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Close more deals with the MEDDIC sales process

As a product manager, one of the most impactful things you can do is enable your sales team. You don’t have commissions to meet, but everyone wins if your product is flying off the shelf. It is your job to make sure your sales team understands the value your product delivers. 

MEDDIC is a B2B sales strategy that emphasizes getting high qualified sales candidates in the pipeline. It helps to hyper-focus on the highest potential clients who are willing to buy your product. 

What is the MEDDIC sales process?

“MEDDIC is an acronym that stands for Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, and Champion. This process emphasizes better customer qualification—in other words, determining whether or not you should expend effort getting a customer into your sales funnel.”

Metrics

What is the quantifiable metric that your client gets by purchasing your product? Are they reducing processing time by 50%? Are they cutting down on production costs by 25%? These are numbers that a PM needs to know and great ones equip their sales team with these stats for their conversations.

Economic buyer

This is the person with the authority to make the purchase. The sales team might not be able to get to them in their first conversation, but this is the most important person in the deal. What is your product doing to help them and their business? If you can tailor the conversation to their needs, the more likely a sale is to close.

Decision criteria

If you understand how the economic buyer is making a choice on whether or not to purchase a product, you can better tailor the conversation with them. What does the economic buyer care about? The role of the PM is to help spotlight how your product exceeds expectations for the client’s decision criteria. Sometimes the client will list out their criteria in an RFP and other times it’s more of a mystery. 

Decision process

The decision criteria tell us what thought goes into the decision, but the decision process tells us how it’s actually made and closed. This includes who is involved in the process, the timeline, and any formal approval needed. If you know the process, you can help alleviate roadblocks on their end to close the deal.

Identify pain

There has to be a reason why a customer is looking to buy your product. You can use metrics to help the client understand how you will alleviate a specific pain. Being as specific as possible only increases the chances of closing the deal. Understanding why a customer is shopping to buy a product is what the sales pitch should be centered around.

Champion

A champion is someone on the inside of their organization that is pushing for your success. This isn’t necessarily the economic buyer, but could be the person who reports to the economic buyer. Your champion can help explain how their life is made easier to the economic buyer. The more well respected your champion is, the higher the chance of winning the deal!

How to begin implementing the MEDDIC sales approach

Your sales team is the one responsible for closing deals, but as a PM you want to make sure they are able to do their job as efficiently as possible. A PM won’t be cold calling trying to find champions and economic buyers, but it’s important to understand who they are. The best PMs understand the sales process so they can provide the most critical information to get the deal closed.

Link to the full article by the Lucid Content Team.

End Note

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Have a great day,

Nick