Kahuoi

MEDDPICC is overengineered for deals < 50k ARR. BANT is useless for outbound generated deals. SPICED is not sophisticated enough for deals over 500k ARR. Do you have to work with any of these? Not necessarily. I studied most existing sales methodologies (NEAT, Challenger, SNAP, ANUM, etc.) and found they have more in common than not. Here are the four factors most have in common: 1???They are using an acronym to highlight the importance of focusing on the Need/Pain/Problem of the prospect. Not surprising this one, right? 2???They want to describe the impact of not solving a problem and/or building a quantitative business case for larger deals. They stress the understanding of what happens if the problem is not solved in the near future. 3???They highlight the importance of a salesperson knowing with whom they talk. They use words such as “Authority”, “Economic Buyer”, “Decision maker”, Champion” and other roles. Makes sense as well. 4???They highlight the understanding of the process and/or timeline to get the signature of the prospect. Some only use “timeline”, some use “Decision Process” and others “Mutual Action Plan”. If you do not somehow directing the focus of your sales team on those four, you are probably doing something wrong. And what about other criteria? Add them if you think they are important for your process: "Competition" "Paper Process" "Teaching Value" How do you know they are important? If you lose business because you did not focus enough. Check out the data of your close lost opportunties. That is how MEDDIC came to life.

Point of View? Business Case? Do I need one, either or both? Let’s discuss… As enterprise sellers, it’s our job to: 1) Present a targeted Point of View to our customer, based on our deep research into the strategic priorities of their business, to articulate where we believe we can add value with our solution/service. 2) Co-develop a Business Case with our champion(s)/executives/executive-nominated stakeholders/others, based on a validated Point of View. 3) Leverage the Business Case and executive alignment to sell our solution/service to the customer, the outcome of which will add significant value to the customer in the form of revenue gain, cost reduction, competitive differentiation, etc. So, and I get this question a lot - what’s the difference between a Point of View and a Business Case? Two things: 1) A Point of View is YOUR perspective as to how you believe you can help your customer. 2) A Business Case, while you helped developed it, is YOUR CUSTOMER’S perspective as to how your solution can positively and significantly affect their business. Next question - why do I need both? “This seems like extra work!“ Two things: 1) A Point of View will ACCELERATE your deal. It focuses you and your customer on identifying and addressing strategic priorities. 2) A Business Case will EXPAND THE SIZE of your deal. Developing a solid Business Case that addresses BIG problems delivering significant ROI, if done right, will equate to much larger deals. So, get good at developing solid Points of View and Businesses Cases. As an enterprise seller, this is a non-negotiable for success.

I posted earlier this week about being kind to sales people making cold calls. What I didn’t expect was how opinionated people would be about sales reps starting off the convo by asking “how are you?” or “how is your day?” I get that can add a few seconds to a convo and time is valuable, but why get worked up about a rep starting the conversation off in a respectful way? Cold calling is HARD, people will get mad if you’re being polite and people will get mad if you’re not. Moral of the story is that you can’t please everyone, so just do your best and hopefully the person you’re dialing can understand you’re just doing your job. #coldcalling #outbound #salesishard