The buying process has seen tremendous evolution over the last few years. From a typical hierarchical structure, we have moved to a flat structure that decides on buying. In the absence of any formal authority, the committee may take its own sweet time to finalize a deal if even one of its members disagrees.
The ever-evolving sales process with a multitude of variables can be overwhelming to even the most seasoned sales representatives.
What if there were a process that would help you identify the right leads at the right time? What if there were a process that would help you to hit the bull’s eye in identifying the customer’s pain point and focus on the same? You have MEDDIC to the rescue.
The MEDDIC sales process has been around for some time now. What makes the process so special? It removes the clutter from your sales pipeline and fills it up with deals that have a high probability of successful closure. MEDDIC is a highly efficient screening process. To fully appreciate how this process can transform your lead conversion rates, let us take a deep dive into MEDDIC.
What is the MEDDIC sales process?
The acronym MEDDIC stands for:
M – Metrics
More often than not, we are advised to identify the pain point of the customer for pitching the sales solution. However, MEDDIC advises that you need to focus on the metrics that are precious to the customer before looking at the pain points. An organization associates its success with the accomplishment of its targeted sales metrics rather than a subjective term like the resolution of its pain points.
For example, if your client’s goal is to reduce the number of hours required for product assembly by 50%, talk in terms of these numbers. Probe your client on the numbers that matter to them and use these numbers to develop your pitch.
The traditional approach – Our product will help in automating the assembly process thereby saving your precious time.
MEDDIC approach – Our product reduces the time required to assemble a product like yours to half, thereby saving you 2-man hours per assembly.
E – Economic Buyer
You should always have the person with the final decision-making authority onboard. The characteristics of an economic buyer are that they have veto power, they are responsible for P&L and know the company’s financials very well.
Deals that have the economic buyer on board have very high chances of seeing a successful closure as compared to deals in which the buying audience has no economic buyer onboard.
Note: Always talk to the economic buyer in terms of metrics and RoI. Economic buyers think in terms of RoI and by stating the same, you will make it easier for them to make a decision.
D – Decision Criteria
Knowing the decision criteria beforehand can get you an edge as compared to the competitors. Decision criteria could be financial, technical or strategic.
The financial criteria could be RoI, one-time costs, recurring costs, etc. The technical criteria could be hours saved due to automation, ease of implementation, learning curve, etc. Finally, the strategic criteria could be about the alignment of timelines and values, trust, etc.
Get to know the three most important decision-making criteria from the customer and adapt your pitch to focus on these criteria to have a winning deal in your kitty.
D – Decision Process
The decision process is as important as the decision-making criteria. The process tells you how long it will take for the company to hop aboard.
Try to get information on the number and hierarchy structure of people who will be involved in the decision-making. Here, the decision-making is split into two stages – the decision that the product is suitable for the company’s needs and the decision to authorize and get the necessary approvals for the same.
Most of the time, deals get stuck or slip through in the process of last-minute approvals. Having the economic buyer onboard reduces such risks.
I – Implicate the Pain
The modern sales process advises that simply identifying the pain points of the customer may not be enough to have an unwinnable deal.
Star sales reps use the technique of implicating the customer’s pain to create unwinnable deals. Here, you not only identify the pain points of the customer but convert them into a short-term RoI.
For example, if you are selling a testing automation software, identifying the pain point will look like – long testing hours and inaccuracies in testing and test reports. Implicating the pain point will look like – expenditure on 70% extra man-hours due to manual testing, 50% more defects in the product leading to 25% loss in sales, etc.
Implicating the pain makes the customer live the pain and your solution shows them the way out of their misery. In this step, if the pain point of the customer does not seem big enough, it will be wise to screen them out of the sales funnel at the beginning.
C – Champion
The Champion is akin to an influencer who believes in the solution that you are offering. This person is well-respected in the organization and sells your offering internally. If you do not have a champion, you are in for a difficult sale.
Generally, a champion will have used your product, probably in his previous company, or heard about it in an interesting webinar. They are sure that your product will help the company and actively internally sell your product. If you do not have a champion within the buyer’s organization, it may be difficult to close the deal unless you are very strong on the other parameters of MEDDIC.
Benefits of the MEDDIC method
Improve your lead to conversion ratio
Since MEDDIC screens out the unwinnable deals from the sales pipeline, your lead to conversion ratio will be significantly improved. The MEDDIC approach ensures a cleaner, easily trackable and highly motivating sales pipeline.
Allocate your resources efficiently
With the clutter out of the sale pipeline, your resources will work only on deals that have a high probability of successful closure. There will be no wasted efforts on bringing an unwinnable deal to the end of the sales funnel only to realize that the approvals may not go through.
Learn to know when to walk away from a deal.
Improve your forecast accuracy
Since most of the deals screened through the MEDDIC approach have a high probability of closure, your sales forecast will be more accurate. The accuracy of your sales forecast will ensure optimal product inventory, correct estimation of sales and marketing efforts and successful completion of sales targets.
Retrospect and improve the sales efficiency further
The leads filtered out from the MEDDIC screening give you an insight into how your lead generation process may be further refined based on the MEDDIC parameters.
Tips to adopt the MEDDIC methodology
Gather data and derive insights from it
The implementation of MEDDIC majorly depends on the availability of data. You need to have data about the metrics, key criteria, etc. to use the MEDDIC approach.
Additionally, keep track of your website traffic, visits to the pricing page, etc. to build a relevant database that can be useful for the implementation of the MEDDIC approach.
Build a business case with metrics
Have a general RoI-based business case with commonly-used metrics ready to pitch your product. Fine-tune this business case for the buyer to take your first step toward implementing the MEDDIC process.
Adapt the MEDDIC approach to your company
Many organizations have devised their own variations of MEDDIC to suit their requirements.
For example, MEDDICC has the extra C to account for competition, MEDDIPC has the extra P to account for the paperwork and MEDIPCC has both. You may adapt MEDDIC to your own organization for the best results.
Use a smart tool
To ensure a fool proof implementation of MEDDIC, you may consider using smart tools like GoodMeetings. GoodMeetings is a smart remote meeting tool that aims at transforming the way you sell. It uses conversational intelligence to track user behavior.
This behavior unearths the client’s pain points, decision-making traits, metrics that matter to the clients, etc. The AI nudges and incognito coaching features add value by enabling the sales reps to ask the right questions to gather the correct data for MEDDIC qualification.
MEDDIC is well-known for its simplicity and depth. This approach has been around for some time and has been successfully implemented by some of the best sales organizations. Use this time and tested approach for improving your sales efficiency by leaps and bounds.
You can also check the BANT method of lead qualification.
