GTM Dysfunction (and how MEDDIC can help!)

We like to say that not all MEDDIC is equal.  But what does that actually mean?

Before answering directly, let’s start with some context. Since 1996 MEDDIC and its derivatives have been used by sales organizations most commonly as a sales qualification framework. This would include using MEDDIC in deal reviews to identify gaps and risks in sales opportunities. Some organizations evolved to overlay MEDDIC to define success criteria across their sales stages. Others have progressed to extend MEDDIC across the customer lifecycle and Incorporated MEDDIC scoring as a way to measure execution and risk.

Because MEDDIC has been primarily adopted by sales organizations, this has contributed to the creation of silos across go to market functions, including marketing, business development, pre-sales, sales and success management. There is now a vast array of frameworks, methodologies and tools used across the GTM functions. 

It doesn’t have to be like this. 

MEDDIC and its derivative MEDDPICC is a comprehensive framework for GTM teams. It contains the three essential elements of value, stakeholders and process that all GTM teams care about. Every GTM function can apply these three essential elements to set their priorities, do their job, engage with customers, and collaborate internally more effectively.

Let’s be brutally honest.  In most organizations, sales complains about marketing, marketing complains about customer success and presales complains about sales.  These complaints stem from misalignments and poor communication which results from a lack of a common language.  Here are some of the most common complaints that occur across go to market functions.

Sales Complaints

• Marketing messaging is not generating quality leads

• Business development is not effectively qualifying 

• Presale is not presenting our capabilities as a solution to the customers problems

• Delivery is not configuring the solution in a way that allows us to capture metrics

• Success management is just focused on satisfying the users and not maintaining strategic alignments and not maintaining and developing champions. 

• The product team does not seem to prioritize their development efforts to what customers are asking for.

Marketing Complaints

• Business development is not effectively converting our MQLs to SQLs.

• Sales is not properly leveraging our sales, assets and collateral.

• Sales and success are not capturing customer success stories that we can use for case studies.

Pre-sales Complaints

• Sales’ initial positioning and discovery lacks depth and is not setting us up for success.

Delivery and Success Complaints

• Sales and Pre-sales have not provided a thorough handover from the sales process, which is making our job more difficult. We lack essential information needed to set us and the customer up for success.

Product

• Marketing, sales and success are not providing us with feedback to help us prioritize our product development efforts.

All of this complaining is a result of things being “lost in translation.”  Poor internal communication and a lack of clarity causes friction between teams, resulting in “value leakage” occurring at handover or transition points.  

But if we were to ask each one of these organizations, what’s most important to the success of their business, and to that of their customers, you would find a lot of common ground. Everyone would agree that as a united GTM team, we must deliver an integrated customer experience, driven by the unique value that our solution brings to our customers. We must engage with the right stakeholders through a mutually beneficial process that identifies and delivers value to the customer such that they wish to continue and expand the relationship.

If GTM teams can agree that they must all support this shared purpose. Then there must also be a common language and framework that these functions can share to deliver on this promise.

That common language and framework is MEDDPICC.

Looking at the individual elements: 

• Metrics - How will sales and success generate customer success metrics that can then be fed into marketing content to be used to generate new leads?  How will sales and presales define the customer success metrics?  How will delivery and success deliver value realization?  

• Economic Buyer - How should marketing message executives?  Then how will sales engage to secure strategic alignment?  How will sales, success and marketing maintain and leverage that strategic alignment?  

• Decision Criteria - How will marketing position and differentiate our solution and business?  How will business development qualify?  How will sales educate and influence the customer’s decision criteria that will lead to victory?  How will presales validate?  How will delivery and success deliver on the customer’s technical criteria, while also satisfying their financial criteria?  

• Decision & Paper Process - How will business development qualify?  How will sales negotiate and gain agreement?  How will the teams transition from decision to delivery?  

• Identify Pain - Who are our target personas and what value messaging can we deliver to capture their interest?  How will sales and presales penetrate the account to implicate and quantify the customer’s pain? How will sales leverage the customer pain and compelling events to drive the timeline?  How will the delivered solution and the resolution of the customer’s pain be captured in the customer success story?  

• Champions - How can we reach those change agents within our target accounts?  How will business development and sales qualify, develop and leverage them?  How will success maintain and continue to develop champions?  How will we partner with our champions to help them achieve their goals?  

• Competition - How will marketing differentiate our solution from the competition?  How will business development and sales identify the competition?  How will presales differentiate the solution and expose the competition?  How will delivery and success monitor the customer’s landscape and find opportunities to expand the solution footprint?

Everything contained in this brief customer journey description is contained within MEDDPICC.

And while it is possible to deliver a great customer experience without using MEDDPICC, the fact is: 

that if your entire go to market team is communicating, strategizing and executing, using a common language, your chances of collective success improve dramatically.

So let’s return to our original question which is: What do we mean when we say not all MEDDIC is equal?

What we mean is that there is a broad range of adoption of MEDDIC and that adoption can be assessed across 3 dimensions: breadth, depth and collaboration.  Let’s take a look at each of these dimensions.  

NAMIE Dimensions

Breadth

The first dimension used to measure MEDDPICC adoption is breadth. This means that the common language and framework of MEDDPICC Has been deployed and adopted across every customer facing team.

Marketing, business development, sales, presales, delivery services, customer success, customer support, should all understand their roles are responsibilities in terms of MEDDPICC.

Depth

Depth refers to both the quality and the consistency of execution across every go to market function. The key question here is how consistently does each of the functions perform at the highest level?

• What is the quality of the customer success metrics provided to marketing by sales and customer success?
• What is the caliber and quality of leads provided to business development?
• How thoroughly is sales executing across every element of MEDDPICC and with what frequency?
• What is the quality of information provided to delivery and success?
• How successful is delivery and customer success at driving adoption and value realization? What percentage of your customers are satisfied? For what percentage of your customers have you generated customer success metrics? What percentage of your customers renew? Expand? What is your net renewal rate and what’s preventing it from being higher?

The breadth and depth of your MEDDPICC adoption is a measure of the quality and consistency that your team executes across these critical success factors that MEDDPICC represents.  

Collaboration

The third dimension of MEDDPICC adoption is collaboration. As mentioned previously one of the biggest benefits of having a common language and framework is the ability to reduce the silos that exist across go to market teams.

While this dimension overlaps with breath and depth, it’s important to specifically think about how the quality of your team's execution supports the other go to market teams.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR: How You Know That Not All MEDDIC is Equal

A few examples.

• Marketing is provided profiles of the most successful and satisfied customers, which helps to guide their prospect targeting. 

• Business development clearly satisfies and then conveys their prospect qualification to sales, resulting in improved conversion rates.  

• Sales executes a high impact initial meeting and discovery enabling presales to crush their tailored demonstration, creating significant momentum for the opportunity and accelerating Champion identification and development.   

• Sales and pre-sales secure every element of MEDDPICC through the sales cycle, thus providing delivery and success with the vital information needed to drive adoption and value realization, leading to improved retention, growth and reference-ability.  

The power of the common language and framework being applied across GTM mean that things are not “lost in translation.”  “Value leakage” has been reduced or eliminated and critical handover points.  These are all the signs of better execution and the business benefits of better execution are massive.  

In closing: 

• Most GTM teams struggle to strategically align with each other because they have historically operated within their own silos, using their own language and frameworks.  

• All GTM teams care about building durable, value based relationships with their customers.  

• MEDDPICC is the common language and framework that enables all GTM teams to strategically align around the value, the stakeholders and the process.  

• NAMIE - Not All MEDDIC Is Equal.  

• MEDDIC adoption can be evaluated across 3 dimensions: 

  • Breadth - Adoption across GTM functions

  • Depth - The quality and consistency of execution 

  • Collaboration - The integration and application of MEDDPICC across and between teams that creates synergy and eliminates “value leakage.”