aspirations. This helps smooth the flow of decisions and expedite deal closures.
Decision process - The second D in the MEDDIC focuses on the step involved around the buyer's approval.
Sales teams, need to achieve things like the below to ease and expedite the process of decision making:
Implied Pain - Determine which pain points and difficulties your product may assist buyers in alleviating.
Tapping into buyers' problems is a proven approach to communicating with them. Anything that sellers can do to reassure them of the efficacy of your solution is a significant plus in your favor of winning the deal. They may better frame your solution as a winner by anticipating pain areas and objectives.
Champion - The "C" in the MEDDIC refers to one of your influencers that the buyer may be following.
A "Champion" who can represent your organization's merits improves the credibility of your organization while influencing buyers. The influencer may / may not be a part of the decision-making process but definitely has a high affiliation to the lead.
So, as seen above, MEDDIC, like its peers, enables the sales teams with a set of principles. It brings much-needed guidance on strategy and consistency. This in turn ensures the sales reps follow an objective-oriented framework to win deals quickly rather than having a long chase with guesses.
It is only as effective as sellers' ability to consistently act on it across the sales cycle. Most companies, however, just plug this as "fields" in their salesforce against imbibing this rigorously. Further, sales teams use MEDDIC partially in the sales cycle instead of using it as a strategic and effective tool to align with buyer needs. Here are the top reasons MEDDIC deployment fails:
#1 It does not help sellers engage digitally savvy buyers
MEDDIC helps the sellers build a checklist to accurately shortlist and forecast transactions. While it does assist in eliminating wrong opportunities, it has limitations in converting good conversations into winning deals. Only when a project is finished can it help in qualifying the leads. However, most buyers initiate the journey by conducting causal research, interviewing vendors, and discovering over multiple interactions. This poses a big gap for the seller to nurture and grow the opportunity by bringing the right people at the right time.
#2 Garbage in, garbage out: A problem with MEDDIC deployments as they are not client-facing
Most MEDDIC implementations seldom have an interface with the client. The insights are collected through a series of "natural" discussions to be included in their CRM.
Why? Most sellers and buyers end up playing a game of guessing by holding back critical insights. Modern buyers who are close to the company's success don't reveal information. MEDDIC in its current form misses a great deal to capitalize on this rising opportunity.
#3 MEDDIC cannot cope with complex scenarios involving large buying teams
The practice of MEDDIC lays primary emphasis on two primary stakeholders - The Economic Buyer and The Champion. However, today's buying journey involves other stakeholders who do not have the same role as the above, yet have a significant contribution to the impact of your deal.
Firstly, the number of decision-makers may not be the explicit champions.
Secondly, key influencers are part of the evaluation teams, and their opinion matters to the decision-makers.
Lastly, cross-functional teams must be brought into the decision-making process and make it successful (Refer to Gartner's JTBD version of Buyer Journey).
How should you change MEDDIC for this new world? What new selling strategy can help you align better with your buyers?
Mutual Success Plans are an entirely new approach to buyer engagement that is focused on turning manual, siloed and frThe core benefit of Mutual Success Plan is based on new approach towards buyer engagement by making it data-driven and interactive, instead of fragmented, siloed, and manual interactions to improve the buyer experience. This is the culmination of buyer and seller identifying shared business objectives and working in synergy to achieve those goals on time. This keeps both the sellers and buyers aligned on goals, objectives, benchmarks, and plans to tap into the full potential of the collaboration.
It can have an influence in three important scenarios: acquiring a new logo, continuous collaboration, and the management of the influence is seen in three important scenarios: Acquisition of a new log, continual collaboration, and efficient renewals/expansions.
Revenue teams use BuyerAssist to help them identify, connect and communicate with their buyers using various aspects of MEDDIC using Mutual Success Plan. It guarantees and maximizes the value driven by B2B interactions on a digital-first platform.
This strategy can help you close more deals in the following ways:
#1 Buyer-centric
Buyer-centric language helps largely in assisting especially first-time buyers. It supports scheduling all operations to align with the launch date and purchase objectives
#2 ‘Mutual’ MEDDIC Plan: Buyer-seller collaboration
Due to the nature of continuous collaboration and objectivity, project management continues to stay efficient. Onboarding new stakeholders are streamlined and improve early alerting on delays and slippages.
#3 One-stop destination for buyer
All assets/content pertaining to the conversation stay contextual and in a single location. It saves significant time by eliminating redundant introductions.
#4 Others
It has improved forecasting efficiency, seamless sales to customer service hand-off, and encourages transparency and synergy, among other things.
When done right, MSPs accelerate sales cycles, improve win rates, and accelerate expansions.
BuyerAssist is a buyer engagement platform used by sales teams to engage, collaborate and align with their buyers at each step in the enterprise sales process. It digitizes ‘Mutual Success Plans' to drive transparency and visibility leading to more engaged buyers and customers. Mutual Success Plans are the intersection of enablement and execution. It's a crucial tool as we work to implement MEDDICC in every buyer interaction. BuyerAssist has been making mutual success plans easy for our sellers and prospects to co-create.
