How to Qualify Leads with the MEDDIC Sales Process

The MEDDIC sales process (not to be confused with the MEDPIC sales process) is an effective way to help you quickly qualify leads and determine if they are a good fit for your product or service. Of the many sales process acronyms available, MEDDIC is one of the better ones.

MEDDIC stands for:

Metrics Economic Buyer Decision Criteria Decision Process Identify Pain Champion

To implement MEDDIC helps you save precious time and resources. It also helps ensure that your efforts are focused on leads more likely to become customers.

In this guide I will run through everything there is to know about the meddic sales process and how to get your sales representatives using it.

Why MEDDIC should be an essential part of your sales process

Being able to qualify leads and sell to the right customers goes a long way to ensure your sales process is successful. If you aren’t using some sort of sales methodology to ensure your sales leads are well qualified, you’re essentially doing yourself and your sales representatives a great disservice. The MEDDIC framework can help with that.

It’s a simple and straightforward way to structure your sales process. It takes into account the 6 key factors that can help you qualify leads quickly and get the sales qualification methodology right.

A sales qualification system is essential because it prevents sales departments from wasting too much time on unqualified sales opportunities. These ‘dud’ deals can make your reps lose out on the ‘hot’ deal because they are spending too much time on a decision maker that will never close.

A low-quality qualification process is highly inefficient, which means your sales team will struggle to get the best leads, hurt their performance, and even make them unmotivated.

The more qualified the leads your sales team has, the better for everyone.

What is the MEDDIC Sales Process?

The MEDDIC sales process leans on only pitching the the highest, most qualified leads to achieve a higher closing ratio. The MEDDIC sales process is a step by step process that ensures proper lead qualification to ensure sales teams a strong foundation of quality business.

The MEDDIC sales methodology was foundational in Parametric Technology Corporations rapid sales growth during the 1990s, taking the company from $300 million to 1 billion. The MEDDIC sales methodology is so fundamental that is should be considered one of the go to’s for B2B sales.

As stated earlier, the MEDDIC process stands for:

• M – Metrics
• E – Economic Buyer
• D – Decision Criteria
• D – Decision Process
• I – Identify Pain
• C – Champion

Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps and see how, when you implement meddic, they can be used to qualify leads.

Metrics:

When qualifying a lead, it’s important to be able to measure the success of the sales process. This means having quantifiable metrics that you can measure. This could include revenue, cost of acquisition, ROI, or any other metric that matters.

Economic Buyer:

One of the most important factors in qualifying a lead is determining who the economic buyer is. This could be the person making the ultimate decision, but it could also be someone in a position of influence. Knowing who this person or group is will help you target the right people and ensure that your efforts are focused on the person who can give you a yes or no.

Decision Criteria:

Knowing what criteria are being used to make decisions is a key part of the sales qualification process. This could be anything from budget constraints to specific feature requirements, or even internal politics. Knowing what criteria are being used to evaluate a proposal will help you tailor your pitch.

Decision Process:

Understanding the decision-making process is just as important as understanding the decision criteria. Knowing who is involved in the process and how decisions are being made will help you target your efforts more effectively.

Identify Pain:

One of the key aspects of selling is understanding a customer’s pain point. Knowing what issues they are facing and how your solution can help is essential in helping to close the deal.

Champion:

Finally, identifying an internal champion within the organization can be hugely beneficial. This could be someone who is already familiar with your product and solution, or simply someone who is enthusiastic about the potential of your product. Having someone on the inside to champion your cause can make all the difference in getting deals over the line.

The MEDDIC sales process provides a sound blue print for top of funnel lead management to ensure that the leads that move forward are the right ones. The key points above make it clearer to identify the the sales-ready leads vs the ones that essentially won’t go anywhere.

When working with a sales organization, it’s essential that they have a key set of principals that can be relied on to qualify leads. Meddicc is one of those key principals and should not be overlooked when developing your sales process. The MEDDIC framework provides a consistent sales qualification process and a strategy to follow rather than guessing what those buying behaviours might be which move sales forward.

After all we are all in sales to close deals. The MEDDIC process can help you achieve that.

Whats the difference between MEDDIC and MEDDPICC?

The MEDDIC process is focused on qualifying leads during the early stages of the sales process, while the MEDDPICC (an extension of the MEDDIC process) adds a couple more steps to the sales process, such as paper process and competition. The MEDDPICC stands for:

• M – Metrics
• E – Economic Buyer
• D – Decision Criteria
• D – Decision Process
• P – Paper Process
• I – Identify Pain
• C – Champion
• C – Competition

By following the MEDDPICC process, sales representatives have a greater chance of success in closing more deals. It provides a systematic approach to the sales process, which helps reps identify and qualify prospects who are most likely to buy.

Meddicc and Meddpicc can be used together to create an effective sales process tailored to each prospect’s needs. Meddic can help identify and qualify leads, while Meddpicc adds more detail with the paper process. In saying that, the paper process is could be considered obsolete in 2022.

How would a sales team practically implement the MEDDIC sales methodology?

Now I will run you thought how a sales process might implement the MEDDIC sales strategy and what that may look like.

Metrics

The first stage of the MEDDIC sales process is by the principle of providing concrete examples of how your solution can help the prospect.

Sales representatives are highly adept at providing the key talking points that can be used to make your product sound like the ideal solution, but at this time is it crucial to provide evidence to back up that talk with actual data points.

This is where metrics play a significant role in qualifying the prospect. Consider the following examples of where metrics can play a role in your sales process:

• “We save our customers x hours per week with our product
• “The ROI on this product is x”
• “Our customers manage to increase revenue by x per year by using our product”

See how the above examples provide specific metrics as to how the solution will benefit the prospect.

It’s a good idea to assess your own current customer metrics to understand what benefits they are seeing with your product currently and weave this into the first stage of the MEDDIC sales methodology. Stats like this are perfect to bring up during customer presentations or sales conversations.

No matter what industry you serve, you most likely have a host of case studies and customer metrics which can back up your claims. Be sure to make use of them.

Economic Buyer

The second step in the Meddic sales methodology is to identify the economic buyer.

We all know that getting past the reception desk can be challenging, and being tossed between different contacts trying to figure out the correct person to speak with can be a significant pain.

With the economic buyer stage of the MEDDIC process the sales representatives job is to prioritize and identify decision makers as the key contact to engage with. Finding the best decision maker at the economic buyer stage of meddic sales qualification might involve questions to ask such as:

• “How does your business make its purchasing decisions?”
• “Who else is involved in the buying process?”
• “What is your role in the purchasing decision process?”

Asking question like the above can help you figure out if you are in fact talking to a decision maker or not. When running the MEDDIC process it is essential that your sales team knows the best titles and roles whom would most likely be responsible for the decision to purchase your product.

Once you know who the economic buyer is, Meddic and Meddpicc can help guide the sales team in terms of what information to provide and what areas the buyer may need more convincing on.

Providing your sales representatives with sales tools such as Linkedin and other prospecting solutions can help you find the best contacts at the company you are targeting.

As sales managers its in our best interest to make use of sales technology to ensure that leads can be identified quickly and efficiently.

Decision Criteria

Every companies decision to working with a product and service is different and that is why it is crucial to understand what the decision criteria is for a purchase decision.

In Meddic sales methodology, the Decision Criteria stage focuses on understanding what factors would sway a prospects decision towards buying.

Such factors might include

• Features
• Service level
• Post Sales support
• UX and design
• Reputation in the industry

As sales managers, we have to understand the complexities of the buying journey – it isn’t linear. There are sometimes many decision makers involved in the process . Meddic can help you understand the decision frameworks of your prospects and provide insights into how to communicate effectively with them.

When using the Meddic process, the sales organization should really start to understand the decision criteria of you prospects and then focus the product pitch around how your product fits that decision criteria. This process should be in place during the lead qualificatiion process so you know exactly how to craft the sales presentation to your buyers.

As you are probably starting to realise, Meddic is a powerful sales methodology that can help you understand the complex buying journey and make sure your message resonates with prospects.

Decision Process

Now that we have a good understanding of the decision criteria, now we need to understand just what the decision process might look like. When it comes to the decision process we want it to be as smooth sailing as possible.

As I tell my sales representatives – we want to be like one click ordering for Amazon. Ways to improve the decision process with Meddic could include:

• Making sure that the sales presentation is crystal clear and tailored to each individual buyer
• Provide product demos in a timely manner
• Making sure that the customer is getting value from the product
• Having a clear understanding of what the buyer’s decision criteria is
• Confirming the time frames for decision making

With B2B sales process sometimes taking may months, its up to sales departments to be the proactive ones in this sales qualification framework and suggest next actions to keep things moving along.

Sales tools and CRM technology can help with this process in ensuring that every step of the process is accounted for. Meddic helps you focus on the key elements of the sales process and make sure that your reps are prepared to close the deal.

Identify Pain

After the decision process, identify pain points.

The most important factor when selling is whether you can identify any pain points that the prospect is experiencing. If you can’t, there won’t be any real desire to change. Once you have identified that pain, its up to your sales team to explain just how your product or solution can assist with removing that pain.

If sales departments can identify pain points, and provide a solution more effectively than the competition, you can go a long way to being the best fit for the deal.

Most business problems exist as a matter of money, time or resource. Here are a few more pain points to consider as part of the Meddic process:

• Reducing the repetitive nature of tasks
• Making software more user friendly
• Saving money
• Making better use of time
• Optimizing a workflow

By understanding the Meddic process, sales reps can identify any pain points that prospects may be experiencing and showcase how their product or solution can create a better experience.

Meddic is a powerful sales methodology that can help you understand the complex buying journey and make sure your message resonates with prospects.

Champion

Identify pain and champion.
Identify pain and champion the best employee for the deal.

Made it this far? Good.

The last section of the Meddic framework relies on identifying the best prospect for the role of being the ultimate champion in the decision making process.

The business champion is the person who will be the ‘flag flyer’ for your business and will be the one whom sings your praises and gives you a sense of credibility.

This champion might not be the key decision maker, but they are involved in some way shape or form in helping when it comes to moving the deal forward.

Meddic helps reps identify who this key contact might be and how to get them onboard. Whilst this is not always possible any mutual connection can go a long way with the Meddic process.

Tips and Tricks for Adopting the Meddic Methodology

Whist I’m aware this is a lot to take in, consider the pay off when sales floors are putting this into practice and closing more deals with the meddic methodology.

It will pay off down the line.

Here are a few tips and tricks to help you get started with Meddic:

• Get buy in from senior management before rolling out Meddic
• Educate team members on Meddic and how it can help them close more deals
• Use tools such as Meddic to help sales reps better qualify prospects
• Track progress and performance Metrics
• Ensure that all team members are accountable and are adhering to Meddic
• Use Meddic as a framework for discussing deals with prospects
• Encourage team members to be creative in their use of Meddic
• Celebrate wins when Meddic is used successfully

If you want more details, consider some more tips below:

Get used to metrics and analytics for both sales teams and sales managers

Sales managers should already have a good handle on data and metrics, but the importance of data is even more important with MEDDIC qualification framework.

Metrics are also important because each process builds on the last, yet it starts with step one so:

• Metrics, Economic buyer, decision criteria
• Economic buyer, decision criteria
• Decision criteria, decision process, identify pain

You get the idea.

If you have a CRM, configure it to track Meddic qualification so you can look at the data later. CRMs can provide a great ROI when it come’s to sales pipeline and providing a great way to measure success.

Customer feedback is essential for the M in Meddic. So ensure that you train your sales representatives to have questions to ask and make sure they’re gathering valuable customer feedback. This will help them to better understand both their prospects’ needs, interests, and pain points.

Additionally, sales enablement tools can play an important role in Meddic. They can help sales departments quickly identify opportunities, efficiently track progress and gain insights into customer behavior.

Review lost deals to avoid being the status quo

As sales leaders, its essentially that we are always looking for ways to improve the sales strategy and having the right questions to ask our reps when they are losing deals.

Complacency should be our worst enemy.

The Meddic qualification methodology is designed to help reps avoid the pitfall of being complacent. Meddic is designed to challenge sales departments, and it’s important that we are regularly reviewing our Meddic process, looking for new ways to improve the process and ensure that every customer is receiving a unique experience.

Common reasons for lost deals include:

• Lack of pain
• No economic benefit
• Complex buying process
• Fear of change
• Lack of a business champion

During Meddic training it is in your best interest to ensure that your teams are aware of the common reasons for lost deals and how Meddic can help them to overcome these issues. It will provide a sound ROI.

You can use your CRM to establish best practices such as why deals were lost, and this data should be used to inform you when using Meddic.

Understand your customer persona

Finally, the more you understand your customer, the more you’ll be able to tailor Meddic to them.

If you want your Meddic process to become even more effective, start by understanding your customer persona.

Gather information such as demographic, psychographic and behavioral data to create an ideal profile of the target customer.

For Meddic to work effectively, you need to ensure that every customer is being met with a tailored approach. Take the time to understand them, and Meddic will become even more powerful.

Conclusion

Meddic is a powerful tool to help sales teams qualify prospects and track progress. When used correctly, Meddic can help sales reps close more deals and provide a great return on investment.

To make Meddic successful, it’s important to review lost deals regularly, ensure sales reps are tracking metrics, and understand target customers.

Doing so will greatly enhance Meddic’s effectiveness and provide a successful sales process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is Meddic?

A: Meddic is a qualification framework for sales teams to qualify prospects and track progress. Meddic stands for Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Identify pain, Decision process.

Q: How can Meddic be used?

A: Meddic can be used by sales teams to qualify prospects and track progress. Additionally, Meddic can help sales teams identify opportunities, efficiently track progress and gain insights into customer behavior.

Q: What are the benefits of Meddic?

A: Meddic provides a great return on investment when it comes to sales pipeline and providing a great way to measure success. Meddic also helps sales teams understand the customer and create tailored strategies to suit them. Meddic also helps create accountability within your sales team and ensure that they are focusing on the right customers. Additionally, Meddic can help sales teams quickly identify opportunities, efficiently track progress and gain insights into customer behavior. Meddic can also help review lost deals to help prevent being stuck in the status quo.

Q: What should I do to make Meddic successful?

A: To make Meddic successful, it’s important to review lost deals regularly, ensure sales teams are tracking metrics, and understand target customers. Additionally, Meddic should be regularly reviewed to identify new ways of improving the process. Meddic training should also be provided to ensure that all team members are aware of common reasons for lost deals and how Meddic can help them to overcome these issues. Finally, understanding your customer is also important to create a tailored Meddic process. Doing so will greatly enhance Meddic’s effectiveness and provide a successful sales process.