Sales: everyone sees MEDDICC as ones pleases.

Sharing the Bold & Sharp Workbook On Qualification was the occasion for many exchanges. Here’s a look back at the main topics raised, which deserve some clarification, starting with MEDDIC, MEDDICC, MEDDPICT and IMCCDDE.

MEDDIC is a Qualification Framework:

MEDDICC has a strong following, and that’s a good thing. We prefer W10, by far.

W10 doesn’t make the Champion and its long list of attributes a must-have. These attributes need to be identified, developed or built with multiple and varied stakeholders, whose alignment cements the quality and reliability of the decision. The Champion isn’t quite dead, but he’s back where he belongs, among the key contacts you need to convince, not as an internal super-salesman to whom you can delegate your sales process.

W10 also has the merit of taking other criteria into account: the suitability of your prospect with your ideal customer profile, or the phase of the customer’s buying cycle, which conditions your sales strategy, including the decision to play when the dice are loaded. Finally, the key stages of the sales process are “mirrored” between what has been achieved and what remains to be done, to check that your sales choreography is being well executed.

W10 is more comprehensive and better suited to complex sales. Like MEDDICC, however, it remains a qualification grid. We might as well start with a genuine sales method, rather than transforming it into something it isn’t: a sales process combining key stages, associated activities, transition phases, sales aids and a management system.

MEDDICC versus Challenger Sales:

What about using Challenger Sales and MEDDIC at the same time? At first glance, it seems a good idea to combine a sales methodology with a qualification grid. In reality, it’s like riding a Ducati Monster…with wheels.

Challenger Sales is certainly not for everyone. It’s a project whose foundations lie in defining what makes you unique and building the disruptive sales pitch that goes with it. Sales pitches! According to the sales scenarios encountered. The implementation effort is substantial. Challenger Sales can make a Pschitt. Hence the temptation to take shortcuts or return to one’s comfort zone: MEDDICC.

However, from the BOLD vs SAFE approach, to identifying and coaching Mobilizers, to the art of deconstructing prospects’ mental models, Challenger Sales requires a specific sales coaching approach oriented towards consensus-building and change, not Chat GPT like coaching based on MEDDICC components.

Time for change:

To return to Chat GPT, we can educate it on MEDDICC and simple sales models. He’ll give us simple, even simplistic answers, fuelled by basic sales principles. On the other hand, the more complex the sale, the closer the relevance of Chat GPT’s analysis and recommendations will be to its philosophical reflection in comparison with Raphaël Enthoven : passable.

Our qualification Workbook is packed with information. Which begs the question: what’s most important? Capture the psychology of your contacts with HBDI or DISC? That’s a real plus. Share a mutual plan with your prospect and get it approved by power sponsors in the early stages of your sales cycle? It’s a technique. Opportunity duration and time spent in each phase vs. your KPIs? It’s an indicator, not an absolute truth.

Focus on one thing: change. And even if buying signals vary according to the stages of the sales process, some do not vary:

• The quality and pace of your customer’s execution.
• Access to and involvement of the real decision-makers.
• Curiosity and constructive objections.
• Your customer’s ability to articulate your unique selling points.

In short, the signals that indicate acceptance of change are change towards your solution.

To find out more about sales methodologies and build the one that suits the complexity of your offering and the maturity of your sales force, contact us at Bold & Sharp. Follow us on Bold & Sharp.

Think. Good Selling.