Juan Medina

Illustrates why MEDDIC Training won’t help your customers

@ ASalesGrowth Company

A Foolproof Method to “Prove” Whether MEDDIC Works!

Comparing one sales methodology to another can be confusing. And often turns into too much “Xs and Os talk.”

Instead, put yourself in your Buyer’s Shoes!

Imagine you’re a Buyer. You’re looking to buy some new software and one of your salespeople has taken the MEDDIC sales training and subscribes to the MEDDIC sales methodology.

With this in mind, I will break down the acronym MEDDIC.

• Metrics – What is the economic impact of the solution?
• Economic Buyer – Who has profit and loss responsibility for this?
• Decision Criteria – What are their technical, vendor and financial criteria?
• Decision Process – Then what happens, define validation and approval?
• Identify Pain – What are the primary business objectives?
• Champion – Who will sell on your behalf internally?
• Competition – Who are we competing against and why?

Now these aren’t bad criteria unto themselves… but remember, stay in that “buyer mode!”

Imagine you’re a buyer and this is how they view you and your organization.  Imagine they are asking you these questions. How many of these 7 criteria actually provide value to YOU the buyer vs. how many are designed to assist the salesperson in getting the sale done… RATHER than help you the buyer make sound decision? 

Imagine being on the other end of the phone as a salesperson peppers you with questions about who the economic buyer is, or what your decision criteria are, or who the champion is going to be, etc.

AN OPEN LETTER TO EVERY VP SALES

WHO’S BEEN BURNED BY “SALES METHODOLOGIES”

By reading and doing your genuine best to apply “Gap Selling” you can easily double your sales.

It’s a simple fact–and it applies to a total beginner to sales just as much as a 24-year sales leader who has managed millions, if not billions of bookings.

But if you are that sales leader, Gap Selling is way more likely to fail to double your sales.

In fact–your personal journey as a sales leader into Problem-Centric Sales might only distract you from the problems biting your sales department–making your performance worse.

This is because Gap Selling the book fixes problems only at the individual-level.

But to fix the problems biting your sales department, you need to implement Gap Selling at the organization-level.

Let me explain….

This deadly mistake Sales VPs have no CLUE they’re making

We’ve interviewed hundreds of sales departments, both underperforming and wellperforming. A common question we will ask VP of Sales:

“What sales methodology do you practice here?”

Most companies have tried one (or tried all of them!) so more often than not the VP will say MEDDIC, or SPIN, or Gap Selling, or whatever.

In this case, let’s say the VP said, “we’re a MEDDIC sales team.”

The fun part is when we move on to the directors and the managers. Here are some of the responses we hear way too often…

Really?

Your team will report “economic buyer” and “not a real champion” up to you in executive deal reviews–but when you’re not around they do whatever the hell they want?

What will shock you: 92% of those departments who “practice” methodology X operate with less structure than those who practice no methodology at all!

What may no longer shock you… 80% of the sales departments who say “we’re a MEDDIC/Sandler/Gap team” actually operate with more chaos than those who practice no methodology at all!

And the last person to know, of course–you, the sales executive.

Because….

The Higher Your Role–the Greater the DISTANCE

Between You and Your SALES PROBLEMS

Consider the implications.

You are simultaneously the person responsible for all or so much of the sales of many people–and also the person in worst position to get your hands on exactly what’s biting those people whose sales you are supposed to nourish.

You may read Gap Selling–and even apply its simple principles into action in your selling and management (not easy–Gap Selling is notoriously difficult)…

But what makes you think it’s possible–by indirect influence–to apply these principles on behalf of your sales reps and sales managers?

And, assume that your managers and reps somehow all do apply Gap Selling personally… how do they evolve into a Gap Selling organization where individuals hold each other accountable and rely on the simple principles to multiply their efforts (and sales)?

Even through all that–what if they forget after 6 months? What about new hires?

These are organization-level hurdles. When sales teams don’t address these problems, they can miss quota/have no pipeline/churn customers not just through one fiscal year, but through multiple generations of new hires and sales leadership. 

Our book alone cannot make that go away… this is why we offer Gap Sales Training for Sales Departments.

These 3 CROs are just a few of our case studies.

More so than the amazing results they gained, focus on the depth of the gaps our training filled in their companies.

Complex Results are *never* transactional one-size-fits-all…

Those CROs cited above–they faced organizational-gaps that could be resolved only with an organizational-fix, which for them, was our training.

Most companies we speak to are not a fit for our training.

So for you, we need to start at 0…

Do you even have an organizational gap? What are the problems causing it? Are they worth fixing?

It takes a hell of a consultant to discover answers to those questions….

But that’s why our Gap Selling methodology exists!

…to train sales reps into sharp curious professionals whose only goal is to diagnose your business problems and ascertain how to fix them!

Our Discovery Audits not only walk you through that–they allow you to “measure up” what a mature trained Gap Selling process looks and feels like.

That’s right: we are elite enough and confident enough at selling to offer discovery calls.

Now, here’s what will happen on our Discovery Audit–

The Goal: to identify business problems and addressable root causes you might not have realized were there (the pressure points behind macro-problems like, “we missed quota by 37%”).

Your Incentive: ask yourself–“is this how I want my reps to sell?” “What are these Gap Sellers doing different in these conversations to engage me, the customer?”

If we find a business problem and root cause we want to solve together–that’s almost certainly bottom-line impact for you (if not outright dodging a bullet).

If we don’t find a business problem (or one we can’t help with) you still sampled a mature trained Gap Selling Sales Process for yourself (the same process that transformed Cart.com, Corestream, JDCU and many more).

Hard to find better ROI on one call…

If you are anything like our clients–we will reveal business problems that need your attention ASAP.

What kind of problems exactly?

I just opened one of our reps’ Salesforce instance–they write this all down. Here’s just one example.

From the Detailed  Notes of Christion Embury’s Salesforce…

• Problems, Long Sales Cycles + Poor Conversion— “goal is 15k / month in MRR – is an upsell piece – last month they hit 12.5k – CS/AM side AE Side – 2/3 in ramp Last month had 2/7 hit quota – were at 74% last month (varying because they’re tiering up) 28.5k target hit 24.5k sales cycle length 25 days avg – would like to see it at 15-18, to him a 25 day is poor sales execution and discovery”
• Root Causes– “Went through a reshuffle in terms of strategy and the way they’re operating as a biz – Running much more lean and efficient model – running as a break even company – layoffs happened beg of year this year has been volatile – rough patch – had some layoffs – contract seats, spend reduction, churn + organic churn Not as much as they’d like in discovery – probably the weakest thing for them right now – If they’re talking about how deep they get – Very rare for them to understand their prospects’ business and the business problem to solve and the value of it – They’ll discover there’s an issue and what it is (if they get there) Two main problems in the product/business – 1. is urgency, processes are not urgent a lot of the time 2. Other is horizontal platform whenever you try to answer the problem of what problem are you solving – What is the platform doing, for most customers, and then the vertical build and what’s the thing that you built on the platform – Basically the other AE ramp time can be really challenging with all of those factors because of all the diff industries, use cases, etc. – take long to Where they’re comfortable selling.”
• Impact– “Haven’t been able to grow the team and grow revenue to the point they need – Series B is not on the horizon – Lost access to capital & resources (VC money) due to lack of growth“

There’s hundreds more opportunities like these in our CRM–dense with problems, problem metrics, root causes, business impact and more…. otherwise it’s not an opportunity.

You should expect a similar level of detail if we meet.

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