MEDMEN: Take a Proactive Approach to Decision Criteria

Even with the perfect scenario in a deal – confirmed Champion and everything seemingly lining up – you can’t just sit back and wait for it to fall into your lap.

In the latest episode of MEDMEN, MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte and CRO Pim Roelofsen shared two stories of being on the customer side of buying. Both reinforced the importance of being proactive with Decision Criteria and stakeholder engagement.

It began when Julie Jin, the new COO of MEDDICC, joined and identified that implementing a Customer Success tool would improve processes and customer experience. She told Andy, “At my last company we used Vendor A, and it’s exactly what we need.” Julie became the Champion for Vendor A and the initiative, while Andy was the Economic Buyer.

Julie then approached Pim, seeing potential for him to also champion the initiative due to his strategic focus on driving recurring business. While he supported the initiative, he wasn’t yet a Champion for Vendor A. Their differentiators hadn’t been linked to the pain he was trying to solve—something that could’ve been achieved with proper discovery. But they never engaged with Pim, leaving him to research the solution himself.

Possibly because Julie, familiar with Vendor A, had approached them directly, they didn’t feel the need to differentiate with others. But to make the best decision for MEDDICC, Andy encouraged Julie and Pim to explore alternatives.

When Pim explained the rationale and costs to Andy, Andy thought like an Economic Buyer. He wasn’t focused on technical features, but on the 3 C’s:

• Cost – including time and resources

• Completion – how likely it was to succeed

• Confidence – how strongly Julie and Pim believed in the solution

While monetary value mattered, it wasn’t the only factor. Andy felt they weren’t getting a great deal and encouraged them to involve Vendor B.

Vendor B had done an okay job—slightly better stakeholder engagement, but nothing standout. Andy predicted they’d still choose Vendor A but negotiate a discount or better terms. Instead, they went with Vendor B. There was no real differentiation or stakeholder engagement from either vendor, so it came down to price.

This outcome wasn’t inevitable. Had either vendor tied their solution to MEDDICC’s retention goal, engaged the Economic Buyer, and aligned with Champions’ vested interests, things might have ended differently.

Stakeholder engagement can have a similar impact. The team was exploring another solution when the CEO of Vendor X reached out to Andy. In an email, he said:

“Hey Andy, it looks like you’re looking at our solution. I wanted to reach out and lend my support as a sponsor.”

It was the first Andy had heard of Vendor X, so he jumped on Slack. The team confirmed they were evaluating the vendor.

At MEDDICC, we advocate for multi-threading. In theory, the CEO’s outreach was fine, except there was no context. They had not built up their Champion, who in this case was MEDDICC CMO Jessica Walker, enough to lay the groundwork for this outreach. Multi-threading without preparing the Champion can backfire. In this case, it didn’t, but it easily could have. It’s important to collaborate with your Champion, for whom engagement is also vital, to make sure that multi-threading is more effective.

The emails were well thought out, so Andy did lean slightly in their favor. However, in one email they mentioned, “We know that you are also investigating Vendor Y,” which goes against what we typically advocate for at MEDDICC: don’t talk about your competition. 

Jessica presented the initiative to Andy, but they ended up in a similar situation to the previous solution with Vendors A and B. Neither Vendor X nor Vendor Y reached out to their potential Champions to try to influence the decision criteria. They ended up leaning more towards Vendor Y, but it was just as likely for Vendor Z to come along and change their opinions with solid engagement and differentiation. 

We might want our buyers to be professional buyers, able to figure out everything they need and want on their own so that we don’t need to do much work, but even with several potential Champions in an organization, winning the deal is not a guaranteed conclusion.