MEDDIC
Lessons Learned from GTM Consulting
For the past two years, I have performed part-time, contract go-to-market consulting. My wife had a surgery that went wrong 18 months ago, so I needed something that would allow me to take care of her, stay sharp, earn money, and help companies grow. What I encountered was quite different from what I expected, so I thought I would pass it along.
Most of the work was with small to midsize companies, but the problems and needs mirrored what I have encountered at larger companies. The main difference is that large companies tend to look to software to address problems. In contrast, smaller companies often lack the budget for what they view as a solution that increases complexity.
Here are my Top 5 findings:
- GTM plans are often developed at the highest levels, often in isolation, without market testing and validation.
- An interesting aside is that the company is often really seeking sales optimization but believes it is doing things “well enough” today and therefore needs to focus on new offerings and revenue streams.
- New perspectives on past performance and failures are well received but more surprising than anticipated. This leads to a better understanding of needs, which builds consensus moving forward.
- Sales teams are sometimes pitted against one another, rather than working together to help everyone achieve more (Coopetition – “A rising tide lifts all boats.”)
- Sometimes the competing team isn’t sales, but support. The team wants to help the customer (which is great), but works outside its defined scope instead of bringing in the services and sales teams to work jointly to solve the customer’s problem.
- Sales teams are focused on selling features rather than solving business problems.
- Training those teams on solution selling and understanding the prospect’s needs pays off.
- CRMs are not consistently used and often reflect idealized fiction rather than reality.
- Old, dead, or unqualified opportunities; lack of recent contact or interaction; deals that have slipped more than once; and a lack of understanding (company, needs, players, business environment) all point to an unrealistic pipeline.
- Sales management and teams are not leveraging AI to help focus their efforts.
- Conversely, they may view AI as a panacea, investing time and money in tools that supplement a strong team rather than focusing on strengthening the team.
Here are the related Lessons Learned:
- Selling is a byproduct of problem-solving. You can’t solve problems if you don’t know what they are. Every interaction with a prospect should focus on gathering information, building trust and relationships, and leveraging prior interactions to demonstrate that your solution will solve their problem and ease their pain.
- Here’s solution sales again. Teaching teams to ask better questions, listen more, and validate their understanding increases their standing with prospects.
- Identifying common business problems and describing how your product or service solves them should be the foundation of the plan.
- Perform market analysis. How do other companies describe those problems? Their terminology, often found in job postings by competitors and your target audience, can help create effective messaging that resonates. Work to become the natural fit for what your prospects are seeking and the problems they are likely dealing with.
- Individual contributors get paid to win, but sales management needs to create incentives for collaborative efforts that lead to both wins and ongoing customer growth.
- Paying sales teams for net new business only causes them to ignore install base expansion opportunities. And, if another vendor solves their problems, it is only a matter of time before they replace you.
- For one company, I convinced them to implement a 2% SPIV (like a SPIFF, but team-focused) for every team member who actively contributed to team improvement. SPIV payments were quarterly, and there was a running total so the team could see the fund growth. Initial indications of a positive impact are good.
- Another benefit of collaboration is that it helps teams focus on approaches that work due to ongoing testing and refinement. Collaboration also helps teams focus on a more accurate ICP (ideal customer profile). Sales management can then feed their findings back to Marketing to tailor and fine-tune their efforts.
- CRMs often either lack information or are full of wishful thinking. They focus on activities, and not progress and next steps.
- Using MEDPICC as a foundation for qualification is a much better start.
- Sales managers need to validate the information independently to ensure their teams are upfront and honest. Trust, coaching, and collaboration work together for the win.
- Chasing deals that are unlikely to close wastes valuable resources.
- AI is not a panacea, but it is very effective for research, market validation, prospecting, and meeting preparation.
- Going in prepared builds respect and credibility, saves time, and helps you quickly qualify prospects in or out.
- There may be opportunities to nurture prospects who have potential but aren’t qualified for immediate deals, seeding the pipeline for future opportunities. This could be a great place to leverage AI for personalized journeys with highly relevant curated content.
So, what are your thoughts? Have you seen some of these problems yourself? How did you handle them? Let me know in the comments below.
And if you are looking for assistance with your business, contact me.
Finding the Right Fit in Sales
I won’t sell a product or service if I don’t believe in it or in the company behind it. But that is only part of the picture. Not all products or services fit everybody, but most fit somebody. Qualification matters, and qualifying accurately and quickly helps you earn more money. Whether you are a seller or leading a sales team, understanding the best-fit use cases can help you build your ICP and a repeatable sales motion, allowing you to:
- Find and prospect the best candidate companies.
- Demonstrate benefits for a credible and relevant use case.
- Find a sponsor who benefits from your offering.
- Accelerate the deal velocity – even in a large enterprise business.
- Close large deals faster – and more of them!
When I started selling at my last company, I was told that the typical deal size was $75K-$80K, with a 9-12 month sales cycle at a midsize company. I sold a Kubernetes Fleet Management platform, and I quickly found that most midsize companies lacked the containerization needs Kubernetes provides. Most also needed to gain the skills required for fairly complex solutions, which can take months. So, a great solution for some may not be the solution for all.
Large Enterprise companies had the need and the expertise to support Kubernetes, which started my profile development exercise. Large companies with a corporate-standard containerization product were less likely candidates, with a much longer sales cycle. Financial Services companies require strong end-to-end security and cannot afford breaches (reputationally and actual costs). Therefore, they had larger budgets and immediate needs, so they became a primary focus.
While looking at these companies’ environments, it became clear to me that with the right targeting, an initial deal could easily be in the $500K-$1 million range. And, if you successfully delivered what you promised, there could be several more significant follow-on deals. The icing on the cake is that by selling those companies what they need, solving significant problems or concerns, and treating them like the valued customers they are, they would reward you with loyalty and long-term business. That became my focus, and my assumptions proved to be accurate.
Finding the right fit for your product or service takes analysis, investigation, testing, and time. Getting this right creates the perfect opportunity for ongoing success and to scale results across the entire team. It also provides credibility when customers are willing to speak with prospects and sing your praises. Success breeds success.
Sales Success for the Individual Contributor
Let’s start with two of my favorite personal quotes:
“Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity.” – Seneca, Roman Philosopher.
“Become the person who would attract the results you seek.” – Jim Cathcart, Author of “Relationship Selling”
Why are those quotes important? Because they point out that you are responsible for your own success.
Great companies with great products or services and great management teams make it much easier to be successful, but anyone who is prepared, curious, focused, motivated, and has a system they follow can succeed anywhere.
My experience has shown the following to be true:
- You are unlikely to succeed without preparation and understanding of your prospects, their customers, and their competition. This understanding provides the foundation for asking relevant questions to understand the real need and effectively qualify a deal in or out.
- Most sales occur because a Product or Service solves real and immediate business problems or ties into strategic business initiatives.
- Your early goals should be to get the meeting, have real discussions, understand problems from your prospect’s perspective (including the terminology they use to describe those problems), and help them describe what success “looks like to them” and why that matters (logically and emotionally). At this stage, you are learning and positioning, not selling.
- Deal qualification is an essential skill that lets you focus your time and effort where you are most likely to succeed. The faster you can “qualify out” a prospect that is not a good fit, the better it is for you and that prospect. Eternal optimism is not a plan for filling your pipeline.
- If you have a supporting team, ensure that everyone understands the situation, their role and contribution to success, and what you want them to focus on. Never assume that things will just fall into place on their own.
- Have a repeatable process to track activities, measure progress, and identify the best next steps. Remember, “To measure is to know.” (Lord Kelvin)
- The sale is not over until your new Customer is happy. Become their internal advocate within your organization, and you will earn the customer’s trust, loyalty, and repeat business.
Ideally, your Sales Leadership Team has defined a Sales Strategy and created a couple of repeatable Sales Plays and compelling supporting materials such as Success Stories, Case Studies, ROI and TCO charts, brief but targeted Demos, and realistic Product Comparison information for internal use. These become the foundation for repeatable and scalable success.
But if that is missing, collaborate with your peers, seek guidance from your leadership, and get creative. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your success, so don’t allow things to become excuses or a crutch. In the words of the Buddha, “There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, Change it, or Leave it.”
To help ensure success, you will need to follow a Sales Methodology. Here is a link to a good high-level overview from Spotio.com. I’ve used several, and each has pros and cons. None of them effectively addresses the successful progression from:
- Initiation, Understanding, and Qualification.
- Defining a compelling Solution and successfully positioning it against the competition.
- Closing the Sale is an area in which many salespeople fall short.
The sales methodology that I personally believe is one of the easiest to use and most effective is MEDDIC. It is a Deal Qualification process, which is more encompassing than a simple Lead Qualification approach. The biggest blind spot is that it fails to address these four key areas:
- Influencers within a buyer’s organization. Knowing who these people are and what their biases are will let you direct resources to each and, ideally, take a multi-threaded approach for each deal.
- Incumbents and the sentiment towards those vendors and their products. This is key to avoiding wasted time on an opportunity you’re unlikely to win.
- Related/Adjacent needs. Tying success to multiple areas provides leverage and increases the value of your solution.
- Timeline/Urgency. This allows you to work backward from milestone dates for efforts like typical lead times for Legal and Purchasing, Integration Testing, QA/QC, Training and Documentation, etc.
Being prepared, creating a common vision of success based on the outcome rather than the approach, being responsive, and developing relationships and trust based on knowledge and a desire to help are easy ways to differentiate yourself from many lesser salespeople. Invest in your skills, set aggressive goals, and always hold yourself accountable for success.
Do this, and you will become part of the 20% of any sales team that ‘moves the dial.’
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 