How to create a winning MEDDPICC Culture with Pim Roelofsen

A good culture in sales is crucial to a business's success. It is essentially a build-up of the attitudes, habits, behaviors, and mentalities of your sales team. In the business world, sales can go up and down, the seas can often be stormy and then serene in an instant. The best sales teams push through both of these environments to keep improving, leveling up, and becoming the best they can be. 

Our very own CRO, Pim Roelofsen delivered a great breakdown of what a successful sales culture consists of, and here is a breakdown of the key takeaways from the session he delivered, live at MEDDICON. 

“Great culture will be your force multiplier in the value you derive from MEDDPICC” 

When you are looking to build a successful and positive culture in your team, it is important to identify a bad culture. These are the key signs that your sales team culture is not in good shape: 

• Everyone lacks trust in one another
• No one has the confidence to be challenged or challenge others
• There’s a lack of commitment in the team
• No one takes accountability or responsibility for the results
• Everyone is finding poor results from their deals

When these things happen, you will typically find these outcomes: 

• Below-par one-to-ones, lacklustre QBRs, and negative deal reviews
• Hesitations within the team when encountering gaps or negatives
• Team members are missing targets
• The team hits poor results and bad outcomes
• Everyone on the team is feeling dragged down by the culture

Now to look at a winning culture. In basic terms, it is essentially the inverse of a bad culture but with some key additions or features. You will find:

• The team trusts one another
• Everyone is feeling confident to challenge or be challenged
• The team can feel the commitment from one another
• Everyone is jumping at the chance to be accountable for the team
• Everyone is smashing their results and outcomes, yet remains driven to keep improving

When these key features of a positive and winning culture are in place, you will find these as the outcomes: 

• Everyone can’t wait for reviews, QBRs keep everyone included and motivated and ones-to-ones keep team members improving and focused
• Team members are confident to ask for help 
• Everyone looks for weaknesses in order to learn and improve 
• Targets are smashed, revenue goals are hit and team members keep leveling up
• The team is uplifted by the culture

Positive v Negative MEDDIC Cultures

A positive culture is built on positive progress - it is continually welcoming everyone’s input and perspective and the trust resonates throughout the team. The sales methodology, MEDDIC, is applied as a success-driven framework and wins should be celebrated by everyone. 

A negative culture is usually focused on negative outcomes - any feedback from the team is shot down and micromanagement brings down the morale of the team. In this instance, it usually means that the qualification framework is used only as a checklist for deals and this leads to frustration and gaps when things breakdown. It also causes reactive behavior.

The Impact of Culture

A good sales culture is one where the focus is pointed to the weakness in a deal. The salesperson looks at the gap in a deal or where things could be better, and will look for help or advice to overcome this. The outcomes lead to success in the immediate but can also lead to much bigger deals and wins in the future. 

A bad sales culture is filled with meaningless drivel that is there to pad the conversation. The subjects are steered away from the weaknesses, gaps are filled and this leads to no actionable goals or next steps. The outcomes are missed deals and wasted potential, in both deals and sales team members. 

Culture Requires Consistency 

When you are building your culture, consistency should be at the forefront of everything you do. 

Things like regular deal reviews can be a huge boost - a session where team members voluntarily submit deals to the team to get feedback. Not only does it encourage trust and transparency from the team, but junior members who need to build confidence and advice will level up so much faster than their industry counterparts.

Whether it is ensuring one-to-ones are successfully completed regularly, with actionable feedback being given in them, or QBRs are made engaging and inclusive with input openly welcome, your culture is built through consistency. 

Success is built on small steps, so look at the small things and continuously level up through the previous advice. Commit to a plan, keep your foot on the gas, and ensure that team members are driven and leveling up.