The MEDDPICC Sales Methodology is arguably the most widely adopted sales framework within B2B sales (along with The Challenger Sale). To kick off, it’s worth noting MEDDPICC is really more of a qualification framework to be used in discovery – think BANT but much more comprehensive. It’s used to ensure GTM teams focus their efforts on only the right leads and opportunities by following a thorough qualification process – and often thought to play a key role in value selling.
It was born out of software company PTC in the 1990s, originally developed to help identify why they were losing deals, losing sales reps and couldn’t sustain growth. In retrospectively reviewing hundreds of opportunities they were able to identify that when a deal was won, PTC dominated in one of six areas, and when a deal was lost, they could pinpoint the cause to being outsold in one of those same six areas. These would later become the foundations of MEDDIC, MEDDICC, and then finally the MEDDPICC Sales Methodology.
What are the MEDDICC / MEDDPICC Sales Methodologies?
As a quick refresher, here are the pillars of the MEDDPICC Sales Methodology (MEDDICC or MEDDIC are just shorter versions of the same):
Metrics | Compelling stats & data points that provide proof your offering adds value |
Economic Buyer | Identify the person who has ultimate authority to approve your deal |
Decision Criteria | The buyers’ formal criteria against which they will evaluate each potential provider |
Decision Process | The process, actions, and people involved to make a decision. |
Paper Process | The specific documents and process the buyer needs to follow to secure a signature. This is what turns MEDDICC into MEDDPICC. |
Identify Pain | Problems the organization currently faces and are trying to fix |
Champion | The key individual at the buying organization who will become your internal seller |
Competition | Competitive strength, weaknesses and differentiators you’re up against |
Some areas of MEDDPICC are more complex and multifaceted than others.
Cuvama helps salespeople in two of the most critical and complicated to execute – Metrics and Pain (I). Let’s explore how.
Metrics in the MEDDPICC Sales Methodology
There are three levels of metrics:
M1’s - Metric Proof Points:
Outcomes you have delivered for existing customers. Usually case study metrics to act as social proof-points which immediately build your credibility with any new prospect. Starting a sales cycle with a point of view on the value you can deliver makes the individual on the receiving end sit up and take notice. It can be a powerful tool in earning you the right for further discussion. However, the real magic comes from turning M1’s into…
M2’s – Measurable Outcomes:
Through discovery and collaboration with your prospect you can transform hypothetical metrics into curated outcomes which are specific and personalized to their role and/or company. These are outcomes they believe are realistic and relevant to their own situation/size/maturity. These will often form the foundations of your business case.
M3’s - Realized Metrics:
These are the quantifiable value metrics your customer has realized after buying, implementing, and using your solution. A relatively new introduction to the framework, and traditionally overlooked by Sales (especially in the old on-premise software days). In today’s subscription economy, M3’s are critical to Customer Success in securing renewals and upsells.
The smart ones amongst you will have realized you can complete the circle of metric life by turning M3’s into new case study M1’s.
How Cuvama Helps Build MEDDPICC Metrics
Admit it, every salesperson has been guilty of showing up to a first meeting and either not having any social proof points (M1s) prepared. Or potentially worse – having M1’s that are completely irrelevant to the individual you’re speaking to (‘but that’s all Marketing gave me’ being the typical excuse).
Either of those occurrences mean you’re starting on the back foot. Scrambling to claw back some credibility to earn the right for a more open discussion.
In only a few clicks, Cuvama allows any BDR or Salesperson to start a sales cycle by building & presenting a value hypothesis (filled with Metric Proof Points) relevant to the company or individual you’re speaking to.
Personalizing MEDDPICC Metrics
Once you’ve grabbed their attention with social proofing metrics you should start morphing them into personalized metrics. But remember, they can’t be any old metrics, they must be relevant and attainable for your solution. But how does a Rep remember all of the M2’s they should be probing for?
MEDDPICC suggests a way to identify metrics is to work backwards from the customer’s goals – establishing what it is they are focused on improving. Once you’ve understood the overall outcomes, you can start distilling them into specific metrics e.g., I want to increase new customer conversion rates [outcome], by 35% [metric].
This is the critical part of discovery that 99% of Salespeople stumble on. They don’t ask and align on outcomes and metrics (or KPIs).
Think of a Salesperson during a prospect meeting; they’re constantly trying to multi-task. On one side of their brain they’re trying to understand what outcomes the customer is seeking, whilst on the other side they’re frantically trying to link each of those to measurable metrics, all whilst attempting to remain calm, confident and scrambling for the next killer question to uncover more pain.
It frazzles the brain. Cuvama is that brain, it magically links your prospects’ challenges to their desired outcomes & metrics to help in the heat of battle.
Disclaimer: it’s not technically magic, we’ve just got some extremely brainy consultants who’ve spent years conducting these many-to-many personas-problems-outcomes-metrics mappings and coded them into our software!
"Identifying generic Metrics is one hurdle but getting a personalized set of metrics is a high jump that's rarely reached. "
Alex Smith, CO-Founder, Cuvama
Many sales opportunities and business cases will have metrics assigned to them, but >90% of the time they’ll be generic, often called an ‘Outside-in’ or External view. And this tends to really impact a deal when it comes to the solution and proposal stage.
Cuvama allows both the Seller and Buyer to collaboratively co-author a set of personalized metrics (M2’s), turning the ‘Outside-in’ view to an ‘Insider view’; a key indicator for buy-in towards your deal closing.
Knowing that a Buyer has worked on, corrected or refined metrics is huge. It shows you they need to be super comfortable before they dare take it up the pole for internal scrutiny and approval. And that’s exactly what Cuvama allows you to do.
Identifying Pain with the MEDDPICC Sales Methdology
Similar to Metrics, there are three I’s to remember for pain for the MEDDPICC sales methodology:
i1 – Identify – identify the problem situation
i2 – Indicate – indicate the size of pain by quantifying it
i3 – Implicate – show a glimpse into the future utopian state
Naturally, you should start with i1, the very basic level of discovery; ask questions and probe to uncover the pain/problems/challenges your prospect is facing. Believe it or not, some reps fail even at this level – and there is a massive hidden cost to organization’s because of poor discovery.
However, it’s fair to say most Salespeople can identify some pain, but the majority trip up in progressing to i2 and i3.
They struggle to quantify how sizeable the pain really is; subsequently they then fail to implicate or illustrate to the buyer just how rosy life could be by solving the identified issues.
The transition from Indicating to Implicating is a master sales technique. To quote MEDDICC ‘It’s the single most significant activity you can undertake to inspire your customer to take action on your deal’.
So if you do struggle here, you’re not alone.
How Cuvama Helps Identify, Indicate and Implicate Pain
Salespeople tend to find uncovering pain painful (did that make sense?!). In short, as soon as most Reps have uncovered the tiniest slither of pain they jump straight into a pitch about how their solution has loads of features to address it. They barely scratch below the surface.
So take note of this line from the recent MEDDICC book:
“Discovery is a crucial part of MEDDICC.
The strength of how well MEDDICC will work for your deal is almost exclusively related to how good your discovery is”.
Read it again.
If your discovery is poor, the whole framework is rendered ineffective.
When you find pain you should keep hold of that pressure point, dig deeper into it, indicate the size of it and implicate what life would be like if the buyer did (or didn’t) address it. But many Reps don’t, because it’s uncomfortable to execute; it’s far easier to divert conversation into a safe zone they know: features & functions.
Think of it as a prescriptive menu – if today’s meeting is with a Head of Finance, the Rep can select the Finance persona, and hey presto… a list of Finance related problems appear. If tomorrow’s meeting is with a Head of HR, then guess what… a list of HR related issues are presented
This means Salespeople don’t have to spend days trying to memorize each individual prospect’s pains, they can sound like a credible pain doctor in just a few clicks.
We work with you to preconfigure Cuvama with all the typical pains/challenges that your salespeople will want to discuss with a particular prospect.
What’s the impact of doing this? Instant credibility. It puts the prospect you’re speaking to at ease, much like when you see a Doctor – the last thing you want is the impression they’ve never previously seen your problems. Cuvama helps even the most inexperienced of salespeople sound like a knowledgeable, experienced consultant who’s seen it all before.
Cuvama doesn’t stop at diagnosing the pain. Once it’s helped you diagnose, it will be prescriptive about the impact of solving (as discussed in Metrics above). Pretty damn smart, no?
Cuvama helps you implement and scale the MEDDPICC Sales Methodology
Cuvama helps Salespeople do deliberate discovery, and link problems to outcomes.
Too often Reps rush past discovery for any one of the reasons below:
- Because they’re only confident talking about what they know – their product.
- They want to do discovery, but have no real-time information available at their fingertips to help them through it (If Mr/Mrs prospect says they have problem A, what should I actually do with that information?)
- They’re ignorant to the fact that they’re only doing surface level discovery. Uncovering some pain, then selling features against that, is in their own eyes great discovery.
The brutal truth is most salespeople barely peel back the first layer when identifying pain and establishing personalized Metrics during a sales cycle.
So let Cuvama be that real-time, dynamic pain doctor, to help any salesperson diagnose pain and prescribe Metrics like a great MEDDPICC practitioner.
