MEDMEN: MEDDIC for your SDRs

00:09 Andy Whyte: Welcome to The MedMen Show. My name is Pim Roelofsen and I'm Andy Whyte. And today we're going to talk about SDRs. We all love them. In typical sales tech organizations today, they are a vital part of our sales process and the way we interact with customers. They are the very first point of contact for our customers — well, typically. The first impression, the very first thing that many prospective customers see. And I think it is an open door that SDRs should be in line with the way the rest of the organization works. We don't always see this. But I think today it's going to be interesting to look at this from a MEDDIC perspective specifically, and discuss how SDRs can be part of that whole qualification motion as well. So what are your thoughts on it? 00:59 Andy Whyte: Well, you said it really well yourself. I think in sales, most salespeople started off as an SDR in some role or another. In my world it was — we had a posh title — telesales. And it didn't have all the great support, or frankly the respect, that the role has today. But yeah, I'm a big, big advocate of the role. And I think one of the things I'll say as well, that I think is really cool about today, is that SDRs typically always had quite a short tenure. And it was a good thing because they were getting promoted to where they wanted to be — into the field. But what that typically meant was a short tenure within the company. 01:45 Andy Whyte: I think now we're seeing this great shift where companies are recognizing that SDRs are the talent of the field for tomorrow. Whether it's a CSM role, partnerships, or other roles we see SDRs evolve into — we're seeing some really great data back from the field. We have a customer who sees that if they promote an SDR internally, they see something like 120% attainment in their first year, versus if they hire externally where they'll see around 80%. So we know that SDRs are great. And I like talking about them from a MEDDIC perspective — not just for some of the stuff you mentioned, like making a more cohesive sales process, but also because by investing in your SDR team with MEDDIC today, you're getting them one foot ahead for when they inevitably do go into the field. So I think that's really cool too. 02:30 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. We've seen some examples of that. And if you take a look at a place where that doesn't happen — I'll talk from experience here for a second. You get into a first call with an SDR. They do a qualification, they've prepped themselves already a little bit, there's not necessarily a positioning of metrics there yet — it's not a MEDDIC company. But they do a good job on qualification. The next thing, if there's no common language, is that the AE gets in. And basically you have the same conversation twice. And I think it's an opportunity for companies to get this right, so that the handover from an SDR to an AE is seamless — because they speak the same language. They know what potential pain has been identified, what the AE can qualify a bit more, and how to start positioning from day one. 03:21 Pim Roelofsen: And I was thinking about some of the conversations we have with prospects, because it comes up quite often — they ask: "OK, but SDRs — sometimes they call them BDRs — we probably won't include them in the MEDDIC adoption journey we're on right now." How do you feel about those considerations, where companies think: "maybe we don't include them" — while also recognizing they are the future sellers? 03:46 Andy Whyte: Well, I'm obviously a bit biased, I'll start by saying that. And I would say that some departments benefit from MEDDIC more than others, and that's taken into account as well. But I tend to think about it like this: for all the reasons you mentioned, what you're really trying to consider at that point is — is the ROI going to be worthwhile? Is it going to be worthwhile investing in our SDR team to use the language of MEDDIC in their work? And I think it's a massive yes. For me it's huge, because it's really quite simple. 04:19 Andy Whyte: If you're an SDR, you said it yourself — they're at the top. The first impression, the first thing the customer sees. But they're also — not through any lack of ability, just by experience — typically the newest to the industry and the newest to the product they're working with. So we task them with this difficult job of capturing a prospect's attention when they have, just by experience, the least amount of information and the least experience to draw on to capture that customer's attention. That's hard. That's a real challenge, and it's quite hard to solve short of just bringing the whole team into a classroom all the time and training them and training them and trying to force the experience upon them. 05:03 Andy Whyte: One of the things MEDDIC does really well, for starters, is that you can extend the framework so SDRs can use it for outreach. If you think about it like this: who should I contact? Well, who is a typical champion for your company in a deal — who's normally the person that, when they hear what you do, thinks "yeah, that's good, I could do that, I'm going to make something happen here"? That's a champion persona. So start thinking about those personas when deciding who to contact. That's the first thing. And then secondly: what do these champions care about? What pain do you solve for them? That's the P in MEDDIC — the pain. So: who am I going to contact, and what problem am I going to help them solve? 05:46 Andy Whyte: And then the third one is: what value do they get from solving that? And that's the metrics. The way we use metrics, of course, is using proof points and M1s to illustrate in a very clear, customer-related, reference-point manner what your solution does for customers — which quickly captures their attention, even in bullet points. We've even got some customers who use that motion in video outreach — they'll do a video to their prospect and talk about: "you probably have these challenges, we help people with these challenges" — and tell a story about how they've helped people like that. So for me, that's solving a couple of big things: the information around who to contact and what they care about. 06:28 Andy Whyte: But also — and you can articulate this much better — that handover piece. Being on the other side of so many sales cycles as I am now, the amount of times I'm going through this process of telling one person one thing, they qualify me — which is fine — and then I get on the actual sales call and the salesperson is asking me the same questions and telling me the same things again. There's no cohesion there. So you've just zoomed in on three of the MEDDIC elements — the champion, the pain, and the metrics. 06:58 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. So would you say that from an SDR perspective, and for the cohesive transition between an SDR and an AE, those three are essential — and the rest adds value but isn't essential? 07:17 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I'd love it if the economic buyer were important too, because then it'd be a nice acronym that makes sense — but no, I don't think it's as essential at that stage. So yeah, I think if you're an SDR listening to this, or a manager, or even an AE thinking about your SDR team — and you work in an industry where your product is a bit commoditized — you can bring in the decision criteria as well, because the customer might be reading what you're saying and thinking "yeah, you and everybody else." So if you've got something really unique in your decision criteria, you can almost put in an email: "you might be thinking this is what everyone does — let me tell you one way we're different." And that's how you start the conversation by sparking an idea of differentiation. 08:10 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, that's great. And then another perspective — for a little bit of professional development, if you will. What I've seen as well is that the transition, and the way that AEs and their management then converse with SDRs about the qualifications they've done, will really help them get ready for that next role. Because what's the average — a year, year and a half as an SDR? And we need them to progress because we need a certain number of sellers in every company as well. So I just want to highlight that the investment companies are making by bringing SDRs into this journey is also very much gearing them up for making that step — giving them a ton of experience even before they get into an IC or AE role. 08:58 Andy Whyte: And the bit I don't think people are talking about enough — exactly what you said there — is that from the company's perspective, great, we're getting this person ready to be promoted. But who's saying that person will want to be promoted with you? That probably comes down to how they feel about their future with the company. So if you're investing in them, they're thinking: "I can look around my industry, I can look at all the top companies I see — and they all use MEDDIC. So this is not just going to make me a better SDR today or a better SDR for this company tomorrow — it's going to make me a better AE forevermore in the future of my career, because this is going to be part of my playbook and my skill set forever." Yeah, you know it, I know it. Absolutely. OK — I think that's a great summary of it!