You have gone to every institution there is, read every book, and acquired all the certifications that exist regarding sales. You have worked extra hard and climbed the ladder from a junior to a senior salesperson. Now all you need is to close actual sales and retain your position; after all, no company will keep paying a salesperson who does not close any sales or spends a significant amount of time and resources before closing sales. For a while, traditional sales strategies were quite effective for sales persons that dealt with B2B sales processes. However, over the years, with new trends in the market, these standard methods are no longer as effective as they used to be. If you are to stand out and close sales as soon as possible, you need to evolve and adopt other methodologies, such as the MEDDIC Sales methodology. This methodology is a framework of questions developed at PTC by several individuals, including Darius Lahoutifard, founder of MEDDIC Academy, who predicted the future of sales. With these questions, the sales representative can close more deals, develop relationships and qualify prospects. There are six main stages involved in the MEDDIC Sales approach, which are metric, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, and champion.
Stages of the MEDDIC Sales Process
Metrics
Metrics focuses on questions that answer questions on goals. What does your potential customer hope to achieve? Metrics are the points they will use to evaluate your proposed solution. Evaluating and understanding these questions makes it easy to evaluate your solution; this way, you can tell whether it is good enough for the potential customer or not. If it is, you will be free to go ahead and frame your solution in a way the potential customer can deem as beneficial.
Economic Buyer
Though personnel is involved in the sales process, there is always the paramount person who makes the final decision. This is the person who has the power to make purchases or make the final decision on whether to adopt your proposed solution or not. It could be the board, a manager, or the boss. If possible, it is always best to talk directly to the economic buyer. Creating a persona interaction and explaining how your solution is ideal could influence the decision process. Interacting with the economic buyer enables you to understand their attitude, preference, and view of certain aspects of the business. This will make it easy to frame your solution according to their preferences and needs and thus increasing the chances of making sales.
Decision Criteria
This is all about how the potential customer evaluates potential purchases. In most cases, potential purchasers evaluate all the available offers and compare them before selecting the one they deem best. Understanding the purchaser’s unique criterion is a cheat sheet; it gives you room to adjust your sales pitch and highlight major points that could impact decision-making.
Decision process
What team members are involved in the decision-making? What internal processes are applied in the decision-making process? What will it take for your solution to be selected? Understanding the perspective’s decision-making process will make it easy for you to follow along. This way, you can understand if there is stalling or stagnation.
Identify Pain
Pain, in this case, refers to the problem your prospect is dealing with. The reason they are looking for your services; is your solution should be the cure to this problem. Personal interactions before pitching your pitch would make it easy to understand the pain. Knowing the pain makes it easy to develop an ideal sales pitch that offers a solution to the problem.
Champion
Your champion should be a person that is directly affected by the pain. The person who will directly reap the fruits of your solution. Identify such a person and develop a rapport with them; they will definitely influence the decision-making process and could root for you.
