How get MEDDICC implementation to stick like a tatoo

Jens P Edgren
May 15
9 min read

How get MEDDICC to stick like a tatoo — **Implementing MEDDICC in the sales force**

"Another sales method we will not use"

When the MEDDICC® course was over, I collected empty coffee cups, forgotten course manuals and scribbled notepads. On one of them it was written in squiggly letters: "MEDDICC, another sales method we will not use". I remained standing with the notepad in my hand. What if the seller was right? That MEDDICC was just another selling course that will soon be forgotten? In fact, 70-80% of the knowledge is forgotten as soon as the course is over. It doesn't matter what course it is or how good it is. The knowledge must be used as soon as possible, preferably within 24-48 hours (steven covey) for them to become part of our routines.

In this article Iwill share my 5 best advice to make your sales force keep using MEDDICC.

The magnitude of the change is equal to the magnitude of the resistance for change to happen

I have learned that all change is resisted by our habits, our comfort zone. In the previous articles I talked about how the nervous system's most important function was to protect us from danger. When we change habits and try new sales techniques, there is always a risk that things will go wrong. Just the thought of failure makes us not dare to try something new. I don't know how many salespeople told me on the follow-up course that they waited to use MEDDICC because this particular customercase was so important that they could not take the risk of failure, that they would have to wait until a less important deal came up, to try MEDDICC then. It may sound logical and wise, but the truth is that these sellers will never cross the threshold, they will never try MEDDICC - there will always some reason not to try. Their nervous system has set up an effective defense against attemt to try anything that could cause a failure.

We must dare to fail in order to succeed.

It is important to be smart, to remember the law of force and counterforce. If you want to make a big change in the way you sell, you will face massive resistance because there are many things that need to change at the same time. The risk that you will fall back into the same rut is almost 100%. If, on the other hand, you introduce small changes, step by step and without interruption, you will get used to being in change, like traveling around a foreign country. After an initial culture shock, you will become more and more used to meeting new people, tastes and places. You should think in exactly the same way when you start using MEDDICC. MEDDICC is designed to be easy to use. If you have the opportunity, start with M, metrics, on the Monday after the course, E, economic buyer, on Tuesday, etc. After 7 working days you have the entire MEDDICC in place.. If you use the MEDDICC Dealsheet as a notepad, you will see where you have a lot of information and where there is a lack of knowledge.

When you want to scale up MEEDDICC for your entire sales team, you will benefit greatly from using the MEDDICC Salescompass, a simple system for visualizing the current state of the opportunity, strengths and weaknesses. Everyone on the team will see what is needed to close the deal or qualify it out of the pipeline.

An example of how a consistent and persistent use of the sales compass contributed to a sales team being able to beat its budget 3 years in a row was when a MEDDICC trained sales manager, Åke, decided that all deals above a certain size should be approved by a sales council. The sales council consisted of the sales manager, a lawyer, CFO, a solution architect and a bid manager. In order to proceed with the deal, the seller presented his sales case with MEDDICC Dealsheet® and MEDDICC Salescompass®. The team made a collective assessment based on the score shown by the MEDDICC Salescompass®: where the score was above 25% the salesperson was given access to the solution architect and when the score was above 50% to the entire bid team. The sales manager's strategy was simple: by focusing all resources where the score was high, the chance of winning the deals was increased. But it required the sellers to also opt out of the trades where they had a weak position. The first half of the year was tough, the sellers were used to getting the resources they wanted. But the sales manager was adamant and even though the salespeople were struggling to find new business, he stood his ground. Pretty quickly, the salespeople noticed that when they were able to present deals with a good business position on the MEDDICC Salescompass®, they got the sales council's pull to win the deal. The result was that the pipeline went down but the hit rate went up. Step by step, the quality of the deals in the pipeline was raised and sales started to increase. Åke said: "At first I couldn't understand why the salespeople didn't come to the sales council better prepared, that they didn't have answers to the MEDDICC® questions. Finally, I was struck by an unpleasant realization, we had never made any demands on the salespeople, except that they should reach their sales targets. That they would have to defend their businesses was something completely new.”

After more than 35 years of experience, I've learned a lot about what can topple the new sales method

1. It is not enough to send the salespeople on a course to get them to sell in a new way, however logical it may be. New knowledge does not replace established routines.

2. Customers' buying behavior can slow down the new way of selling, esp

buyers who are used to buying products and services by asking for

offers and pressure the prices. It takes enormous strength to resist.

3. The first steps of change are fun but to change one's whole way of

work is extremely hard and demanding. It's easy to fall back into old routines

4. Salespeople who perform well enough have the hardest time changing their way of selling. They usually do not have the winning instinct required to dare to fail a few times, their motivation is hindered by the risk of not reaching their budget. The reason why they perform mediocre lies in this fear, they do not dare to try something new.

5. Management can be the biggest obstacle of all for MEDDICC® to be implemented. The management's routines for sales reports, sales forecasts and how the salespeople get resources must also be changed. The CRM system must be adapted. But the biggest problem occurs when the management team demands that the salespeople perform at the same level as before. It prevents the sellers from having time to find new business to replace those that were disqualified, business that was already lost, stalled or where the chances of winning were small. Normally, such deals make up 50-70% of the pipeline. The sellers get stressed and start looking for easy deals to at least show their managers that they can sell. Soon the entire investment in MEDDICC is lost.

If you want to develop yourself and your entire sales team, a lot of motivation is required.

You need to set challenging goals, maybe it's about survival. The new goals force everyone to rethink and find new ways: bigger deals, new customers, different pricing, faster sales processes. Perhaps your market has changed, new competitors have appeared, customers have become more accustomed buyers and your product has become less unique. Then it is necessary that the way of selling changes in order for sales to be maintained. It will take courage to try new paths and self-confidence to dare something new. MEDDICC® is a simple and straightforward method of selling but it will take a lot of courage to ask about Metrics, Economic buyer and pain.

FIVE TIPS TO QUICKLY TRANSFORM THE SALES FORCE TO USE MEDDICC

1. First, you need to find the decision makers at your customers who are ready to shift their focus from talking about products and price to discussing with you how they can solve their business problems.

Those decision makers sit in the management team. For them, the business goals are the most important, not which suppliers they use or products & services they buy. If you can arouse their interest, show them how to solve their business problems, there are good conditions for success. The easiest way is to collect reference stories from other successful projects. You can use them to book meetings with the right people.

2. Second, you need to put in place a sales process that helps the customer to buy. Then your sales activities, decision criteria and decision process in MEDDICC® can help the customer buy what they need to solve their problems. It will show that you are different. The sellers need to show their GO-LIVE Plan to the customers and explain why this plan is ultimately about the quality assured solution, maximizing the chances of success.

3. Third, there must be someone to coach you and your team. Everyone needs a good coach, not someone who does the work for you, but a coach who helps you see what is going well and what you need to develop.

4. Fourth, training in MEDDICC® is needed for a long time, for all involved in sales – not only the sales people. MEDDICC training will help the salespeopl to ask the right questions thre right way: How to use the MEDDICC® questions correctly,, how to get the customer to open up and share true and honest information about their pain, how you ask questions to find the causes to the problems, how do you build ideas together with the customer and identifies the Metrics that mean the most to the customer and thus gets the Economic buyer to set aside money for your business. Everybody in the salesorganisation and supporting functions need to fully understand MEDDICC, be able to support the idea of fact finding and qualification process. It is also very important that everybody undertands and speak the MEDDICC language, communicate and share information faster.

5. Last and most important is that the CRM system supports MEDDICC®

The CRM system must be the center point, the hub, in the salespeople's work. All answers to the MEDICC® questions must be found there, data on the deal's size, content and closing date, information about contact persons at the customer and where the deal is in the sales process. Then the sales manager and CFO can themselves create sales forecasts and analyze the salespeople's performance. The reports become excellent coaching tools, they are freed from emotions, the numbers speak for themselves. From the CRM system, you can the activity level, the current pipeline, the size of the average deal, hit rate and how long the sales cycle is. These are the most important data points you need to make a reliable sales forecast. Always use GO-LIVE Plans and MEDDICC® Salescompass on important deals. These things must be able to be followed in a CRM system or via Excel.

An example of how important it is to be able to measure the pipeline was when I worked with a construction company that wanted to increase its hit rate on quotes. They only had 2 percent when we started the project, it was too low as it cost a lot of money to offer. They identified a new type of business they called early projects, where clients hadn't started their planning process yet. To reach these customers, the salesmen went out with a few ideas under their arms, they had principle sketches in A1 size. They made the customers think and want to start a new building project. It could be a new kindergarten, retirement home or a fire station. After two years, they achieved a 68 percent hit rate on these trades and made the margin increase to 7 percent, which was more than doubling! An important success factor for the new sales process, MEDDICC®, to take hold was to evaluate each business every week for 2 years with the MEDDICC® Salescompass.

Summary

An enormous number of books have been written about change management. Feel free to delve deeper. I have learned the hard way that MEDDICC® must be supported by the CRM system to become more than just another sales course. My tip; start using MEDDICC® Salescompass on all your deals immediately after completing MEDDICC® sales training. Then you will see where you are strong and what in MEDDICC® you need to focus more on. The increase in your sales will happen almost automatically.