MEDDIC Sales Process: 7-Step Implementation Guide

MEDDIC is a popular B2B sales methodology with origins in the 1990s. It consists of six steps and is a prospect-centered framework. MEDDIC helps sales reps ask more relevant questions at the right time and focuses on gathering valuable information to help convert prospects at different stages of the sales lifecycle into paying customers. 

What is the MEDDIC sales process?

The MEDDIC sales process is a B2B sales qualification methodology, first introduced in the 90s. It provides a framework to better qualify, develop, and close leads. After all, better leads mean increased sales.

Introduced by PTC software company, the MEDDIC sales process is credited with fueling the company’s impressive growth from $300 million to $1 billion. 

Since then, multiple startups and B2B businesses have used the MEDDIC framework to build a healthy pipeline and forecast.

Below, you’ll see a summary of the MEDDIC sales process, its framework, and how you can implement it effectively in your organization.

MEDDIC is an acronym for the six steps in this sales qualification process:

M — Metrics

E — Economic Buyer

D — Decision Criteria

D — Decision Process

I — Identify Pain

C — Champion

Metrics

Metrics are measurable and quantifiable results. They are numbers they can compare and interpret to achieve success in the future. Metrics can be divided into two types – below the line and above the line. 

Below the line: These metrics relate to aspects like cost savings or efficiency.

Above the line: These metrics include aspects like revenue, profits, time to market, quality, or customer satisfaction.

Keep in mind, your metrics will interest the prospect only if they are aligned with the prospect’s goals, so start by asking a few qualifying questions.

Qualifying questions to ask: 

1. What is your current business goal?

2. What efficiency or business-related metrics matter to you? 

3. How would success be measured by your business?

Economic buyer

An economic buyer is a decision-maker — a person in the organization who has the authority to spend and drive the project. 

Normally, it is the person who handles the economic profit or loss of the project where your solution will be implemented. The economic buyer considers the big picture and has a clear view of the business benefits, which is why the decision to buy your product will be made by them.

It is important to research and be prepared to meet an economic buyer, as it could be your key to success. Do some checks about their decision-making process to be better prepared for the meeting. Think about the value proposition that your product brings to this specific person.

Qualifying questions to ask: 

1. What do you need to make this project successful?

2. Are you sponsoring this project?

3. Will someone else be involved in the final decision-making, formally or informally?

A successful meeting with the economic buyer would mean a greater chance of closing the deal, and the likelihood of closing drops by 50% if a meeting with the economic buyer is not scheduled at all. 

Decision criteria

In the decision criteria step of the MEDDIC framework process, we are qualifying prospects based on the business’s decision criteria. A business has formal or informal decision-making criteria which can be further divided into technical, legal, or business decision criteria.

Technical Decision Criteria — This looks at the criteria related to the technical extendibility and the current infrastructure of the organization. Things like the organization’s current tech stack and the possibility of your product’s integration with it will be considered here. If your product is a great fit for your client’s needs, but can’t sync with the organization’s current infrastructure, then there is a slim chance the organization will consider your product.  

Business Decision Criteria — These criteria include all things related to revenue, cash flow, and budgets of the organization. An organization’s yearly OPEX or CAPEX budgets may also drive its business decision criteria.

By understanding and aligning your offerings to your clients’ needs, you will project a helpful attitude and be more likely to influence their decisions.

Qualifying question to ask: 

1.   What are your criteria for a buying decision?

2. How are you calculating ROI to justify the project investment?

Decision process

The decision criteria step is used to understand the components that could influence a buying decision. Decision process is the actual step-by-step process that needs to be followed to formally arrive at it. Just like the decision criteria, the decision process is mainly categorized into three parts — technical decision-making process, business decision-making process, and paper-based process.

Technical Decision Making

Technical decisions are based on the requirements and criteria of the company’s tech leads, such as architects, business technologists, and operations managers. Their perspective is based on their role in the business. That’s why it’s important to understand the whole technical decision-making process, the people involved, and the way the client documents and confirms a decision. This process could be either formal or informal in nature.

Business Decision Making

Business decisions are usually linked to finances, so it is vital to understand the approval process that a business follows. For example, a formal board may need to approve the decision, or there may be a normal timeline required for such approvals that must be considered.

Paper Process

Paper processes typically involve intense negotiations and can drag on for weeks or months. There could be other regulations and compliance requirements that involve a lot of paperwork and time. 

Qualifying questions to ask:  

1. What are the steps and their sequential order to arrive at a decision?

2. Is the approval process different based on budget?

3. What are the critical terms and conditions and are there any frame agreements in place?

4. Is there a legal review process?

Identify pain

An effective sales pitch is one where you can solve the problem that the customer is facing or might face in the immediate future. The pain is normally around technical or business aspects affecting your clients. Addressing these by linking your product to the tangible benefits they can receive will catch their attention.

A weak, unclear, or futuristic benefit with no timeline will lead to reduced budgets or your product being pushed to a low priority. 

For example, saying that your product will improve productivity might not be very impactful. However, suppose you state that your product can improve productivity by 30% and help save costs by 50k/year. In that case, you’re showing that your solution will directly affect the business’s time, cost, and revenue, making it more likely they will consider purchasing your product now. 

Qualifying questions to ask: 

1. What are the current challenges that you are facing?
2. How will these impact you or the business in both the short term and long term?
3. What are the consequences of not acting on the pain?

Champion

A champion is a person who has a personal interest in resolving pain. This person will collaborate with others to find a suitable solution to the pain point. Champions are usually influential, well-accepted by their peers, and have an excellent track record in successfully executing projects.

As your product will directly impact the way champions do business, they will see its immediate value. Identify champions and nurture them by addressing their specific issues. For example, connect them to subject matter experts and provide helpful information and references. You could even share relevant events and recordings with them. Doing so will build trust and motivate them to defend your cause. They will then support you and promote you in their organization.

Qualifying questions to ask: 

1. Does this person have the right influence?

2. What will they gain/ what is their personal interest?

3. Will they be able to explain the benefits of your product without your help?

MEDDICC vs. MEDDPIC vs. MEDDPICC: What’s the difference?

The big difference in all the three is the addition of two components, Competition and Paperwork. Based on the industry that you operate in, adding these components might be necessary.

Paper Process

The paper process is already a part of the original MEDDIC process; however, in matters where the paper process is critical for the legal or procurement aspect of the business, it might be a good idea to separate it into an independent step.

Competition

It is essential to know what your competition offers in highly competitive markets. Understanding your competition’s offers and pricing allows you to position yourself better as a strong contender. An analytical approach with a brilliant sales strategy will help you convince your client better.

Why use the MEDDIC sales methodology? 

The MEDDIC sales methodology has been so successful because it keeps the prospect at the center of the process. It is a methodology proven to help you sell more by giving you better control over the sales process. 

Instead of being salesy, it relies on attaining knowledge about the customer and the business, thereby making the process much more effective in the long run.

This framework and the associated questions offer you a repeatable method that optimizes your time and supports you in building a healthy sales pipeline. It is a simple checklist that is easy to remember and implement.

The MEDDIC sales methodology helps:

• Benchmark your value proposition with the prospect’s needs.
• Analyze the cost-time effectiveness and qualify leads objectively.
•  Identify and uncover pains backed by data to better align your offering and build urgency.
•  Build and empower champions who understand your product’s distinct value, thereby getting access to real-decision makers.

The success of the MEDDIC sales methodology has been proven through its use to maximize sales efforts for multiple businesses across the globe. Statistics show that the framework is successful for both startups and established businesses. Startups have seen a growth of over 250%, while the growth is 30% even in saturated markets.

Who should use the MEDDIC sales process?

MEDDIC is not a sales process but a framework that should be a common language across the entire revenue team in your business. It removes second-guessing from the sales prospecting phase and helps the sales team sell better and more confidently. The marketing team can also collect data to provide customized services to the leads that may convert down the line and help sales personnel uncover more profound insights into customer pain.

How to implement the MEDDIC sales framework

To effectively implement MEDDIC, it is crucial to train the sales team on the buyer persona. Then, once they are clear about the products, services, and audience, encourage them to apply the MEDDIC framework to their discovery calls and document these conversations.

Get full buy-in from sales managers

MEDDIC implementation can’t be a half-baked effort. It is vital to make it the universal language across your organization for greater success. While the sales team needs to instill the basics of MEDDIC and implement it by identifying Champions and Economic Buyers, the marketing team needs to speak the MEDDIC language to communicate their initiatives and label different contact types for the different MEDDIC sales stages.

Front line sales teams need regular training and support via in-person training and meetings or resource centers within the app to learn best practices and next steps on demand.

Review sales objections and win-loss data

To move forward with MEDDIC, it is vital to continue using it, seek advice, learn from your peers, and discuss the latest wins or losses. Sales objections like price tag, lack of trust, or concerns around contracts will likely arise when the sales team begins to ask deep, provocative questions. The sales team must be prepared to respond to these questions during MEDDIC sales training. During implementation, a weekly review with the sales team to analyze the win-loss data and discuss any objections will help iron out any initial setbacks. In addition, easy access to refresher videos and training will help reinforce strategies to manage sales objections.

Update buyer personas

Personas are designed to identify the ideal customer for your product or service. It is essential to review the buyer personas during MEDDIC training, as it can refine your understanding of your target audience by adding roles and attributes to them. Personas can help sales personnel identify and talk to the right prospect or possible economic buyer. It is also helpful for new sales agents, as their interaction with the client might be limited. 

Refine sales qualification criteria

Review your current sales qualification process against the MEDDIC process and fill the gaps. There will be a component of unlearning and relearning for sales and marketing teams. Encourage them to understand the changes that need to be implemented going forward. Use sales enablement to equip sales reps with all the information they might need for the successful and efficient adoption of MEDDIC.

Map interactions to the MEDDIC process

Document the customer interaction during and after discovery calls using the MEDDIC steps and create easy-to-access standard templates for sales teams. Encourage them to work through the whole MEDDIC process. In your CRM tool, add fields as per the MEDDIC process to speak a common language for sales, marketing, and service teams. Another benefit of adding MEDDIC to your CRM is that it helps provide a snapshot view of the sales pipeline and the customer stage at any given point in time for effective MEDDIC implementation. Embed MEDDIC training modules in the CRM environment to provide access to on-demand training modules when they need them. 

Use software to enable sales reps

Enable and empower sales reps to do their job well from anywhere in the world with technology. In today’s remote and hybrid work environments, sales reps are often in locations worldwide, making it challenging to keep track of their understanding and implementation of a sales framework. 

Similarly, it’s inefficient for sales reps to return to their training content whenever they have questions. Having standard training libraries doesn’t answer the need for real-time contextual content either. 

It’s essential to leverage technology and software to enable and empower each sales representative to do their job well, anywhere.  

Spekit is a modern digital adoption and enablement platform that provides employees with knowledge and skills to understand and adapt their organization’s tools and navigate processes like a pro, enhancing productivity and revenue.

With Spekit’s just-in-time enablement, sales reps can access contextual training, playbooks, battle cards, objection-handling, sales process, and more from any app or workflow.

Spekit supports enablement through emails, LinkedIn, or any other place where the sales rep interacts with the customers, reinforcing messaging and personas for better qualification and lead conversion. 

You can even embed a sales methodology like MEDDIC within your CRM with Spekit. It syncs real-time with any changes made in the CRM, offers bite-sized embedded training across various stages, and sends in-app alerts and notifications about any changes. It also offers powerful analytics and helps create a feedback loop between teams for better adoption and reinforcement. 

Lastly, Spekit Flows, step-by-step walkthroughs that reinforce crucial knowledge within the workflow, show users how to do something rather than tell them—helping both in the short-term and long-term how-to retention. 

Monitor performance and hold MEDDIC reviews

Once the systems are in place, monitoring progress and holding MEDDIC reviews for effective implementation is indispensable. 

After your CRM is set, it becomes easy to understand each prospect’s top priorities and identify problems a specific sales rep might face. Having weekly MEDDIC reviews will help solve these issues by discussing them with peers. Weekly deal reviews are also a great time to brainstorm ideas, learn from others’ experiences, refresh the MEDDIC methodology in a seller’s mind, and help new employees get up to speed with the company’s standard operating procedures (SOP).

Use Spekit to implement MEDDIC in your organization

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MEDDIC is a robust sales framework that keeps the prospect at the center of your process. With each step in MEDDIC, a sales rep is better positioned to ask relevant questions and gather valuable data that will take them one step closer to converting the lead. This article has covered the benefits and reasons why organizations should adopt the MEDDIC sales process.

Proper training and reinforcement of MEDDIC steps and processes are crucial for effective implementation. Sales enablement tools like Spekit can make this easier and empower the sales rep by surfacing relevant, contextual training during the sales process. Plus, its easy integration with CRMs like Salesforce makes reinforcements convenient and timely.
To know more about how you can empower your sales team with the right training and processes, visit Spekit for sales enablement.