Let’s continue…

In Connecting The Dots of MEDDPICC Part 1 we talked about how to use MEDDPICC in the initial stage to quality deals that have the characteristics of a sales qualified opportunity. We talked about discovering a pain or initiative with a consequence for the business and a person that has power and influence plus the personal interest to solve the problem. An opportunity that has a good chance to progress.

Sounds fantastic. Let’s go and sell something! Send in the troops and secure the deal.

With our positive sales attitude and high energy we can wait to convince the client that we have the perfect solution for them, only to find ourselves a couple of weeks later, ghosted by prospects with no ammunition left. I have experienced this myself as well as many of my sales executives and here is where MEDDPICC can guide us to. Slow it down a bit and continue to qualify! How big of a problem are we talking about? Besides your champion, which stakeholders care about the issue? What is their desired outcome? Based on which criteria will they support your campaign?

Why does your client have to do anything?

Why is this important? Finding the answer to the “why do anything?” will allow you to understand the magnitude of the issue you are trying to solve, get to know stakeholders, understand their decision criteria to support a buying decision in the end. It is the Number One question of a CFO or financial board to the project team to understand the necessity and priority of your projects and prioritize it over the numerous requests of a shrinking and limited budget. Now is a good time to continue to develop your champion and have your first test on their power and influence.

Truly Understand Your Client

Ask your champion to identify and arrange meetings with stakeholders who are impacted or would benefit from solving the pain you have identified. Try to think broadly when discussing potential candidates. Besides the people who are directly impacted, there might be other departments, business users or even partners and clients that are impacted. Ideally you want to arrange meetings or web calls to discuss the current situation and the respective negative business consequences arising from it. You always want to discover some quantifiable benefits if the pains are addressed. Collecting those metrics in the stakeholder meetings is like collecting gold nuggets. If you do this well you will have great ammunition to avoid unnecessary price discussion with solid metrics fueling the business justification.

As a side effect you get to know additional stakeholders and understand the current situation and impact from various angles. You will identify metrics that will support or endanger your case. You will discover uncertainties and even resistance from one or the other stakeholder, as they are supportive of the status quo, an incumbent vendor or supporting a competitor. Be open to qualify any resistance you encounter, as you need to be certain of potential roadblocks that could negatively impact your campaign. On a flip side the customer also gets to know you, your company and your offering. Some stakeholders might be open to support you beyond this meeting and eventually develop into additional champions on various levels.

MEDDPICC Leads The Way

As an ideal outcome of these meetings you will have a good understanding of Why the client needs to act: Pain, business implications, compelling reasons and negative consequences.

Metrics for preliminary business case: How the stakeholders measure the impact of the pain and quantify the benefits.

Decision Criteria, of the various stakeholders needs and requirements

Competitive threats, which you now can build a plan to neutralize

Identify an Economic buyer, a person with the discretionary power to make a buying decision

Develop a stronger relationship with your champion: Your champion now knows more about your solution, the benefits and got a good sense on how the stakeholders will support the campaign. The goal is now to consolidate and document the findings, ideally building a preliminary business case, something that would spark the interest of the

Economic Buyer, the person with the discretionary power to spend, to discuss with you and your champion. More to this in part 3 of Connecting The Dots of MEDDPICC.

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