How to MEDDIC: Part 1 – Qualify Your Sales Pipeline with the MEDDIC Sales Methodology
Have you ever experienced taking over a sales patch with an existing pipeline? I personally have. This also came with the great honor of first “cleaning up” the pipeline in order to separate the hot and promising opportunities from the weak to death deals which were sitting in the pipeline for ages. These “weak” and poorly qualified deals had been moved from quarter to quarter as a cushion of comfort, which ended up blocking clear sight and the truth – there were just simply not enough qualified deals.
If you’ve ever inherited such a pipeline, you’d also need to start by pulling up your sleeves to qualify out the bad seeds, so that you can focus on the promising deals.
In this first part of our “How to MEDDIC” series, we’ll be sharing with you more about how you can utilize the MEDDIC sales methodology to properly qualify your pipeline through:
1. Identifying Pain Points
The “I” in MEDDIC stands for “Identify Pain“. Your prospect’s pain point is the ultimate reason why they’d act and purchase your solution in the end.
It’s easy to fill the pipeline with opportunities. In fact, most pipelines are probably filled with opportunities which were created because a prospect was initially interested in exploring your solution and started the conversation by getting on a call, demo, or workshop.
However, without identifying a strong, qualified pain point, this lead will probably not go beyond simply being an unqualified lead.
Hence you need to ask yourself: “Was I able to identify a strong pain point, need, or initiative?”.
2. Discovering the Business Implication
Now if you were able to identify a pain point, the next question you need to ask yourself is “How big is this pain?“. Is there a consequence for the business if this pain point is not addressed? In other words, is there a business implication? The pain point should be so strong such that the consequence of doing nothing would impact their business heavily.
3. Identifying Your Sales Champion
The “C” in MEDDIC stands for “Champion”. A MEDDIC Sales Champion is the person within your client’s organization who will sell on your behalf when you’re not there. They will guide you through the decision making process, introduce you to key players and decision makers, and alert you if things go wrong. Hence, for every deal, you need to ask yourself:
- Have I identified someone who cares about the pain point?
- Would this person be able to confirm the business implication?
Conclusion
In conclusion, these are the 3 most important qualification items (Identifying Pain Points, Discovering the Business Implication and Identifying Your Sales Champion) which will help you determine if an opportunity should be qualified in or out of the pipeline. If you have a large number of deals in the pipeline, having a good grasp of these qualification items will come in handy as qualifying and prioritizing your opportunities will take time.
One can argue that there should also be a compelling reason or event for the client to act. This compelling reason could be an allocated budget or a project defined with a clear deadline and a sponsor up the ranks. Rest assured these will come if there is a strong enough pain point that impacts the business. Upon identifying a Champion who has power and influence, this person will create the urgency, drive the conversations and bring the project up to the Economic Buyer, who will ultimately allocate the budget.
We hope you enjoyed the first part of our “How to MEDDIC” series. Stay tuned for the next parts of this series, as we share more on how you can use MEDDIC to determine close dates, latest activities, forecast categories and more!
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