Using the MEDDIC Approach to Qualify Prospects and Acquire Customers

Each year, B2B sales teams waste countless hours pursuing unwinnable leads, while, at the same time, failing to reach out to qualified buyers. Such an approach is not the most effective use of employee time and company resources. Using the MEDDIC approach to customer acquisition can dramatically improve your sales figures. 

Also Read:

• Decoding The Challenger Sale – Effective or Hype?
• Using the Agile Sales Methodology to Manage Teams
• Qualify your Prospects and Sales Leads

What is the MEDDIC Approach?

Dick Dunkel and Jack Napoli of the PTC corporation developed the MEDDIC methodology more than 20 years ago, and it still works today! The letters in MEDDIC stand for the six steps of the customer qualification and acquisition process: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identity pain, and Champion. When you apply each of these steps to a potential customer, you have a consistent way to determine whether a likely lead is the right customer for your company. At the same time, you will have gained valuable knowledge about the company which will allow your team to market to them more effectively. 

Applying the MEDDIC Approach to Close More Deals With Fewer Headaches

Metrics

Asking what your potential customers want is the only way to find out whether your company can fill their needs. You are only wasting your time if you are pushing a solution which doesn’t even address the company’s exact requirements. The key here is the word exact. It is critical to have your potential customer define a measurable objective which they want to achieve. So, if prospects say they want to increase productivity, probe further until you get into specifics such as the desire to reduce time spent on follow-up calls by 20 per cent. This gives you the quantifiable information you can use to sell your solution. 

Economic Buyer

Who is going to ultimately make the decision when it comes to purchasing your solution? Your sales team member is often not talking to the ultimate decision maker, or the economic buyer. Using the MEDDIC approach it’s encouraged to whenever possible, push to talk directly to the person with authority to approve purchases. If it’s in no way possible, attempt to find out in-depth information about the economic buyer from your company contact. 

Decision Criteria

Remember that you are not the only company pitching your solution to the prospect. The economic buyer has alternative options. By determining the factors a prospect uses when making a buying decision, you will be able to decide whether or not your company can meet these buying criteria. This will also enable your team to create a sales presentation which addresses these criteria.

Factors for choosing one product over another may include the product’s cost, the available support level, the ease of integration with existing infrastructure, or anything else. 

Decision Process

Insights into a prospect’s decision-making process helps to prevent losing out on a possible deal. Every company has a different timeline for making purchases, and when your team knows the prospect’s approval process, it is better able to ensure that contracts and agreements are in place when they are needed.

Identify pain

Companies, like people, rarely make changes for the sake of change alone. Most businesses are looking to buy their way out of an existing problem. If you are able to identify these problems or pain points, you will determine if your solution can help them overcome these issues. To make the most effective sales presentation, discover the details surrounding these issues to allow your sales team to showcase how your product or service can help deal with these specific struggles. 

Champion

Find an insider at your potential customer’s company who will champion you. This ‘champion’ of your solution doesn’t need to be the economic buyer or even have a supervisory role at the company, but it should be a person whose opinion matters. One of the best ways to cultivate a champion for your solution is to determine who in the target company would benefit the most from your solution. Once you locate a champion, the person will actively work towards the company’s adoption of your product. 

Soco Sales Training’s Take on MEDDIC

Here at Soco Sales Training we find the MEDDIC approach for qualifying and acquiring customers to be very effective on complex sales with a long sales cycle and multiple stake holders. Much of the MEDDIC concepts align perfectly with our own approach to complex sales.

If you need help training your team on how to use the MEDDIC methodology to qualify leads and acquire new customers, ask us for a quotation or more information.

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