Categories: Sales Qualification | MEDDICC | Selling to the C-Suite
MEDDICC is an industry standard for determining the strength of a deal and charting the path to get the deal closed. Many times, deal qualification can hinge on whether your team can identify the Economic Buyer and build enough influence in the organization to both access and evangelize them. But the power of MEDDICC for influencing deal decision-makers extends far beyond the “E” in the acronym.
Recently, we hosted a discussion with Force Management Managing Director Brian Walsh where we explored how leaders can better equip their go-to-market teams to drive a collective “yes” from all stakeholders. Taking notes from that conversation, let’s break down how you can operationalize MEDDICC with your selling team in a way that helps them have more power with the players who hold the key to the deal.
Metrics
The M of MEDDICC is about quantifying the business benefits of your solution based on the customer’s current state and use case. To effectively gain access and influence with decision-makers, sellers need the ability to connect these metrics to those parties’ specific priorities. Efficiency savings of 25% may be important to an operational manager, but not as motivating to a Chief Revenue Officer who is zeroed in on doubling ARR. Sellers need to be able to connect those dots. Here’s how Brian described it in our webinar conversation:
| “The conversations that I have only matter if they're about the person across the desk from me. If that's not in context and connected to what they actually care about, the problems they're trying to solve, the outcomes they're trying to drive, it doesn't matter.” |
Throughout the customer journey, reps should focus on framing value in terms of the metrics that matter to each party, building credibility with each internal stakeholder along the way. Often sellers stop at the bar of efficiency or time or cost savings, assuming the business benefit follows - but that may not be motivating enough to a decision-maker who is inundated with sales requests and competing priorities every day. Equip your selling team with a process for uncovering and developing metrics that will move decision-makers to action.
Economic Buyer
Often, sellers misidentify the Economic Buyer as someone who has budget to spend. In reality, the EB is the decision-maker with the ability to move and alter spend to create budget for your solution. To consistently close high-value deals, your team needs to be able to gain emphatic support from these leaders. In our webinar conversation, Brian encourages leaders to coach their sales teams how to successfully ask for access, rather than just harping on the importance of the EB.
| “A lot of us have a sense to say things like, ‘I need to meet with your boss.’ You’ve got to teach your people how to ask for access in a way that matters. ‘Here's why you and I should go meet with your CEO, and here's why you should take me.’ That’s a big difference. And those reasons why go back to the problems you're solving.” |
Your sales team has to earn the right to talk to the Economic Buyer. That means asking for access from the appropriate person, at the appropriate time. Ensure that reps understand they may have to work their way through several roles and teams to reach the decision-maker. Help them see each of those steps as an opportunity to gather further discovery and ready a message that resonates strongly with the EB once they do reach them.
Decision Criteria
When reps successfully identify the decision criteria early in the deal, they can influence them. Sellers should work to satisfy the buyer’s criteria while keeping in mind that if they present a compelling business case, they can help create a new set of requirements that favor their solution.
| “It’s about expanding and deepening the story that the customer is trying to write for themselves...When I show up, I'm starting to help the customer write a story that they never would have written if we weren't in the room because of the expertise and the experiences that we have. |
Once sellers understand the decision criteria and establish credibility with a relevant message, they can begin to expand the customer’s picture of what is required to solve their problem and position your differentiation as a core driver of success.
Decision Process
Today’s deals are rarely ever decided by a single decision-maker. More often, sellers have to navigate a committee made up of some combination of an Economic Buyer, a Technical Buyer, an Implementation Owner, and others who influence them. Too often, sellers are posing the question: “What is your decision process? Who will be involved?” Many buyers don’t know the answer to this question, or aren’t willing to be forthcoming with the information. Taking their answer at face value is a great way to get your deal tripped up by last-minute objections and approvals.
To avoid these deal hang-ups, Brian suggests that leaders give their teams a point of view on what the decision process and buying committee usually look like for their ideal customer.
| “You've got to develop for your team a very specific point of view on who's involved in these customer conversations and these decisions. Get them really good at delivering that so they can say, ‘We know when we're talking to an organization of your size and we're having a conversation about this type of issue, these are the other people that are going to be involved in getting to an answer that makes sense.’" |
Start by providing a framework of the core business problems your solution solves and who in the target organization typically cares about those problems. Then, you can begin to get your team asking the right questions to triangulate the truth of the decision process.
Identify Pain
Typically, when sellers struggle to break into higher levels of power in the buying organization, it’s because they haven’t identified a pain that’s big enough or messaged it in a way that conveys the size of the pain. Although messaging for who they’re selling to now is important, it’s also critical that sellers message for who they want to sell to, because we get delegated to who we sound like. Here's Brian's insight on why identifying the biggest business issue matters when it comes to getting to decision-makers:
| “If the business problem or the business outcome is big enough, one of those technical buyers or implementation owners that you happen to be in front of is gonna be the one to see the light and say, I gotta get this person upstairs." |
Champion
For many teams, the champion has been reduced to a checkbox in the deal. Often, this is the result of leaders and managers using an ‘inspection’ approach, requiring sellers to show that they have a champion without actually coaching them on how to get there. True champions meet three criteria: they have influence, they actively sell on your behalf, and they have a vested interest in the success of your solution in their organization. Once a champion is identified, they have to be coached and supported with the content they need to be able to sell on your behalf.
Consider what Brian shares about the importance of supporting your internal stakeholders:
| “Very few people are talking to them in a way that it makes it easy for them to turn around and say, let me tell you why this relationship with this company is a valuable use of our money. You gotta have people evangelizing for you. And the only way they can do that is if they can tell that story. Otherwise, the only thing they can say is, well, it's got a cool green button, and the dashboard is nice, and the sales rep is pretty cool. That ain't gonna last very long.” |
Avoid the trap of the ceremonial champion; ensure your team is validating and supporting champions by emphasizing the role of managers in coaching reps through that process.
Competition
Competition isn’t just other solutions in the market - most likely, your biggest competition when it comes to deal decision-makers is the other internal budget priorities leading to a “do nothing” or “do it internally” decision. This is where it becomes critical to define your differentiation on value, not just technical bells and whistles.
| “You are competing against every other use of money and time and resources today. Every spend is being compared to every other potential use of money in an organization. If your solution can't jump off the page on its own and grab a CFO by the by the shoulders and shake them a little bit and go, ‘you can't afford not to do this right now.’ - You're in trouble.” |
Equip your team to uncover the competing priorities and objections that can create internal competition against your solution, then provide them a roadmap for articulating value that conveys the cost of not funding your solution.
Win with More Decision-Makers
Start mobilizing your team for bigger wins with even more strategies from our webinar, Driving a Revenue Mindset. Brian covers how leaders can help their teams drive a collective "yes" from complex buying committees, drive urgency to close deals on forecast, and build a go-to-market motion that sets the stage for scalable growth. It starts with aligning the entire revenue function behind a common mindset for maximizing customer value at every stage of the journey. Watch the conversation.
