When I was a kid, my brother and I spent hours on Saturday mornings watching Magic Bullet infomercials. Add eggs and veggies to a blender… poof, omelet! It all seemed so easy.
Sales methodologies promise to be a “magic bullet” to boost your close rates, but they often end up a watery, eggy mess. (Ew.)
Great omelets and great sales teams require more effort. If you’re going to close high-stakes, B2B deals in SaaS, you need something with structure and a sharp focus on the buyer.
Stay ahead of the competition with a clear, collaborative approach that can transform potential leads into solid deals. Enter: the MEDDIC sales methodology, designed to enhance sales efficiency with a focus on key metrics, decision criteria, and pain points. Used in B2B sales processes, MEDDIC has been around since the ‘90s, when creator Jack Napoli used it to triple sales from $300 million to $1 billion in four years.
"MEDDIC provides a framework that helps my team to qualify opportunities more accurately, ensuring we focus on deals that are aligned with customer needs and have the best chance of closing. My team is better able to prioritize high-value deals and reduce risk, ultimately driving more consistent revenue growth.”
— Alex Ticas, AVP, Enterprise New Business
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What is MEDDIC?
MEDDIC is a sales framework that guides deal qualification to help teams determine if a lead or prospect is a good fit for a product or service. It focuses on six key elements of prospecting: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, and champion.
Sales teams can use this step-by-step guide as a structured approach to evaluating and advancing your sales pipeline. MEDDIC and Mural together can make your sales process much more collaborative and impactful. Close more deals and build a more cohesive sales team with this powerful combo.
Understanding the MEDDIC sales framework
Let’s get into the framework. Follow these six steps in your sales qualification process to have a much better understanding of customers’ needs… and get ready to close more deals.
Metrics
Numbers show what’s important. First, focus on the metrics that really matter. Identify quantifiable success metrics, and pinpoint which of those matter most to your potential customer.
- Summarize your client’s most pressing needs.
- Prioritize your client’s goals using this simple bull’s-eye diagram to visualize what’s important.
- Identify the most important metrics. How does your product or service quantifiably improve the metrics that matter to this customer?
Tip: Run a vote on top metrics with your team in Mural, either by adding icons like stars to the top choices, or using the voting feature.
Economic buyer
Follow the money. Who in the organization has the financial authority to approve the purchase? This stakeholder is critical for getting the go-ahead and the budget.
A stakeholder map can help your team understand the entire landscape of people connected to a sale. Who is involved, what do they care about, and how much influence do they have?
From there, articulate a description of the economic buyer. What title does this person have, and what keeps them up at night? This description clearly outlines the persona, so this individual can be easily identified.
Decision criteria
What matters most? Understand the factors the customer will use to make a purchasing decision, like cost, features, or implementation time. You might schedule time with prospective buyers to ask questions about their decision-making process. Ask questions about their decision-making regarding technology, cost, and relationships.
Decision process
How do customers decide? Map out the steps the customer will take to arrive at the final purchasing decision. Align your sales strategy with your customer’s timeline and needs to stay ahead of their goals, tailor your pitch, and adapt to any changes they throw your way.
Create a journey map, which includes:
- Key milestones including phases of the process
- Client interactions that happen during each sales phase
- People involved in each part of the sales journey
- Actions that are required in each phase
- Emotions you want customers to feel
Identify pain
Find the problems. Tailor your pitch to meet the customer’s needs head-on by knowing what problems your product or service solves for them.
Select a persona and run an empathy mapping exercise. List any known problems, and explain the consequences of not fixing them to make your product or service more urgently necessary.
Champion
Find your supporters. Identify a strong advocate within the customer’s organization who supports your solution. Use a SWOT analysis to brainstorm ways to increase support for your champion based on challenges and opportunities they are experiencing.
Benefits of using MEDDIC in sales
MEDDIC sales methodology helps you understand potential customers and their needs better. Benefits include:
Target stakeholders more accurately
MEDDIC highlights the importance of targeting the right stakeholders within the customer organization, such as the economic buyer and the champion. This translates to a higher rate of successful conversions and, importantly, satisfied customers.
Understand customer needs
Understanding customer pain points takes time, but allows sales teams to craft their messaging with precision. Increase your chances of a successful close and lay the foundation for enduring customer relationships.
Prioritize high-potential opportunities
Zero in on metrics, decision criteria, and pain points to strategically spend your time and resources. By going after deals that are most likely to convert, you’re optimizing your pipeline and boosting your sales team’s performance.
Enhance team collaboration
A structured approach also means transparently sharing knowledge within the team. Team members can come together better when they visualize insights and strategies in a shared space, like a mural, which boosts overall performance.
Empowering sales teams with MEDDIC
Alex Ticas, AVP of Enterprise New Business at Mural, shares a story about how he has used MEDDIC with his B2B sales team:
“My team was working on a high value deal with a major consulting firm. Initially, our contact was responsive, but we were unsure if they were the true decision-maker. Using MEDDIC, we identified the Economic Buyer and involved them in the negotiation, while also outlining the Decision Criteria and key impact workflows based on what we learned from the customer.
We realized the buyer’s main goal was improving collaboration and enhancing remote workshop experiences, particularly for brainstorming and customer journey mapping with their clients. Our sales team demonstrated how Mural streamlined their processes by enabling real-time, visual collaboration that fit seamlessly into their existing workflows. This clear alignment helped us secure their commitment faster and made our success planning more collaborative.”
Our sales account planning template quickly visualizes the MEDDIC sales framework, and helps you transparently document your observations and decisions alongside your buyers.
Co-author: Dustin Stiver is a designer, researcher, and facilitator at Mural. He's also a LUMA Institute instructor. If he writes a book, the tagline will be: Create the conditions for collaboration.
