MEDDPICC & METRICS

Metrics are the quantifiable measures of value that your solution can provide.

Where can Metrics come from?

Picture your customer in the future, live with your solution. What KPIs are they using to measure the impact it has had within their organization? It is likely that some of these KPIs can form your Metrics.

What are Metrics?

Here at MEDDICC™, we believe in the power of Metrics, so we’ve expanded on what was originally created for MEDDIC back in the 90s. We now have three different types of Metrics that we will use as part of the MEDDPICC Sales Methodology.

METRICS 1s (M1s)

M1s are the business outcomes you have delivered for your existing customers.

METRICS 2s (M2s)

M2s are the Metrics you have personalized specifically to your customer.

METRICS 3s (M3s)

M3s are the validated M2 after the solution has gone live. These can be used to go back into your M1 repository.

METRICS AND DISCOVERY

No discovery = no meaningful metrics!

DON’T BE A ROOKIE

Sellers frequently make the mistake of aligning their Metrics to the value proposition of their solution. They think “everyone knows my solution is most commonly used for driving increases in conversion rate, so a Metric for my customer must be increased conversion rate”. This is a rookie mistake.

METRICS NEED TO BE APPLICABLE

Metrics need to be applicable to the organization you are selling to, and the only way to do that effectively is to take your customers through a discovery process.

YOU NEED TO GO DEEP

Elite sellers know they have to be patient and go deep in discovery to truly uncover the full extent of value and pain within an organization they are selling to. Average sellers don’t go deep on Discovery. Instead, they look to ‘Identify the Pain’, and once they do they shift into pitch mode, leaving a tonne of value and pain uncovered. The best sellers see uncovering pain as a loose thread and once they pull on it they know it uncovers more and more, uncovering the most value.

ABC - Always be curious

Last but not least, don’t forget that your Discovery isn’t a single stage. You should remain in Discovery mode throughout your deal, right up to the last few moments.

USE METRICS IN YOUR FIRST MEETING TO OPEN THE CONVERSATION

So much work goes into getting a first meeting with your customer. However, sellers regularly blow it by diving too quickly into discovery or just by skipping discovery altogether and going straight into a basic sales pitch. This video is an extract from our Online MEDDPICC Training Course and shows how to use Metrics in a first meeting to showcase and uncover value.

Watch video

ALWAYS DRIVE URGENCY

Metrics should be used to drive urgency with your customers. Elite enterprise sales organizations often use a framework called ‘The three why’s to help their sellers focus on the things that matter when engaging with prospective customers. The three why’s:

Why should you buy this type of solution?

Why should you buy from our company?

Why should you buy now?

In the above three questions, Metrics are essential to underpinning positive intent in questions 1 and 3; they help quantify the solution’s value. They can support the business case that states why the customer should invest now.

In question 2, you’ll need to dig deeper to uncover Metrics as these will be what differentiates a decision to buy your solution, a competitor’s, or to do nothing.

USING METRICS IN YOUR SUCCESS CRITERIA

A Success Criteria is a useful tool to align to a business case, or something like a test or proof of concept.

If you’re going down this route it’s imperative for the success of your deal that you underpin any test with a ‘Success Criteria,’ meaning you set out with a goal in mind and KPIs for what you’re aiming to achieve.

This Success Criteria and Metrics on your deal aren’t intrinsically linked. They could be related, but often the test serves a different purpose to the main objective of buying your solution.

With this in mind, you must establish early on the specifics of any kind of test, and what exactly is it that you are trying to test, and what a successful test would look like.

Once you have this information, you can build the vision of success into a Success Criteria. This should be measurable as the outcome of tests isn’t often binary, and you need to remove any uncertainty that opens the results up to interpretation.

METRICS AND POST-SALES

If you are using MEDDPICC correctly then you should never find yourself engaging with Procurement without having your Metrics locked in place, complete with consensus from the main stakeholders, such as your Champion and the Economic Buyer.

You should put the Metrics front and center of your conversations with Procurement. This will keep the conversation focused on the business outcomes. Top Tip: Keep the conversation focused on value.

METRICS AND POST-SALES

Once you have closed a deal, it’s common that you’ll pass ownership of the relationship with your customer to your post-sales team, often a Customer Success Manager, Support team, or an Account Manager.

This passing of the baton often plays a critical part in dictating how successful the customer will go on to be with your solution. If the pre- and post-sales departments are aligned, passing over a customer who has clearly defined Metrics will be incredibly beneficial to the post-sales team.

Elite sellers know that it’s important to have successful customers to use as references in the future. Therefore, they’ll always ensure that the handover process to post-sales is as thorough as possible.

Capture the success

The most elite sales organizations focus on capturing success from their clients. Elite sellers will be tuned into these initiatives to ensure that their customers’ success is captured into proof points that are available to be used as references, case studies, quotes, or in any relevant collateral marketing support.

Summary of Metrics

There are many parts of a seller’s job that can be perceived by the buyer as self-serving. However, Metrics is one selling element that the buyer can never feel aggrieved at the Seller for being enthusiastic about. The purpose of Metrics is around measuring the success your solution will provide. With this in mind, Sellers should be ruthless in their pursuit of obtaining and agreeing on Metrics into their deals.

This page is a super-condensed and re-written adaptation of the full insight given into Metrics and how to use them in your MEDDPICC / MEDDICC / MEDDIC Framework that is detailed within MEDDICC – The Book and as part of our MEDDPICC Certification.