David Weiss: Stageless Selling | Masters of MEDDICC

00:00 David Weiss: It is significant. It is, in my mind, one of the silver bullets for discovery. I've got problems here. And so I started seeing the power of this. And then I started nitpicking my own deals. And I was like, holy God. And when I actually took MEDDPICC, operationalised it myself, used it to find gaps in my deals and then run plays and take action — I literally made almost $1 million that year. It was my highest W-2 year ever. I ended up getting promoted. And from that point on, I have taught every human I've possibly met this — because it is that life-changing. And that's the story. 00:39 Andy Whyte: First question back to you: what do you think you would have done that year without MEDDIC? 00:39 David Weiss: Easily half as much. Half. Easily. 01:01 Andy Whyte: Hello and welcome back to Masters of MEDDICC. Today I have an absolute master with me — Mr David Weiss. How are you doing, sir? 01:01 David Weiss: Andy, thanks for having me on, man. I'm doing awesome. I'm pumped for this conversation. 01:01 Andy Whyte: Yeah. Me too. We've been talking for a long time, and I think one of the things we both love about our MEDDIC ecosystem is exactly that — there are so many people who are really passionate about what we do. Getting your expertise on the show — I've been a massive, massive fan of your view of the world of sales and everything you say about MEDDIC for a while. To get you on is great. Why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourself, David? 01:22 David Weiss: Yeah, Andy — feeling's mutual. So, a little about me: 20-year sales leader. I like to feel like I'm still an operator, still a high-level practitioner. Today I am the Chief Revenue Officer for a company called The Sales Collective. We build ourselves as a sales transformation company. The whole idea is we don't want to put you in a box when it comes to how you need to solve revenue challenges. We like to look at the entire ecosystem — your entire approach to go-to-market and revenue generation — and then figure out: do you need more people, better people? Do you need to assess and coach and develop the people you have? Is it a technology problem where we can create scale with tech? Is it a process problem where we need to stand up, document, and implement processes? Do you need onboarding, training, help making leaders better leaders? Do you need to insert a fractional Chief Revenue Officer to guide everything? 02:21 David Weiss: Where is the challenge? And let's work together to solve it. That's the approach to the business — and it's what I lead. It's a lot of fun because it's what I love doing. So it's cool when you get to merge the side hustle and the main hustle together. 02:21 Andy Whyte: Yeah, you know, in a funny way we're both in that spot — salespeople turned sales leaders, and now we get to talk sales while still being salespeople and sales leaders. It's like the great trifecta of what we want to be doing. So super cool. The show is named after MEDDIC, so we should definitely start there. How did you find out about it — and maybe give us your origin story? 02:55 David Weiss: I like that. The origin story. Yeah, so I was dipped in a vat of radioactive fluid and emerged like — boom. OK, so it's funny. I want to go back almost ten years. I was working at ADP and was a global strategic account executive for them — the year before I became one of their leaders in the RPO/BPO business. 04:00 David Weiss: There was an org change. I normally hate org changes because they almost never go well, and I almost always get stuck with a terrible leader. So I was dreading it. This guy came in — and to my surprise, he was one of the greatest leaders I've ever worked for. To this day, he's still a friend of mine. His name is Gregory Donovan. Gregory and I still talk every week — and Gregory taught me MEDDPICC. Now, anyone who also knows me knows: if you try and tell me I'm not doing good enough, I have a problem with that. Because I normally work extremely hard and spend a lot of time mastering whatever craft I'm pursuing. So when someone says "you can do better," I'm normally like: you can piss off. I've already worked every hour I can. I can't work more hours than I do. 04:54 David Weiss: But Gregory came in and introduced me to MEDDPICC, and I pushed back. I said: "I don't need it. I already have a process. I have a methodology. I already have an approach and it's already successful. I'm already one of the top sellers in the business. " And he said: "No, I think you could really benefit from this. " And I said: "I'm good. " He said: "Can I just teach it to you? " I said: "Sure. " So he taught it to me — and I was still like, I'm good. But on every single deal review, every single pipeline call, he would simply ask me: "Hey David, what's the business case for this deal and what metrics drive it? " Or "Hey David, who's the economic buyer in that? " And he would just probe me — and he did it in such a thoughtful way. Simply: let me point out where there's a problem in this deal. And let's talk about how you go close that gap to win more. 06:04 David Weiss: And eventually I was like: man, these are great questions. And oh — I've got problems here. So I started seeing the power of this. And then I started nitpicking my own deals. And I was like, holy God. And when I actually took MEDDPICC, operationalised it myself, used it to find gaps in my deals and then run plays and take action — I literally made almost $1 million that year. It was my highest W-2 year ever. I got promoted. And from that point on I've taught every human I've possibly met this, because it is that life-changing. 06:04 Andy Whyte: First question back to you — what do you think you would have done that year without MEDDIC? 06:04 David Weiss: Easily half as much. Half. Easily. And that's maybe still puffing my chest out a little. 07:21 Andy Whyte: This really resonates. And I'm sure it resonates with people watching and listening who've been on a similar journey. What's interesting about what you're describing is that you were using it to spot the gaps — to see opportunities to increase your chances of winning. And most people classically use MEDDIC that way: as a framework to qualify where they are in an opportunity, and identify strengths and weaknesses. But the way I think about how you talked about it is: you're still the same salesperson underneath. You're using it as a framework to identify gaps — and then applying what you already had: the skill, the craft, the experience. In your story — and in so many people's stories — all it was doing was acting like your co-pilot. You're Maverick in this example, and MEDDIC is Goose sitting next to you, asking you those questions. Obviously the ejector seat in your story worked out, and Goose didn't launch himself into the canopy — but that's why I love that analogy even though it always breaks down a little. So yeah — it fascinates me. 07:21 David Weiss: Yeah, man. And look — I've rarely met a top-performing seller who doesn't get myopic. Who doesn't look at their own deals and think they're running a great sales process. I rarely meet someone who's genuinely good at their craft who says: "I need help, I'm failing. " But MEDDPICC created a way for me to remove blinders and myopia in my own deals and scientifically, objectively show me where I might be missing something. That to me is the power and the beauty of it. And it gives you a lens, a common language, a common view — so you can ask for help from people who also know the framework, and they can see exactly what you need because of it. Without it, I don't think I would have ever been as successful as that. And that's why. 09:17 Andy Whyte: The interesting thing about your story, which is slightly different to mine, is that you were already a top performer before MEDDIC. I wasn't — I'd been a top performer relative to being a big fish in a small pond in startups. But when I stepped up to enterprise selling at places like Oracle, I looked around at the people I got to work with and thought: wow, these people are on another level. I never for a moment thought I wouldn't get there, but I figured time would get me there. It was like they were playing sales on easy mode while I was on hard mode. The small-minded person would say: "They've got all the good accounts. " I knew that wasn't the case. I just knew I had to get better — but I didn't know what "better" looked like. When I actually learned MEDDIC, that was what unlocked my full potential. 10:42 Andy Whyte: And it didn't happen overnight. I learned MEDDIC and thought: OK, this makes total sense — there's not a bit I don't understand, not a bit I don't think would benefit me. But I had to lean in. It probably took a month before I really got it in full context — where I started to understand how Decision Criteria and Decision Process fit together, the real difference between a coach and a champion, those kinds of things. And probably three months before it felt natural. Then maybe six months before it became muscle memory. How was it for you — how did you lean into it? 10:42 David Weiss: Yeah, it was quick for me. Because what's interesting is MEDDIC didn't necessarily teach me anything new about sales. What it taught me was how to look at the process I was running and figure out where I would lose — where my risk was, where I'd missed a step or hadn't gone deep enough. And then it forced me to level up in those areas and in those deals. 12:38 David Weiss: Because it can be hard to do all the things all the time in every deal. And I hate to say this for the sellers listening — but if you want to win, you kind of have to. Because if you're not running a great process and somebody else is, you have risk. And that to me is the beauty, the elegance, and the power of it. Every morning I would look at my whiteboard — I still have it, even though I'm not running sales cycles now — and I'd MEDDIC a deal in minutes, asking myself questions. Do I know this? Where am I at with that? I'd colour-code it: red, yellow, green. And my inner monologue would be: "David, you need to take action to move this from red to yellow, or this from yellow to green — and you can do that by doing this, this, and this. " That would literally be my system of action. And once I cracked that, it moved really fast for me. I do everything at high urgency because of my fear of mortality. I picked it up quickly because it was simple — but also powerful. 14:30 Andy Whyte: Yeah. What's naturally coming across is that you're focused on spotting the gaps. And one of the things I'd love your view on — that I think our industry gets wrong — is this: if a salesperson has a gap in their opportunity, a lot of people treat it as a reflection of them not doing a good job. Whereas my view is: if a salesperson has identified a gap, they've done their job well. Because selling isn't a linear process. Even with a fully qualified prospect, a clear pain you can solve, unlimited budget, the best product, and the best salesperson — that's not a guaranteed deal. 15:30 Andy Whyte: Even in that perfect scenario, there's a world of things that can happen — economic events, internal politics, surprises. So you still need to be on your game to spot those gaps. Because only once you find them can you fix them. There are two parts to this. Part one is finding the gaps — where MEDDIC is incredibly strong in showing you the strength of your value proposition in the customer's eyes, how well you're engaged with all stakeholders, how well you understand the customer's process. Part two is the cultural bit — if I'm in a sales team where I feel respected and valued, and I've got a great manager, then I'm much more likely to put my hand up and say: "Hey boss — I've got a great opportunity here, but I can't find a champion. I can't figure out who the economic buyer is. I can't seem to influence the decision criteria our way. " Whatever the gap is — that's me doing the best possible job in that scenario. More people in the business can come together, do reviews, run team sessions to help. So as much as the framework helps people spot those gaps, you've got to get the culture right. What do you think? 16:40 David Weiss: Yeah, man. So I've got a philosophy a lot of people will probably disagree with. It's almost like seeing past the matrix, in a way. The concept is this: I do not believe in sales stages. My theory of sales is that there are two components — there's a circular motion, and there are no stages. There are things that have happened. Certain things do tend to happen at certain points, but they don't have to. And even when they've happened at a particular point, they come back around — discovery, solution presentation, business case creation, expansion. Those things recur throughout the journey. 18:29 David Weiss: I don't hear many people talking about this, but I don't believe sales should be stage-driven. I believe in the stage of the sales process — and it's not about which stage you're in; it's about what you've accomplished in the deal. That view has allowed me to layer MEDDIC on top and ask: where are the gaps? What have I not done yet? Because there are no stages, it's not "I have to do this by this point, and we're not there yet. " It's: here's the problem — what am I going to go do to solve it? How do I check that box or cross it off? It's a little bit of in-deal game theory in that way — the job is to keep the ball in the air and find a way through the motion to accomplish the thing. I feel like at some point the sales world is going to adopt this. The only reason it hasn't is because of Salesforce and CRM tools that force you through stages. The way we track deals and the way deals actually work are not aligned — and that's a problem. 20:03 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And what would underpin your thinking there is: customers don't buy to our sales process. We don't go into a first meeting and tell the customer: "By the way, we're in stage one right now — before we can get to stage two, I need you to check these things off with me. " Customers have their own way of doing things. And that's actually the beauty of why MEDDIC has stood the test of time — because it's literally reverse-engineered from how customers buy. So I totally see where you're coming from. The thing I'll throw back at you — because I don't disagree — is that there needs to be some structure. Discovery, for example: I don't think discovery is a stage. That's complete nonsense to classify discovery as a stage. Even if you take away all the layers that make great salespeople great and just look at it from the simplest perspective — I meet one person in meeting one, so discovery is supposed to be done? Then I get a second meeting and now there are three new people in the room. Am I not going to do discovery with them? 21:03 Andy Whyte: And it's also the fact that by meeting two or three, they've probably met the competition. If the competition has done a good job, they'll have nudged the customer's thinking slightly in their direction. If we don't rediscover that, we'll keep going thinking they're with us — and then we'll turn around and go: "Where did they go? " So that's an example. And the same goes for the customer lifecycle. Salespeople are often still set up for a start-and-end relationship model, which we know doesn't reflect reality. 21:03 David Weiss: Yeah. I can't wait until Salesforce or somebody figures this out — because it's the CRM that drives the behaviour. The sales leader manages the CRM, which drives rep behaviour. And I've never met a sales leader in my entire career who says: "Oh, new stakeholders entered the deal — glad you moved it back to stage one. " No — they say: "Why are we going backwards? We've been in that stage too long. " The accountability, the stage metrics, all of it drives the wrong behaviour. 23:25 Andy Whyte: Yeah. I once took a sales leadership role where the CRO told me we had a 5-to-1 pipeline coverage requirement — roughly 20% conversion rate — and that was what I needed to back the target. Let's say the target was $1 million for the quarter. I came in and we had $8 million in pipeline to close that quarter, and I was thinking: this is finally the one where I land on my feet. But in about two to three weeks, I figured out it was the land of the living dead pipeline. It was just dead. What was happening was that towards the end of the quarter, the AEs were lifting hypothetical late-quarter deals and sweeping dead pipeline into the next quarter. 24:18 Andy Whyte: So the first thing we did was implement MEDDIC. The second thing we did was lock it down — clean it out. My definition of a qualified opportunity: we've qualified with the customer that we can provide real value; they are engaged on the basis of evaluating whether that value is enough to make investment worthwhile; and we're engaged with stakeholders who are helping us do our job, and we understand what the process ahead of us looks like. If that's not in place, it's not pipeline — or at best it's early-stage pipeline that hasn't been qualified yet. What happened next was that the pipeline went from $8 million down to roughly $3 million. Every dashboard in the region went red because in the company's eyes we no longer had enough pipeline to cover the quarter. And I'll be honest — for a good month of that quarter, I thought I was going to get fired. But what actually happened was we overachieved. Not by a massive amount, but we beat the target. And afterwards everyone was like: "Oh, so you only need three times coverage. " And it was one of those things where you realise: you were using the wrong inputs to drive behaviour. And that's exactly what you're talking about with the sales process problem. 26:19 David Weiss: Yep. That's a lot of it — it's about what's actually happening in the deal. What have you accomplished? What do you have left to accomplish? So I created a checklist for myself — literally about 90 questions, about 12 questions per letter of MEDDIC. And once I answer all 12 questions for a given letter, I'm highly confident in that element. Once I've gotten all of them answered, I'm approaching a 95-98% close rate. If it's a yes, I'm good. If it's a no, I figure out how to turn it to a yes. It's really that simple. 27:48 Andy Whyte: Next gift is something stopping it from happening at the very last moment. 27:48 David Weiss: Yeah, exactly. 27:48 Andy Whyte: You said MEDDIC isn't linear, and that reminded me of a topic I love — the different myths of MEDDIC. What's your favourite MEDDIC myth? Or maybe favourite is the wrong word — what's the one that makes you think: not that one again. 27:48 David Weiss: There are two big ones. The first is that MEDDIC is a sales process — the idea that you just show up to a first call and ask: "What's your business case for change? " Like, this is outbound sales — they don't even know who I am. That's not what we're saying. We're saying at some point in the deal you need to build a business case and use metrics to drive it. The other one is that Metrics means you show up to the call and just fire questions like you're reading from a checklist. No. Neither of those. 28:40 Andy Whyte: I remember getting into a debate once with a fairly prominent influencer who was making a strong correlation between MEDDIC and a competing framework. And I'm like: you don't understand the thing you're arguing. You're arguing it wrong. Please, for your own sake, stop. 28:40 David Weiss: And what's the thing? 28:40 Andy Whyte: The correlation I've always seen — and I've yet to be proven wrong — is that anyone publicly criticising MEDDIC meets two criteria. One: they've never actually used it. You click on the post, you think what's this, click on their profile — never worked for a company that implements MEDDIC. Second: they always have an ulterior motive. They've got their own methodology, their own thing, and they see the noise around MEDDIC as a platform to pivot from. But what they fail to realise — and you see this just by looking at the comments — the people agreeing are never companies doing anything notable. It's always very niche, very far from best practice. And again, they've never used it. And it's a shame, because MEDDIC is not a zero-sum game. The more people using it, the better for everyone — including them. Some of them are sharp thinkers. They have genuinely good things to say and good views of the world. They've just got this chip on their shoulder about it. If they could get their head around what MEDDIC actually is, everyone would be better off — and they'd look good to everyone, not just a small subset. 30:58 David Weiss: Yeah. And I love reading those comment sections — and I'm often in there flaming them: stop, you don't know what you're talking about. The other big myth: MEDDIC doesn't teach you how to sell. I call MEDDIC a gap-analysis checklist. That's how I look at it. I don't necessarily consider it a sales methodology — and maybe I'm splitting hairs. But to me, a sales methodology is something that teaches you how to sell. Challenger is a sales methodology. Consultative selling as originally written is a sales methodology. SPIN Selling and Rackham's work is a sales methodology. Those are the car — this is what I'm going to drive from start to finish to close a deal. MEDDIC, in my view, is why a lot of sales training companies try to bash it — they think it's competing with them. It's not. We're very different things. In fact, if you actually understood what we did, you'd love us. Because the way your methodology becomes actionable and effective — we sit on top of it, from start to finish. Whatever methodology you want to use, MEDDIC ensures no one misses the actual way to deploy that methodology. 32:41 David Weiss: I relate it to a blind spot detector. You have your car — the methodology you're driving to get where you're going — and then you have MEDDIC, which is integrated into the car, and while you're on your journey it stops you crashing into a wall, hitting the car in front, or reversing into something. It helps you avoid accidents. It de-risks your journey. That's how I look at it. 32:41 Andy Whyte: Yeah. I agree. And the way you describe that is very similar to how I think about it, but I frame it slightly differently. One of the things I love most about MEDDIC is the common language. For me, professional selling is three things: value, stakeholders, and process. What value do we provide the customer? What pain do we solve, and what's the value in solving that pain? How does our solution solve that pain in a way that's better or different from everyone else? Who cares about that pain — who cares about the value from solving it? Those are your stakeholders. And then process: how do we go from a spark of interest to an evaluation to a closed deal, to a renewal and everything thereafter? 34:21 Andy Whyte: If you just come to me in a deal review and say: "Andy, tell me about the value" then "tell me about the stakeholders" then "tell me about the process" — it's too far zoomed out. MEDDIC zooms in to exactly the right level so we can have a very cohesive, very efficient conversation about value, stakeholders, and process. And that common language carries not just across your sales team but across the whole go-to-market. Your marketing team can think about personas the same way you think about stakeholders. They can use metrics and case studies and use cases the same way your sales team does. So it becomes the common language that — where I see 95% of people using MEDDIC — is as a framework to spot gaps, and then you apply the methodology to solve those gaps. The methodology could be your discovery approach, value pyramid frameworks, the three whys, new business meeting structures — all of that. How I think about the opportunity, though — and why we would say MEDDIC is more than a qualification framework — is because we've built methodologies around each letter. We have an M1, M2, M3 methodology for Metrics. 35:48 David Weiss: Yeah, you've taken it to a completely different level, especially with the tech you've built around it. 35:48 Andy Whyte: And the idea there is that we're actually expanding it. We've almost got two groups pushing back against us: the gurus who've never used MEDDIC and see it as competitive for the reasons you said; and then the orthodox, Old Testament MEDDIC contingent who say you can't change it, can't expand it, it's perfect as is. But if you're using GAP Selling as a framework to do discovery and spot gaps, brilliant — that helps you find and quantify pain. But what if you don't want to use GAP Selling? Then you can use our metrics framework instead. Same for everything else across the letters. 37:28 Andy Whyte: So I actually think the big opportunity is: if your organisation has implemented MEDDIC and is using it well, the real prize is expanding the MEDDIC language into everything you do. So when you build a value pyramid, it references back to MEDDIC terms — Pain relates back to where it sits in MEDDIC, Decision Criteria relates back, and so on. We're just expanding it so it becomes the connective tissue across everything. That's a huge opportunity to maximise people's existing investment in MEDDIC while bringing in everything else they've also invested in. 37:28 David Weiss: Yeah, I completely agree. And the power of that common language is incredible. When Gregory and I — or any other person I've taught this to who knows the framework really well — look at any deal together, we can in five or ten minutes tell you all the reasons you're winning, all the reasons you're losing, and exactly what actions you need to take. It is efficient. And going back to the fear of mortality — I like being really efficient with time. If you and I are both looking at a deal but speaking slightly different languages, it's going to take way longer to figure out how to move forward. The power in the common language cannot be overstated. 39:08 Andy Whyte: So another myth I hear a lot — and maybe my favourite, because I'm almost amused when people come up with it: the idea that you have to try to cover everything in the first meeting. But my favourite flavour of that is when they say: "It's Metrics — we have to start with Metrics. " Imagine a Zoom meeting: "So, Mr Guzman, tell me about your metrics!" No. Not that. But the one where people say: "MEDDIC is only for big deals, only for big opportunities" — I get where they're coming from, because that's where it is brilliant. You're going to extract massive value there. But my answer to this myth is: use MEDDIC relative to the complexity of the opportunity. 40:02 Andy Whyte: So if you're selling DocuSign to small businesses — let's say to a ten-person law firm — you're probably not going to meet the managing partner. You might have one call, a demo, and close via email. But it doesn't mean you should disregard the economic buyer. Even in that one-call-close scenario, the salesperson should still consider: the person I'm talking to — who I'm hoping to build into a mini champion in this one meeting and maybe two or three emails — I need to prime them for when they go to get sign-off from the economic buyer. Because that's probably going to happen. Someone's going to look at this and ask: "Why do we need this? " So let's make sure this person can act as a champion for us. Have we given them what they need to go get the action we need? 41:22 David Weiss: Yeah, and I look at it this way: I don't care what size deal you're selling — MEDDIC is the foundational element of all sales transactions, forever. And I'll give a really clear example — anyone wants to fight me on this, fight me right here in the comments. Andy, would you agree that door-to-door pest control is one of the lowest-complexity sales on the planet? 41:22 Andy Whyte: Yes. 41:22 David Weiss: Low dollar, low complexity, fast transaction, B2C? 41:22 Andy Whyte: Yes. 41:22 David Weiss: I can't tell you how many people would argue that you can't use MEDDIC there. But check this out. A guy came to my door the other day to sell me pest control. He said: "Hey, out of curiosity — do you have a pest control vendor? " Yes I do. "Would you be open to making a change — competition versus status quo? " It depends. "What is your current cost? " Well, I'm paying this. "Do they charge you any other fees? " Other Metrics. "What's important to you in a pest control vendor? " Decision Criteria. "Oh, does your wife answer the door on this? Does she have a view? " If she had answered, she'd be a stakeholder — potentially a champion. "I make the decision because I pay for it — so I'm the economic buyer. " He's talking to me. "What are they not providing you? " Oh, they weren't granulating my lawn and weren't getting down to my dock. "Why is that a problem? " I have a nine-year-old who sometimes steps on anthills, and I have to granulate my own lawn to avoid the ants. "Well, we could take care of that for you. " There's the Pain, there's the implication — my nine-year-old getting hurt. "Are you under contract? " Paper Process. "My contract's up in a couple of months. " "Cool. How will you make a decision to change? How should I follow up with you? " Decision Process. I just got MEDDIC'd. And I just showed you how MEDDIC can be applied door-to-door in pest control. If he didn't ask any one of those questions, there would have been a gap and risk in his deal. I just proved to you that MEDDIC is valuable even in door-to-door pest control. [QA: check word count — approx 288 words]44:24 Andy Whyte: That's brilliant. What the level of scrutiny looks like changes depending on complexity. You can be fast with a low-complexity, high-velocity B2C motion. In a high-complexity B2B motion, it could take you a year to fully work through all the elements. It's just the depth of scrutiny that scales — not whether MEDDIC applies. That is outstanding. I love that. 44:24 David Weiss: And actually — that literally happened. And I told the guy about MEDDIC afterwards. I said: "Can I tell you something? Have you ever heard of MEDDIC? " And I literally taught him MEDDIC on the spot. Well, not exactly — he was just doing it naturally. 44:24 Andy Whyte: That's brilliant. You know, there are so many things. And I think we've talked about this before, but my first job in sales was knocking on doors B2C. In the UK it's called double glazing — the unknown of the US equivalent would be something like second-hand car sales, which seems like the lowest rung of sales — but double glazing is arguably lower. And that was what I did. And there are things I learned doing that which I still use today. One of the things I found really interesting — and slightly off-topic, but worth sharing — is that I found it really hard to move from B2C to B2B. Not because I wasn't good at it, but because no one would hire me. People would say: "We love your self-starter energy, we love the hustle — but come back when you've got some B2B experience. " And I'd be thinking: that's a catch-22. You're not going to give me the experience, and you won't hire me without it. But what I think is really, really strong about people coming from those high-velocity sales environments is it trains your emotional intelligence like nothing else. Because a typical modern salespeople career might go: university, then customer-facing role, then SDR booking maybe one, two, or three meetings a week, then AE with maybe two or three customer meetings a week. Maybe two or three complete sales cycles a month. Door-to-door, you're doing full cycles multiple times a day — knocking the door, booking the meeting, doing the pitch, selling the product, doing the paperwork on the same day. That is an extraordinary accelerator for learning how to handle objections, deliver value, and read people. So if someone with that background comes in for an interview with me, it's a massive level-up in my mind, not a level-down. [QA: check word count — approx 304 words]45:31 David Weiss: Yeah, I have a deep respect for anyone who does door-to-door. My first sales job was selling uniforms, floor mats, and shop towels for a company called Aramark. Five-year contracts. If you didn't close on the first call, your win rate was like 5%. You needed a one-call close on a five-year contract. 200 calls a week, 16 appointments, knocking on 30 doors, submitting 4 to 5 proposals — high velocity, high action, immediate close, rapid value identification, rapid pain identification. That's where I cut my teeth. Everything else in life has been easier since. 49:16 Andy Whyte: Yeah. That was one of the most fun jobs I ever had. My second job, though, was at a startup — I was pretty much the first non-founder commercial employee. It was a B2B e-commerce platform. Two things about that job I always reflect on. One: five-year contracts — non-negotiable, no variation. Two: no discounting. That is the price. Full stop. Black and white. And I started that job thinking: this is it. This is clean. And if they didn't want a five-year contract or didn't want to pay the price, they just didn't close. No back and forth. And I reflect on this a lot — I genuinely wonder: if you could take a well-established public company and for one year just say "three-year contracts only, no discounts," net-net, would they be worse off? I don't think they would be. I feel like they'd be better. Here's the funny thing, though: it turned out one of the founders was basically writing any contract variation he wanted behind the scenes. He'd told me it's only five years — but he was doing things like: "If you buy two e-commerce stores, I'll give you the second one at half price. " And we weren't measuring sales by ARR, we were measuring by units. So he'd say "I sold ten stores this month" and I'd sold five. But really he'd sold five and given five away for free. My five were infinitely more profitable. And he used to love rubbing it in — "I've beaten you again. " And I'm thinking: you're playing with cheat codes. I'm playing the real game. [QA: check word count — approx 263 words]52:35 David Weiss: Ha! Yeah. OK, funny story. Someone knocked on my door about six weeks ago — 16-year-old kid — and he asked if I'd take him to prom. Let me be clear: he asked if I'd drive him to his prom. He'd seen my car. I was like: wow. The confidence. That's a person who's going places. That's going past the obvious for what you want. So I caught it on the Ring doorbell and thought: let's do this. We made a little mini video about it. And I was asking him: what made you do it? Because I was trying to get across to this kid: that trait — seeing something you want and being brave enough to knock on the door of a complete stranger to get it — is something he needs to lean into. It doesn't matter what he goes into in life; that is going to set him up incredibly well. 52:35 Andy Whyte: And the funny thing is, like you say — there's a very fine line between that kind of boldness and other kinds of obsessive behaviour. 52:35 David Weiss: Yeah. Hopefully he channels it for good. 54:28 Andy Whyte: David, something I love from our previous conversations is how aligned we are on the importance of preparation for customer engagements — and how we think about discovery. One of the things I told you about before that I was immediately like: if David is up for sharing this, this is going to be a gem — is how you approach first meetings. 54:28 David Weiss: Yeah. So I've tried to make MEDDIC as actionable as humanly possible. To me, that's the power of it — finding where you have a problem and taking action. I look at MEDDIC as a system to drive action, and action is taken through plays. This is the situation, here's the play we're going to run to move the chains, advance the ball. I've written a book with 79 plays in it called The Sales Tactician's Playbook. And there are a couple of plays — variations of each other — that drive discovery, identification and implication of pain, business case and value realisation, and solution alignment. One of them is called the Faces of Discovery play. There's also a Faces of the Problem play that broadens this to entire teams of stakeholders, with specific quotes tied to each — but I'll maybe come back to that. 57:11 David Weiss: The Faces of Discovery play is my favourite, and I've been teaching it to salespeople for close to six years. The ones who adopt it have a 90%+ conversion rate from first meeting to second meeting. In other words, if you do this right, the person you're talking to is going to lean in and want to bring more people to the party over 90% of the time. So here's the play. Before walking into any meeting — virtual or in person — do your homework on the individual, on the business, on the persona, and on the problems that persona typically faces. For public accounts: annual reports, news, investor briefings, earnings calls. For private accounts: news, LinkedIn profiles, competitor analysis, their website. And what you're trying to do through all of this is put puzzle pieces together to form a hypothesis: what problem are you as an individual — inside your role, inside your business — likely facing right now that my solution can help with? 58:56 David Weiss: What I do is: I take that information, start with their LinkedIn profile picture, and literally put their picture on a slide — in a circle. I title the slide: "What I think you care about. " Then I put three to four bullets based on all this homework — my hypothesis — on the slide. Then comes the narrative. The narrative is very simple. If you're a fan of the ASEM framework — Appreciate time, set agenda, establish neutrality, move forward — you go into it. You say: "Before we get started, before I show you how we can help — is it okay if I ask you a few questions and we chat a little bit? " Then you pull up that slide. "I like to make sure our time is well spent, and I always do my homework on the individual to make sure we're here to have a productive conversation for you. So I put this together for today. As an outsider looking in — and this is key — I'm probably wrong. " And that is key. People love to correct you. "Probably wrong — but as an outsider looking in, here's what I saw. " And I read the bullets on the slide. "I'd love to have a conversation about this — for you to tell me where I'm right, where I'm wrong, and maybe where I missed the mark entirely. And I'd love to go a little deeper with you. Is that OK? "60:31 David Weiss: Then I shut up. And they read the slide. They see their picture. And they say: "That's me on a slide. " And I say: "Yeah. " And then they're like: "No, no — you got these two right. But this one, you got completely wrong. Let me tell you more about that. " And they just spill. And I sit there frantically taking notes. 60:31 Andy Whyte: I love that. And everyone watching knows what's happening here — but just to call it out: the biggest part of this is that you've hyper-accelerated your route to credibility with that prospect. You've shown you value their time — they've seen you invested time before the meeting, solely for them. And even if you're incorrect, you've demonstrated a relevant perspective. If one bullet is slightly wrong, it's not wildly wrong — it might be that, say, their electronics company has a supply chain issue in their space, but actually they source their chips from somewhere else. The fact that you knew they could have that problem makes them think: this person knows what they're talking about. And it gives them a chance to correct you — which opens the door. 62:01 Andy Whyte: And I always think: our customers are so used to salespeople acting desperate. It can be hard to get a meeting, and so when we get one we don't want to let it go. We chase, we push, we show up everywhere — and the customer thinks: this person must be desperate. But for you to invest time upfront, it says: this person must genuinely believe they have value to offer. Why else would they spend their precious time this way? 62:01 David Weiss: Yeah. And it shows you came to play. There's also an ego stroke — having their picture on a slide. Sellers sometimes get weirded out by the picture. Customers — never. Every single time I've done this, they say: "Oh my God, that's me on a slide. Where did you get that? That's really cool — I've never seen anyone do this before. " Always a reaction like that. And psychologically, people are immediately drawn to looking at themselves — you're creating affinity for the conversation instantly. The "I'm probably wrong" is key because you're removing all ego and inviting correction — and people love to correct you. So they lean in. And ultimately what I'm trying to do is earn the right to real discovery. If you just show up and say: "Hey, what are your challenges? " — I'm not telling you. I don't trust you yet. But you earn the right through this preparation. And now they'll give you the real, deep stuff — and they'll be willing to go to a second layer they normally wouldn't. 64:42 Andy Whyte: Yes. That accelerates the deal forward. 64:42 David Weiss: And this is a cheat code. People say it takes so much time — I can boil this down to five or ten minutes. You can't take ten minutes to prepare for a meeting? Seriously — get out of sales. 64:42 Andy Whyte: Ha, 100% agree. I'll give you one quick anecdote along the same lines. One of the tactics I love to get my teams to do — and something I've always had my teams do as a sales leader — is play back the decision criteria. Once the customer starts establishing it, even from a first meeting, you'd say: "It sounds to me like in a solution, you're looking for these things — or these things are important to you. " And then the beautiful move is to lace in some of your own strengths. 65:35 Andy Whyte: Something like: "It sounds like this wasn't something you'd previously considered as important, but from our conversation it seems like this is going to matter to you, given the goals you want to achieve. " And the hyper-professional version of that: for the technical decision criteria, get your sales engineer or solution consultant to do that. Introduce them as a point of contact in the deal. Then you can handle the commercial and relationship side of the decision criteria yourself. It splits the two nicely. But I had a guy on my team once who took this a step further. He would deliberately put something wildly incorrect — not too wild, but clearly off-base — in one of the bullet points. To check two things: whether the customer was actually reading it. And if they were, would they call him out? Did they care enough to say: "Jim, you've got that wrong — let me tell you what it actually is" — and in doing so, confirm everything else on the slide. 66:46 David Weiss: That's not something I would personally do — because I feel like with my customers, I don't want them to think I made something up or misheard them. But for this guy, it worked. He had zero need to be liked and zero need to be right. And I dig that. There's a little mental judo there — forcing correction, forcing deeper engagement, forcing them to pay attention. That's someone who came to the party to play, who's one or two steps ahead of everyone else in the room. Like playing chess — that's someone who's two moves ahead. And I like that a lot. 68:10 Andy Whyte: All right, David. Last question — quickfire. Not your most important element of MEDDIC, but your favourite. What's your favourite letter? 68:10 David Weiss: Oh, it's got to be Metrics, man. I'm a big business case guy. With Archimedes: with the right lever, I can move the world. With the right business case, I can make anything happen. Economic Buyer would be a very, very close second. But yeah — Metrics all day. 68:10 Andy Whyte: I love that. David, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find you if they want to connect? 68:10 David Weiss: Hit me up on LinkedIn — David Weiss at The Sales Collective. I get out of bed every single day to help the sales community sell better. So if I can ever do anything for you, I'm literally here. Andy — seriously, man, I love our conversations. Every time we talk it just makes the rest of my day better. 68:10 Andy Whyte: Yeah, likewise. Thank you. Dude.