In today’s landscape, we know that the buyer’s journey begins long before the sales team gets involved. That’s why the work done by Marketing during the Awareness and Prospecting stage is so essential; by building up the reputation of your business, Marketing invites customers to trust your organization and your solution.
When Marketing use MEDDPICC as they support the rest of the GTM team, they are empowered to enhance their best work end-to-end. A lot of MEDDPICC lingo is familiar to Marketing already; they know to utilise the use-cases of Metrics when promoting your company. MEDDPICC simply aligns the language used by Marketing with the rest of the team. Many marketing teams are confused by or are bombarded with the variety of templates to use when looking at the Customer Lifecycle. At MEDDICC, we encourage using MEDDPICC in tandem with the Customer Lifecycle. This ensures that every team and their goals are aligned with the framework, and the teams can work together with ease.
The Marketing team can apply many elements of MEDDPICC during the Awareness and Prospecting phase. An early example of how Marketing can drive value is with Metrics, which can be used in promotional content to spread the word about your company’s success stories. Even before sales are engaged, the customer is learning about your solution. The Marketing team can specifically use M1s, which utilise proven and relevant value from your existing customer base to demonstrate the value your solution provides to potential customers. Marketing can use eye-catching statistics to illustrate the actual impact your solution has for existing customers, which will spark interest and invite potential customers to investigate your solution further. Many businesses see a higher lead conversion rate when they include M1s on their websites as proof of value. So, the Marketing team can look at their conversion points and make sure they are using metrics to show the value they deliver. Marketing can also target potential Champions and Economic Buyers through tailored content and events. By incorporating specific stakeholder personas into the core Marketing outreach, you can identify the people who it will be necessary to contact during the rest of the Customer Lifecycle.
Marketing can aid the rest of the GTM team both before and during the Selling stage by creating content that helps influence the Decision Criteria. The Marketing team can support the sales team by helping prospective and existing customers to rapidly understand how your business creates value through solving for pain in a specific way, as well as the technical, economic, and relationship based differentiation of your solution. They can articulate to a variety of personas what your solution does better or uniquely to anyone or anything else. With an effective marketing campaign, your customers will already have somewhat of an idea about what sets your solution apart from the competition going into the selling stage!
During the Closing stage, the Marketing team can help speed up the Decision Process and the Paper Process. Upon the solution being mapped out and explained in thorough detail to the customer, Marketing can empower AEs with content to support customers along their buying journey. They can provide content educating customers on what buying your solution looks like, so they are well-informed about the different aspects involved when it comes to closing. Furthermore, they can aid in the Paper Process by creating collateral to support the closing stages, such as guides on ‘How To Buy From Us’, and FAQs pre-empting questions the customer may have. This way customers have a clear understanding of what lies ahead in the buying process, and prepare ahead of time when needed.
During the post-sales stages of Value and Growth and Retention, the Marketing team can remain engaged with the Champion as the GTM team ensures that promised M1s and M2s are converted into M3s. M3s are the point at which proposed measurable value becomes KPIs and something the post-sales team works towards. The great thing about M3s is that when they are delivered, they re-enter the Customer Lifecycle as M1s. Therefore, Marketing can use the M3s delivered to the customer during the Growth and Retention stage to further promote your company and attract more potential customers. The success of your deal during the post-sales process will also influence the Decision Criteria in further deals as they will demonstrate how your solution is differentiated from the competition!
Companies see the best success when Marketing and Sales work in tandem, and using MEDDPICC allows them to do so at an elite level. Often, potential sales people prefer working with Marketing teams that know MEDDIC, as it facilitates easy communication.
See you next time for the instalment on Product!