Strategy & Best Practices

Decoding MEDDICC—Andy Whyte Breaks Down the 3 Key Parts to Selling

By Ideas @ AppDirect / March 21, 2023

If you’re in the enterprise sales space, chances are you’ve heard of the sales framework MEDDICC. MEDDICC, and all its variations (MEDDIC, MEDDICC, or MEDDPICC), is a sales qualification methodology beneficial to B2B enterprise sales organizations. Hundreds of top-performing sales teams use it to drive efficient and predictable growth following six main elements. Need a quick refresher? The MEDDICC acronym stands for:

1. Metrics: Measuring the potential gain leading to the economic benefit of your solution vs. competition or maintaining the status quo

2. Economic buyer: This step includes identifying and meeting the person who has the ultimate word to release funds to purchase

3. Decision process: Understanding the decision process enables sellers to exert influence

4. Decision criteria: This includes understanding the requirements defined by the client to make a purchase decision

5. Identify pain: Analyzing the challenges which require the seller’s solution to be remedied

6. Champion: The process of identifying, qualifying, developing, and testing your internal seller who can help convince other stakeholders to purchase

7. Competition - Strategizing your account plan by knowing your competitors

‘Focusing on the right things to win’

What makes MEDDICC so effective? According to sales professional Andy Whyte, MEDDICC ensures sales teams are working on the right deals and focusing on the right things to win. Andy has literally written the book on the power of this established selling methodology. His book, “MEDDICC: The ultimate guide to staying one step ahead in the complex sale,” outlines how to apply the MEDDICC framework to any sales deal. His MEDDICC knowledge is nearly unprecedented, with 5,000 masterclass enrollees and over 15,000 book sales.

Three key parts to selling

In this Decoding Digital episode, Andy talks with AppDirect's President and Co-founder, Dan Saks, about how companies can best implement MEDDIC to optimize revenue and accelerate growth.

He talks about how the most effective salespeople are good at solving their customers' problems focusing on complete solutions, instead of point products. He also shares three critical parts to selling, which he identifies as:

1. Value - Identifying the customer’s pain and the value they get from solving that pain

2. Stakeholders - Knowing who in the organization is invested in achieving the 'value'

3. Process - Understanding the customer’s decision-making process

Hit play to listen to the podcast episode, or read on to find out more.

What do THE BEST salespeople have in common?

Before Andy became a powerhouse in sales, he was an account executive at companies like Oracle and Sprinklr, and he led many successful sales teams. From his experiences, Andy highlights traits of the most successful sales professionals.

"There's not often a deal where everything's green and everything's great, right? If there ever is, you know, they get called a bluebird. And so there's often challenges. And what we like to say is the best salespeople are the ones who are the fastest to identify. What the challenges are, and they're the ones who put their hands up."

‘Spot the gaps’ and ‘focus efforts on where we can win’

Andy asserts that MEDDICC teaches salespeople to celebrate challenges they identify with the deal because it puts sellers in the driver’s seat.

“...If they do have any challenges with their deal, it's actually celebrated…because what the best salespeople do is they spot the gaps. And the way I kind of described this is even if you have the world's best product, the world's best salesperson, and a territory of customers who absolutely need what you have, you're not going to sell to them all because there's a million reasons why they can't buy.”

“And so in that situation, what the best salespeople do is identify where they can win, but more importantly, they identify where they're losing and get the support of the team so that they figure out can we actually overcome this obstacle, and if not, let's qualify out and focus efforts on where we can win.”

MEDDICC helps teams ‘speak the same language’

During the conversation, Dan shares why he believes MEDDICC creates a common language within a sales group and why the sales framework can help sellers succeed as companies shift from enterprise-led to product-led.

“So one of the things that I've found as well is that part of your sales onboarding should definitely include at least a base level of MEDDIC training so everyone can speak through the same language,” Dan says. “And then your point on culture is super powerful because I think there's many different types of organizations and many different types of sales cultures, and I think that there's been a cataclysmic shift in the way we think about sales culture over the last couple years.”

A shift in selling: MEDDICC + product-led

As more companies implement a product-led growth approach, Dan believes technology advisors who apply the MEDDICC sales framework will be the biggest winners.

“But what we found is that the combination of MEDDICC plus product-led growth enables our sales leaders to be strategic, to be champions, to be heroes, and the way the client perceives an account executive in the world of product-led growth plus MEDDICC is really their trusted advisor on how to buy the solution,” Dan says.

Want a refresher on product-led growth (PLG)? Listen to our conversations with PLG expert and Founder of Pendo Todd Olson.

Listen to Todd’s episode: Decoding Product-Led Growth: Todd Olson on Nailing the Customer Experience

“Product- led growth companies are ones where their go to market function, leverage the product to obtain and convert customers very, very simply.”                                                              

                                                            —Todd Olson, CEO and Founder Pendo

Using metrics to demonstrate value

According to Andy, a critical component of the MEDDICC formula is using metrics to demonstrate the value of the solution you’re selling. He believes sharing use cases, and proof points with prospects can effectively make a case for purchasing the solution.

“Let me tell you about ABC. Here's the problems they had before. Using our solution, here's the value they're getting from it now. And by the way, what we've seen, and that's when you can start to really lay in true metrics about the increase in revenue they've seen or the reduction in costs or the reduction in risk, or whatever the by level value driver is.

“ …So you want to arm them not just with their love of your product, but also some data points that suggest that there's a business case that can be built behind this so you can start to get other people vested in the idea of evaluating your solution. And then the next part, which really works well with product-led growth and MEDDIC, is all around really helping the customer to build, like I said before, that decision criteria.”

What makes up the decision criteria?

One element of MEDDICC Andy believes sellers can laser focus on is the prospects’ ‘decision criteria.’ These criteria are principles, guidelines, and requirements an organization uses during the decision making process. He asserts this element includes three critical parts: technical, commercial, and the relationship.

“The decision criteria [breaks] down into three parts. So there's the technical part, which is where most people tend to orientate the decision criteria around. You know, it's basically can the solution integrate with, have the user interface, the features, all the things that we need it to do to be viable.”

“…The commercial part is around the business case. Is it gonna be the ROI we want? Are we gonna be able to grow with this? All those kind of considerations, not just price, but the model itself. And then, as I said, the relationship part, which is not just do they like you, do they feel like they're, you're gonna be a good partner, but more so do you work with other partners that we work with?”

‘Doubling down on winners’

What's the single biggest takeaway from the MEDDICC framework? Applied effectively, MEDDICC helps sellers qualify opportunities quickly to optimize their results.

“I’m really big on this idea of just being more efficient with your time and therefore double down on your winners. You can only double down on the winners if you have a framework that's gonna help you identify what the winners are, which is kind of bringing it all back to MEDDIC.”

Listen to the full conversation

To hear more from Andy about all things MEDDICC, listen to his conversation with Dan on the Decoding Digital podcast.

Listen to Andy’s episode now

Check out the Decoding Digital podcast series for more secret insights from inspirational leaders. You can listen to the podcast on all the major podcasting apps, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.