Lessons Learned from Implementing MEDDPICC
MEDDIC, MEDDICC, MEDDPICC Sales Methodology
(Since initially writing this article over two years ago I have since implemented MEDDICC at another organization and am writing a book about my experience and the MEDDICC sales qualification framework. I have also written an update version of this post over on meddicc.com. You can view the updated version by clicking here — Thanks, Andy)
MEDDPICCR is Poq’s sales qualification methodology. Well, it’s obviously not entirely Poq’s…MEDDPICCR is a variation of MEDDPICC which is a variation of MEDDICC which was famously created by the legendary sales organisation within PTC.
PTC’s growth was incredible, not only did they grow from $300m to over $1bn in four years whilst never missing a target in the process, they, in fact, met or exceeded their quarterly target for 43 quarters in a row. Incredible.
The hottest companies in enterprise technology follow the playbook set out by PTC and use MEDDICC. Many of the top execs from PTC moved onto BMC where they continued to thrive in a culture of world-class sales execution. Many of which have gone on to lead some of the worlds largest organisations, and if you take a roll call of today’s Unicorns (Qualtrics, Okta, AppDynamics, Sprinklr, MongoDB, Fuze, and more!), it’s hard to find one that doesn’t rely on MEDDICC in some form or another.
If you’ve not heard of MEDDPICC then nobody articulates it better than the legends at Force Management. Here’s their take on it, click here.
MEDDICC for me as a salesperson was like a beautiful realisation of all of the things I innately felt about deals but didn’t have a framework to overlay on top of. It provided me with a map to keep myself on course, and on top. So, it was the obvious first choice of improvement initiatives to implement to Poq. In this post, I am going to share the lessons I’ve learned from implementing MEDDPICC to a new organisation: Poq, a London based SaaS company where we have grown the sales team from 6 to 20 in 12 months breaking all previously set records and hitting targets along the way.
You need to go all in 🎳— MEDDPICC is unlike any other framework I’ve come across. I often think that if sales management was a computer game and there were difficulty levels then MEDDPICC would be the hardest level. You’d probably find BANT as easy and some milder form of MEDDPICC in-between. With this in mind, you can’t half-ass MEDDPICC implementation, you have to go all in and stick with it AND…
You need the support of the executive team 👔— not just to back you but to keep you honest to your own goals. A modern salesperson has a tonne of plates they have to keep spinning to be effective and by adding something new for them to learn and apply to the majority of their activities, you have to ensure it is worth their while. Put simply, the average salesperson isn’t going to embrace MEDDPICC on their own — it needs to be driven throughout the business.
Celebrate and showcase the quick wins 🍾— The beauty of MEDDPICC is when you overlay it over the top of a deal it acts as a map. Often without it a salesperson is looking for the treasure (the deal) but they have no idea what route to go on to get it. MEDDPICC marks the spot and uncovers the critical path you need to go down to get there. For salespeople that haven’t used MEDDPICC before this should act as a EUREKA moment, like someone shining a light on their deal. It’s important to capture these moments and celebrate them to bolster support across your team.
All aboard the qualification train 🚂 — On-boarding of MEDDPICC is a crucial part of our new starter process. We have built a MEDDPICC onboarding course into our online learning environment. New starters have a guided course to bring them up to speed on the methodology finalised by a test. The test allows us to review their understanding and formalises MEDDPICC as a key part of their onboarding.
The Doctor will see you now 👩🏾⚕️ — At Poq we firmly believe in the power of having an open and collaborative sales team. There is no better example of this than our twice-weekly MEDDPICC sessions (clinics) where we spend an hour to review the MEDDPICC of two deals.
There’s a BD in MEDDPICC 👩💻— The development of our Business Development team at Poq plays an important part of our goal to create a world-class sales organisation and involving the BD team in the sessions is a powerful way of immersing high potential talent into the murky world of deal craft. It also leads to an improved qualification of opportunities as the BD team know the qualification criteria of what makes a sound deal.
Introducing Scoring provided clarity 💯— About 6 months after rolling out MEDDPICC we introduced a confidence scoring framework that scored each letter of MEDDPICC out of ten. This allowed us to gain some clarity over how confident we felt about each stage. So, for instance, we could identify whether we felt we had a real Champion or strong Competitors in the deal. It meant we could focus our actions from a deal review on improving areas of weakness identified by their low score. It also meant we could push harder to validate a salesperson’s confidence if it was high.
Happy Ears and the Pessimists 👂— The problem we found with the scoring was that the confidence levels would vary across salespeople based on how optimistic or pessimistic their personalities were. To fix this we created definitions and criteria for each level of scoring. This had an instantaneous effect of driving clarity and ratcheting up the visibility of areas of MEDDPICC that needed focus. It also allows us the opportunity to report more accurately across deals AND…
Build MEDDPICC into the sales stages 📶— By introducing scoring criteria we are able to align these criteria to deal stage. So, for instance, for a deal to move into our Negotiation stage it has to have a Decision Process score of 8/10 or above, the definition of which is:
‘We strongly understand the Decision Process the project has to undergo and have qualified with our Champion that there are no other factors except those identified. We are aligned extremely closely to the Decision Process. We have tested the accuracy of what we have been told through each stage and found it to be mostly accurate.’
Marketing and MEDDPICC 🙋♀️ — Poq’s marketing team embraced MEDDPICC with events aimed at building Champions and content designed for Economic Buyers. Having visibility and clarity of the Metrics and Pains of our prospective customers also helps our marketing department to keep their messaging absolutely relevant.
Don’t forget the value 💵— Whilst MEDDPICC is a powerful framework to drive smarter execution in sales opportunities it is no replacement for value selling. In fact, it’d be fair to say that in our experience value selling is like Batman and MEDDPICC is Robin, the trusty sidekick keeping Batman focused and out of trouble.
To really Identify Pains and uncover Metrics you’ll need a sound value based selling approach.
Sales is a Risky Business! 🧨— If you are a MEDDICC or even MEDDPICC user then by now you are probably wondering what the phantom ‘R’ is for at the end of MEDDPICCR, it stands for ‘Risks’. Whilst there is a fair argument to say that you should build Risks into your consideration at every other level of MEDDPICC we found it worthwhile calling out any Risks we found in its own section. It provides clarity and focus to keep mindful of the risk/s with the deal and encourages behaviour to tackle risks at every opportunity.
In closing, and perhaps most importantly at the highest level MEDDPICC has transformed Poq’s ability to accurately forecast, at a granular level it has empowered our extremely talented sales professionals to apply a consistent and focused framework to their deal craft, allowing them to very simply answer these four imperative questions:
- Do we belong in this deal?
- Where is the deal strong for us?
- Where is it weak for us and for what reasons is it weak?
- What actions will move the deal forward more efficiently and effectively?
The combination of talent, MEDDPICC and our relentless focus on our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP which I will write about the process behind in the future) has created a fiercely productive sales organisation with our goal set firmly on becoming world-class.
This is an excerpt from the book MEDDICC. For more information and to join the newsletter please visit www.meddicc.com.
