00:00:00 Andy Whyte: Producer Nick tells me we’ve got some questions. Let’s dive in. Okay. Question number one. Oh, it’s from you, Producer Nick. Again. 00:00:11 Nick: So, with the I in MEDDPICC, or MEDDIC here, a lot of people say “identify the pain,” but we say “implicate the pain.” So which is right? 00:00:20 Andy Whyte: Which is right? Oh, yeah, good question. They’re both right. In fact, if you were to take our most modern thinking, you could say they’re both wrong. Initially, the I stood for “identify pain.” The evolution of thought there was that merely identifying the pain is not enough. Sometimes customers know they have pain, sometimes they don’t. But if they do know, they’ve already identified it, and skipping over the implications that pain is causing them is not good selling. So we always talk about there being three stages. The first is identifying the pain. The second is indicating the pain, which basically means quantifying how much the pain is costing, and we use metrics for that. And the third, and most important, part is implicating the pain. So: identify, indicate, implicate. That means you really get into the implications of this pain for this customer, specifically for the individual stakeholders, because each stakeholder feels pain differently. So what are the implications for each stakeholder? 00:01:22 Andy Whyte: The reason I said both could be wrong is that one of our evolutions of thought here, as we’ve evolved to be more than just a qualification framework, more than just a methodology, but a value framework as well, is that we want to get from the identification of pain to the identification of gain. That way we can really see the transition from what life is like without our solution to what life is like with it. So we talk about implications as being the implications of pain, but also the positive implications that come from the gain. We take the customer on that full journey, from life without us to life with us: from the nightmare, horrible state to the utopian, wonderful state thereafter. So yeah, good question, Nick. Our second question is from an old friend of mine, Marina [surname unclear], and her question was: what is the biggest mistake that salespeople make? What is the biggest mistake that salespeople make? I feel like I might have some recency bias based on the last question, but one of the biggest mistakes I see salespeople make is thinking of MEDDICC, and particularly pain, and qualification as an event. 00:02:36 Andy Whyte: And the same for discovery. Basically, with all of the good tenets of selling, people think of them as a moment in time, an event. They think about discovery as an event that happens at the beginning of a sales cycle, normally. They think about the implication of pain as something that happens once. When the truth is, the best salespeople know that buyers and customers are human beings. They have emotions, and things are happening all the time. Just as we know from our personal lives: when we’re interested in buying something or making a decision, we’re all for it, and then we have a complete change of heart. Sometimes, in the space of minutes, we completely change our minds, and our customers are doing exactly the same, except it could happen many times over the span of a sales engagement. So the biggest mistake salespeople make is not taking that into consideration. They go, “Well, I’ve already done discovery, I’ve already found the pain, I’ve already quantified the metrics.” But they haven’t taken into account that the person or people who did that discovery, who had that pain implicated, may have forgotten about it. 00:03:42 Andy Whyte: Other priorities may have come up. Other salespeople, your competitors, may have changed their minds a little bit. Not to mention new stakeholders coming in all the time. So the biggest mistake is to treat those things as an event, and not to constantly be re-implicating pain, rediscovering, and a ton of other really good things. Really good selling is never one and done. It’s always going to be omnipresent throughout your engagement with the customer. Good question, Marina, thank you for that one. And by the way, for those who want to hear more great comments, questions and thoughts from Marina, we have a Masters of MEDDIC episode, which will be linked somewhere with the magic the team does in post. So, question number three says “mystery external guest.” It says “play this video,” and [unclear]. Okay. Oh, it’s Caroline. 00:04:24 Caroline: Hi Andy, I have a tricky question for you. So we talked about how deal review can be perceived, just because of the name “review,” as a reporting session, and how we have to find the right words to change the culture of how MEDDICC is used. So what’s the right word? 00:04:40 Andy Whyte: What is the right word? Because with the term “deal review,” you never leave a review for a restaurant halfway through your meal. It’s always after you’ve finished. So why would you call it a deal review when you’re in the midst of working on the deal? That’s the idea there. It also has a connotation of someone turning up and having something reviewed, when actually what we’re trying to do is bring all the brains together, from the sales team and the different go-to-market teams, to brainstorm the opportunity. What are some things we can do to increase our chances of winning this deal, for more, in a shorter space of time? The one I really like here is “dealstorming,” because it combines the deal review and brainstorm elements. I just like that as a concept. We have a dealstorm as the MEDDICC sales team every Friday, at about 2 p.m., I think. I’d love that to become an industry term. I think it’s quite cool. Oh, and if you like seeing Caroline, you can see her as our first-ever guest on [show name unclear]. Caroline joined us in the studio, and yeah, it’s a great episode, so be sure to check that out by clicking the link. 00:05:51 Andy Whyte: Question number four is from Elise Fox, and it says, “Hi to Nick behind the camera.” Hello, Nick behind the camera. So the question was, and I think this is a really good question: how do you work the MEDDICC process effectively if the company you work for doesn’t have it implemented? Oh, okay. Yeah, we see this a lot, because one of the things about our industry is that salespeople are frequently looking to improve. That’s one of the great things about sales: there are always opportunities to learn more, be more, do more. And we have a lot of people come to our programs who are just like that. It’s not a company-based initiative; it’s just them looking to improve, and they’ve probably heard about MEDDICC as a way to do that. So in those instances, you’re a bit of a lone wolf using this common language. And for sure, there’s a lot of upside if your company uses it. But by the same token, as a salesperson using it, particularly if you take it on with the mindset of a common language, a qualification framework and a methodology... 00:06:51 Andy Whyte: ...there are just going to be so many upsides to using MEDDICC that you’ll be in a much better position. So the advice I’d give is: just lean in and use the terms. The great thing about MEDDICC is that even if people don’t know what it is, if you start talking to somebody about your champion, about the paper process, about the customer’s decision criteria, decision process and so on, they’re going to know what those terms mean. Now, where the challenge will come is in the definitions. Of course, someone might talk back to you about a champion who you know is actually a coach, or just a contact, and that’s where the disadvantage comes in. But my advice is to really lean in. What we see happen a lot is CROs reaching out to us because one or two of their sales team have started using it, and they’ve liked the clarity, they’ve liked the progression, all that good stuff. So it’s a great way for you to stand out among your peers, if they aren’t using a framework or a common language, and to look good. But I wouldn’t overthink the downsides of your company not using it. There’s still a ton of upside. 00:07:56 Andy Whyte: That’s Elise Fox. I remember that name because... did this question come from the SDR webinar? Okay, yes. Because I remember reading “Elise” and thinking that’s a nice name, but I didn’t want to get it wrong when she asked a question on the webinar. So yeah, that’s interesting. By the way, I don’t know if Elise is still in there [unclear]. But if anyone is still watching this and is thinking about getting into MEDDICC and furthering their career, if you fancy going into the field: Nick, correct me if I’m wrong, that webinar is still on LinkedIn. I’m sure someone will put a link somewhere if you want to catch it. It’s a good webinar for anyone who’s thinking about progressing their career with MEDDICC. 00:08:36 Andy Whyte: The last question. It says “mystery internal guest.” 00:08:39 Nick: Yes. So this person was dying to ask you a question. [unclear] 00:08:45 Mystery Internal Guest: Okay. I wanted to ask you this question. My question to you was: what’s the most embarrassing mistake you’ve made as a sales professional? 00:08:52 Andy Whyte: So this is a silly thing, but it was embarrassing for me, though I don’t even know if anyone else figured it out. We were doing an SKO with a large company once, and I had spoken on the phone, which is a little bit unusual these days, to the president of that company, who had a very specific first name. I got on great with them and was looking forward to meeting them. I knew I’d see them at the SKO. It was in Vegas, I think. Then at the event, somebody introduced me to someone with the same name, who seemed very familiar and very happy to meet me, very pleased to see me. And I just put two and two together and got five, and assumed that was the president of the company. This person wasn’t. They were a senior manager, but they weren’t the president. But for the next day and a half or so, I assumed that person was the president, and they were probably thinking, “This guy is very, very respectful. Very familiar with me as well.” So that was funny. 00:09:57 Andy Whyte: And then obviously I met the president, and I had this moment where I was probably a bit weird with them, because I was like, “Oh, wow, you’re the actual [president].” Yeah. So that was quite embarrassing. I don’t think anyone knows, and I’ve obviously not revealed any names or anything like that. I’ll take that to the grave with me. But I was a little bit [unclear]. Okay, I think that’s all the questions we have for episode number two. Thank you very much to those who got in touch, and I’d love to see more questions. This has actually been quite a lot of fun, so thank you for that. If you’d like to ask me a question, please do get in touch on LinkedIn, email us, send a pigeon, any kind of thing. Maybe a smoke signal, anything like that. But seriously, we’d love to see your questions. The comments below are probably the best place to put them. Nick was violently pointing below, and I was thinking, “What’s down here?” But he means the comments that are down there somewhere. Leave a question in the comments. We’d love to answer it. Thank you very much.
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