What do fast-growth, high profile companies have in common? They’re all using MEDDIC as a framework to drive sales and achieve high levels of success, according to the industry tracker, MEDDIC.com.
While many people think of MEDDIC as a sales methodology, it’s actually a sales qualification framework designed to save time by quickly disqualifying prospects who aren’t likely to close.
According to Tom Williams, Head of Align at Clari, it’s not enough for a sales or revenue operations leader alone to adhere to MEDDIC. To be effective, your entire sales team needs to use it consistently.
Here’s why, plus four tips for getting buy-in from your team.
What Is MEDDIC?
MEDDIC is a qualification framework for determining whether a deal is worth pursuing. Each letter in the acronym stands for a key data point about an opportunity that reps need to understand in order to qualify a deal:
- Metrics
- Economic buyer
- Decision criteria
- Decision process
- Identify pain
- Champion
If a rep can’t identify each of these points in an opportunity, it’s a red flag and worth a conversation around why we should continue investing time and resources
The Importance of MEDDIC for Your Sales Organization
Sales isn’t about pushing through every deal. Disqualifying prospects as quickly as possible is key, so teams aren’t wasting time on deals that will never close
That’s where MEDDIC comes into play. It’s invaluable for organizations with a good number of leads and limited bandwidth—ensuring your reps work on the right deals.
Used properly, the MEDDIC framework has four benefits:
- Increased forecasting accuracy, with a higher likelihood of hitting your milestones
- Boosted sales rep self-confidence, which can increase sales productivity
- Higher confidence to disqualify a deal, so reps feel free to move on to better deals
- Increased goodwill with clients who are not quite ready to buy, who don’t feel uncomfortably pressured and are more likely to come back later
But first, you need buy-in from your reps.
How to Convince Sales Reps to Adopt MEDDIC
Sales professionals are typically type-A people. They like their own systems and the tricks of the trade they’ve picked up throughout their career. They’re likely to be skeptical of anything new.
Given this scenario, how do you convince your entire sales team to buy into MEDDIC?
1. Showcase their edge
When sales reps see others doing something that results in success, they don’t want to be left behind. Rather than trying to sell MEDDIC, showcase it.
Focus on getting one or two account executives to adopt, and successfully use, the framework. Teach the concepts. Work with them to implement it in their everyday sales activities.
Once they start seeing success, other sales executives will take notice and follow suit.
2. Inspect for MEDDIC activities
There’s an old saying: Inspect what you expect. This is especially true for sales organizations. In your weekly one-on-ones with sales executives, use MEDDIC as the framework to inspect each deal, moving from one element of the framework to another to help them understand how you think about deal health.
Many CRMs and sales apps require salespeople to document their use of their organization’s sales methodology. Inspect these fields. If the documented data seems weak, ask questions about it.
3. Appeal to their desire to win
MEDDIC is designed to ensure your reps are working on the right deals. That’s going to give them more closed-wins and fewer closed-losts.
MEDDIC works because it forces them to review every deal objectively. It pushes reps to explore in detail what needs to happen for the deal to close.
If the prospect can’t quantify the economic benefit of a solution and can’t precisely identify the before and after they’re looking for, the rep knows they won’t be able to make a deal. At that point, abandoning the conversation isn’t a failure, but rather, the wisest choice.
4. Emphasize forecasting accuracy
When using MEDDIC, your reps can focus on working higher quality leads and moving prospects more quickly through the pipeline.
Over time, that will shift their thinking. They’ll grow more comfortable with letting deals go. They’ll be more discerning about red flags and other disqualifiers that show up early in a deal. They’ll also become better at forecasting their pipeline, since they will have a better sense early on which deals will close.
And that’s a win for the entire revenue operations organization.
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