MEDDIC Process
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A MEDDIC Process is a sales process for corporate sales.
References
2016
- https://now.iseeit.com/meddic-sales-process-checklist/
- QUOTE: MEDDIC as a sales process has helped many sales teams around the globe to achieve extraordinary results.
Here’s the basic MEDDIC checklist:
- Metrics: Metrics are quantifiable and measurable results that a customer perceives as valid for his project or initiative, and can be divided in 2 major groups:
- Below the Line: For example, cost savings and efficiency gains. Many times paired with reductions on FTEs (Full Time Equivalent).
- Above the Line: These are more business-centric like increase in revenue or profit, quicker time to market, higher quality and customer satisfaction. These metrics are used to build decisions and are used to build the Business Case or ROI.
- Strong Metrics: We are 15 FTE (Full time equivalent) with 95% utilization. We are expanding our infrastructure 15% a year and we expect another acquisition this year, which will double. We will not get a budget to increase FTEs.
- Economic Buyer: The EB is a person with the discretionary approval to spend. The person gives the ultimate “yes” or “no” to a project. Usually the person has a clear sight on the business benefits, decision criteria and the process to close a deal.
Meeting the real EB, checking for his sponsorship, criteria and next steps usually sheds a lot of light on the complex decision criteria and processes. Preparing the EB meeting is key to success, however you need to do your homework on the value proposition and earn the right to ask for this meeting.
Qualifying if you talk to the real EB is key. A good qualifying question could be: ”If you & I come to an agreement, is there anybody else formally or informally that would need to be involved or approve?”
- Decision Criteria (Dc): Every project has formally or informally defined decision criteria. These are often categorized further as Technical, Commercial and Legal Decision Criteria.
- Technical decision criteria (TDC): Here we talk about criteria to understand the feasibility. Are the use cases covered by the potential solution? Does it comply with the existing infrastructure and, if so, how does integrate? How easy is to work with and does it fulfill the standards of the Enterprise Architecture? Typically this TDC will be validated in a Proof of Concept or some sort of Technical Decision Making Process.
- Business/Commercial Decision Criteria (BDC): The most common BDC is Alignment to Budget, but nowadays corporations are very much driven by Return on Investment – sometimes in less than 12 months to justify the investment. Further, there are different types of budgets like capital expense (CAPEX) or operation expense (OPEX). Some clients have huge OPEX reduction campaigns or have certain cash-flow requirements that drive the decision criteria. Thoroughly understanding and aligning yourself to the clients needs will show great flexibility and influence the decision towards your offering.
- Business Decision Making (BDM): Who needs to approve? Are there any formal boards? Is there a formal process in a project approval workflow or paper forms? How long does this usually take?
- Paper Process (PP): Rigorous regulatory or business compliance needs often lead into time intensive negotiations. These can take weeks or even months, but are necessary to have a legal agreement. This process is reason No. 1 why contracts get postponed and deals slip out of a quarter. Make sure you have executive sponsorship to give negotiations with Purchasing and Legal the right focus, the right time and the right resources. Be paranoid about the details!
- Identify Pain: Together with the Champion, the Pain is one of the 2 major qualifiers in the discovery phase that are required in order to understand if you have an opportunity. As strong pain can be a technical or business shortage that the client would like to overcome, stop or change. It must impact the customer in terms of time, cost, risk or revenue if not solved within a certain time frame.
- Champion: Pain is an important driver and implication drives urgency. However there is always an owner with a personal interest to get this pain solved. This personal interest drives the person to collaborate with peers, consultants and vendors to attack the pain as soon as possible. The goal should be to identify these individuals. Even if they don’t carry the official management head, they can be spotted as they are well accepted by their peers, are very influential and usually have a good track-record of successful projects that make them visible in the chain-of-command.
- QUOTE: MEDDIC as a sales process has helped many sales teams around the globe to achieve extraordinary results.