MEDMEN: Hiring AEs with MEDDIC

00:00 Pim Roelofsen: Welcome to The MedMen Show. Today we are talking about hiring AEs — specifically with MEDDIC. 00:05 Andy Whyte: And you are actually hiring your team at the moment. 00:07 Pim Roelofsen: Yes we are. Yeah. And the way Lee — our head of sales — and I approach this is: we see every hiring process pretty much like a sales opportunity. When we look at candidates, every single thing going on within that interaction between the candidate and us as a hiring company can be viewed through that lens. How do they approach it? How do they show up when it comes to preparation? Do they engage with other stakeholders? Are they putting in the effort to come up with a point of view? Because ultimately — same as anywhere in our industry when it comes to selling or interviewing — it's simply the best possible opportunity to show how you would approach something like this. 00:52 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. So that saying: how you do one thing is how you do everything. Oh yeah, absolutely right. I feel like that's very, very true. In fact, one of the things I find really interesting about that is I'm often inadvertently involved in your hiring processes. And there's a very clear distinction — two modes. Mode A is where the person thinks: "OK, this is obviously a MEDDIC company and they really believe in what they do — so I'll see Andy as maybe an economic buyer in this process." And they'll engage with me either because they think that's what we want to see — Mode A — or because they genuinely know how important and powerful that engagement could be — Mode B. I'm probably not the economic buyer in our hiring process, in fairness. But for anyone going through a process with us: if everyone asked, we'd just be giving you the cheat sheet. You still have to be qualified. 01:49 Andy Whyte: Yeah — I'll probably be more like a coach or an influencer in that context. But the point is: you can tell. I can tell straight away when someone's engaging with me because they feel like they just need to tick a box — "I've engaged with the economic buyer in this hiring process" — versus actually knowing the power of the economic buyer and how engaging with me, if done well, can have such a radical impact on their success. And it's honestly night and day. Binary. Either one or the other — never any middle ground. I can tell pretty much straight away: are they actually curious and genuinely trying to understand me and get my perspective? Or are they just thinking I'm going to forward their email or LinkedIn message into our Slack channel and say "by the way, this person checked in"? 02:35 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah — you see the difference immediately. And I think the other thing we especially see is people starting to use MEDDIC language. Which is right. But so much of "how you do one thing is how you do everything" comes through in other things — like: do they do meeting hygiene at the start of the call? Confirming the time, making sure the agenda is clear to everyone, making sure we leave time at the end to set next steps. Because that's exactly the kind of thing you want to see in a sales call too. And what are they doing before the meeting? Are they following up in a timely manner? That has nothing to do specifically with MEDDIC. It has more to do with how someone shows up by way of attitude. 03:25 Andy Whyte: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things more specifically — if you're hiring and trying to find someone with MEDDIC skills and experience — you want to be able to bring out how they actually use it, to test that they really have those skills. There are levels, right? Do they know what the letters stand for? Have they read a bit about it? Have they actually crossed the line of using it — and do they use it reactively, like most of our industry does, as a kind of checklist post-event? Or do they use it proactively? There are all these different layers of proficiency. And as a hiring manager, what you're really trying to uncover is: how proficiently do they use it? The way to do that is not to ask "tell me how you build champions" — because you're going to get a very contrived answer. The way to do it is simply: "Talk to me about a deal you're really proud of" or "talk to me about a deal you almost lost" or "a deal where you feel like you really made the difference." No trick questions. Just sit back and see where the story goes. 04:29 Andy Whyte: And what I'll say here is: I don't really have a preference as to whether the person uses MEDDIC language explicitly or not. It comes down to their style. Sometimes you can see someone really trying very hard — "and then my champion..." — almost like they want a subtitle to appear and be put in bold text in front of them. And sometimes people are more subtle. You want to be able to see the language in their story because it's a common language we're looking for — we want to see them using those words. But for me, I'm not necessarily going to score them up or down based on how prominently they're putting those words in front of me. I want it to be natural. I'm looking for it to be part of their modus operandi — their common language. 05:19 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, 100%. And I really agree with asking for situational examples. The combination of asking where they've almost or actually lost — where they've learned the most — demonstrates a few things. One is: what's their experience like? But also culturally — are they confident opening up? Do they tell the real story? And "clock speed" — which is something we always look for — can they connect the dots between what they've learned and what we're actually looking for? You can just see it happen in the conversation. And I know this isn't necessarily tied to MEDDIC specifically — but by bringing it back to situational examples, you can see how someone dealt with certain situations before that they're very likely to face again if they join your team. 05:58 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And one other thing you inspire people with is joining the dots of the MEDDIC language. One of the telltale signs that someone isn't yet proficient with MEDDIC is if they see each element in isolation. They don't think about it from the perspective of: "Well, if I can implicate pain, that's going to help me quantify the metrics. And then I need to think about not just the pain as one thing, but that pain is relevant and relative to different stakeholders — what might be a big pain for the champion might be a different pain to the economic buyer." And how different people play different parts in the process. Individuals even have different decision processes themselves. And it's this grand myriad of things going on inside a deal — and MEDDIC is the language that helps you zoom in on where you stand and what your next best actions are. They're not in isolation. That's always the thing that stands out for me: whether the person can connect those elements together and explain how they complement each other and help you make progress. 07:19 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. And if we talk about clock speed — the ability to connect the dots — you will see candidates that maybe don't yet have full MEDDIC proficiency, but they'll still use language that relates to value, stakeholders and process. Getting someone to theoretically learn the language and merge it with a skill set they already have can be a very effective way to onboard them into the team. Same as in a deal — from a hiring perspective, MEDDIC shouldn't become a checklist. You can still use it as a lens to see where someone is. If they were to come in, how far are they from where we sit and how we operate? Is it worth investing in this candidate? What will the time to value be for them to onboard effectively? 08:02 Pim Roelofsen: And the last thing I'll say on this topic: it's not just about candidates with MEDDIC experience. Because you might miss an absolute A-player who has simply never been exposed to MEDDIC. It's the same for me as a sales leader — I joined two existing seller organizations as a new sales leader, and both had never used MEDDIC before. That doesn't mean we weren't going to be successful. In fact, sometimes having a clean slate where you go in and say "hey team — here's something new" is great. In one instance, pretty much everyone in the sales team had never even heard of MEDDIC. So I had to both enable them and sell the benefit of it — which is actually quite easy to do, because you can show the correlation of success it creates. As long as the candidate is coachable, wants to learn, and is open-minded — that's not actually such a bad place to be. 09:12 Andy Whyte: And sometimes if they've come from an organization that uses MEDDIC poorly, they'll arrive with a very limited, very narrow view of what it is — compared to how we and our customers use it. So I wouldn't write anyone off if they don't have MEDDIC experience, as long as they come in open-minded and coachable. And our sales team is a great example — someone who joined having never heard of MEDDIC. Look at him now! 09:40 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. And ultimately, the way MEDDIC was created in the first place — reverse engineering the way customers buy — means that if someone has had experience outside of MEDDIC and has done a great job without using the same language, you can still spot those things in conversation. And find a great candidate. 10:02 Andy Whyte: Cheers! 10:03 Pim Roelofsen: Cheers!