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Transform your sales with MEDDPICC. Ever heard about the MEDDPICC sales methodology and not know where to start? Our blog covers everything you need to know about MEDDPICC and how you can utilise it to drive your sales performance.
Have you ever heard about the MEDDPICC sales methodology and not know where to start?
We hear you. It’s not always easy to understand what these complicated terminologies mean and how you can implement them into your company. That’s what this blog is here to do. To start, we need to define a few things.
A sales process deals with how new technologies, products, brands, or services get into the market. A methodology is a guiding principle that helps shape sales processes and makes them easier to navigate.
MEDDPICC, therefore, is a modern sales methodology which combines both processes and frameworks and is used to drive digital sales. MEDDPICC is used most commonly in business-to-business (B2B) sales.
The phrase was coined and created by Jack Napoli, John McMahon, and Dave Dunkel at Parametric Technology in the 1990s. The methodology can also be known as MEDDIC but it has now been adapted to include two extra steps: the paper process and the champion.
But, what does MEDDPICC mean, what are its benefits when compared to other sales methodologies like BANT? How can you implement MEDDPICC into your business? Keep reading to find out.
What does MEDDPICC stand for? Join us as we break each word down.
These are the benefits of your solution and how you choose to measure your success. Using hard numbers, consider how your prospect will succeed in their role and what kind of quantifiable goals will lead to that achievement.
The person, people, or group that has the overall authority in the buying decision, i.e.: a CEO, manager, or main stakeholder. Ask yourself, are you speaking to the decision marker?
This stage is about understanding the feature functionality that your buyer is looking for and how closely your solution aligns with it. Consider what changes you should make to align your solution with their decision criteria.
This is all about the method of how the client makes a decision internally, which is closely linked to their criteria.
The series of steps that follow the decision process in how you will go from decision to signed contract. I.e.: Drawing up a legal contract.
What pain does your product resolve, what would their personal or professional win be with this change? If they don’t make the change to your product/service, then what are the negative implications?
The person who has power, influence and credibility within the customer’s organisation. This is the person that can vouch for you and will bat for you when you need them to.
Any person or company that is competing against you. Consider what differentiates you from them?
There are many benefits for using MEDDPICC as a bona fide sales methodology. Most fundamentally, it can be used to develop, qualify and focus on the prospects that are most likely to convert.
It also ensures that no vital part of the sales process is overlooked, as every step is carefully accounted for. Using this sales methodology will put you in a great position to achieve your targets or your company's OKRs.
MEDDPICC can also help businesses collect quantifiable and actionable high-quality data due to the use of specified metrics. Due to this focus on metrics and the step-by-step process, it can also help reveal weak areas in any sales cycle, allowing you to improve your approach and transform results.
You may be thinking: I’ve heard of other sales methodologies, so what makes MEDDPICC stand out from the others? This is a fair question. One of the other sales methodologies you may have heard of is BANT, and we will use this as an example to show just how great MEDDPICC really is.
BANT was coined by IBM in the 1960s, which predates MEDDPICC by thirty years. It stands for:
What is the prospect’s total budget? Can they even afford what you offer?
Does the prospect have decision-making authority, or are do they not have much influence in the buying process?
Do they have the need for your product? If they don't you may be wasting your time on the wrong customer.
What timeframe are you setting for the prospect to come to a decision?
One immediately apparent benefit of BANT is that its simpler than MEDDPICC as it has fewer steps that you need to follow. It is probably easier to learn, so it could be a good place to start for sales professionals. However, MEDDPICC is more thorough and robust as it details an extensive step-by-step process. Using MEDDPICC will ensure important factors aren't overlooked, making it an elite approach to sales methodology.
MEDDPICC also covers a lot of the same things that BANT covers. Instead of budget, MEDDPICC favours metrics, instead of authority it has economic buyer, instead of need MEDDPICC has decision criteria and implications of pain, and instead of timeframe it has the decision process.
As you can see, MEDDPICC does the same as BANT but goes even further to really create a specialised and specific sales methodology which thrives at enterprise sales level.
If you’re still not convinced that MEDDPICC is the best sales methodology out there, here are some more factors to consider whether it’s the right process for your business.
MEDDPICC is necessary for any business that is really struggling with their sales as it provides a clear checklist on how to successfully close a deal. By making sure you have hit each stage of MEDDPICC you can be more assured that you will deliver a successful sale. However, it can also be used to help with a wide-range of sales-related problems and doesn’t just need to be for businesses that can’t seem to make any sales.
MEDDPICC can be used to help close more deals and stop deals from dragging on. Given that there is a clear step-by-step guide, it reduces the change of complex contracts and overlong complicated processes.
If you're now convinced that MEDDPICC is the right sales methodology for your business, read on as we give you advice on how to implement MEDDPICC within your sales process.
At each stage, you can track progress. Next to each step, you can use a colour coding system to express how confident you feel with the progress you’ve made with each particular aspect.
Green represents that you are 100% confident, and red represents information that you have not collected yet. Amber could then represent partial information or a general lack of confidence about the specific step. Alternatively, you could use numbers with 1 representing the same as green, 0.5 representing the same as amber and 0 representing the same as red. For example, if you are tracking progress for the economic buyer step, but you are still uncertain about whether you are speaking to the main decision-maker as your research is still incomplete, an amber colour or a 0.5 would be best used here.
How will the prospect succeed? What kind of quantifiable goals do you need to achieve? You can use KPI’s to help establish the clear metrics for performance indication. To find these, establish the quantifiable gains a customer requires from the product/service or brand.
Ask yourself: are you talking to the decision-maker? Do you have access to the authority that makes important financial decisions for the company that you want to represent your product? If not, you need to find access to this or establish a way to work around this that won’t halt the sales process.
Consider what is driving the client’s decision and what changes you can make to your product or communication to best meet these criteria.
Ask who is involved in this decision process and how they will come to a final decision. If you know the process you won’t lose time and the sale will become more streamlined. You’ll also know when to follow up.
What is the process of getting everything completed and signed? This is the added part of MEDDPICC which was included to best support a secure and efficient closed deal.
A customer needs something because of a particular pain. Learn to identify this pain and your product will be beneficial to the customer.
This is the super end-user of the product. This person will give valuable information and support to the company and the users. They will be the person who has the most pain and gets the maximum benefit from your product or service. Leveraging this internal stakeholder is another added part of MEDDPICC and can really help to secure the deal.
Who else is your prospect considering, and how good is their product? What is the competition, and how can you meet and outdo their success metrics? Knowing your unique selling point is absolutely crucial as it ensures you stand out from the crowd.
MEDDPICC is a foolproof sales methodology technique which can be used to best secure a clear, easy and non-drawn out sale. It allows you as a company to cover all bases and ensure that you haven’t overlooked any aspect that will lead to a failed sale.
If you would like to know more about MEDDPICC and find out more about the sales technique, you can find out more through their own website where you can buy a book all about the methodology.
Let us know how you implement MEDDPICC in your businesses sales methodology through messaging us on our Twitter or LinkedIn.