What is MEDDIC Sales Methodology and How Can It Help You?

MEDDIC is a sales qualification methodology that is an acronym for "Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion." It is designed to help sales teams effectively qualify leads and close deals faster by understanding the needs of their potential customers and focusing on the key elements of a successful sales process.
It was first introduced in the late 1990s by two sales and marketing consultants from Boston, Jack Napoli and Dick Dunbar and it was designed for complex sales processes with multiple buyer personas involved, long sales cycles and high ticket/enterprise level products/services.. Since then, MEDDIC framework was implemented by many B2B technology companies as a main sales methodology.

Six stages of the MEDDIC process

MEDDIC identifies six main stages:

Metrics: Identify the metrics that the customer uses to measure success and align your solution to it. Metrics play a key role in the sales process by helping to build credibility, quantify customer pain, and support a business case. Throughout the process, metrics should be used in different ways and should evolve as more information is gained. It's important to be prepared for scrutiny in the late stages and have a proposal, along with metrics, ready to back up the deal.

Economic Buyer: Determine the economic buyer, the person who can make the purchase decision, and has the budget for the solution. Be ready to engage with the Economic Buyer at all times. You should have an understanding of their role, their challenges and the solutions you can offer them. You should be able to articulate how your solution fits the company's goals and how the investment will pay off. Be ready to answer any questions and objections they might have. With preparation, you can give yourself the best chance of success.

Decision Criteria: Understand what criteria the customer uses to evaluate solutions, and ensure that your solution meets those criteria

Decision Process: Understand the customer's decision-making process, including who is involved and what their roles are.

Identify Pain: Understand the customer's pain points, and how your solution addresses those pain points

Champion: Identify a champion within the customer's organization, who can help you navigate the decision-making process and ensure that your solution is adopted.

MEDDIC framework is normally used by B2B sales teams in conjunction with other sales methodologies, like Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, Challenger Sale, and the Consultative Selling. It is designed to provide a structure for the sales team to think about the customer lifecycle and the buying journey and help them developing a value proposition and message that resonates with prospects. With MEDDIC sales teams can better identify the people involved in the decision, understand their pain points and decision making criteria, which ultimately ends up in closing more deals faster.

Examples of MEDDIC questions

Metrics: 

What makes our solution unique, and what is the metric that measures its value?

To understand this we should ask customer following questions: 

• What metrics do you use to measure success? 
• What business objectives are you aiming to achieve with this project? 
• How will you evaluate the success of your project? 
• Which KPIs do you rely on to gauge performance? 
• What ROI do you expect from this project? 

Economic Buyer: 

• Who is the economic buyer for this project? 
• Who has ultimate decision-making authority? 
• Who holds the budget for this project? 
• Who is responsible for signing off on the purchase decision?  

Decision Criteria: 

• What criteria will be used to make a purchasing decision? 
• How will you decide which vendor to choose? 
• What factors will affect your evaluation process? 
• How much flexibility do you have in terms of pricing and terms? 
• How important is support when selecting a vendor or solution provider? 

Decision Process: 

• What is your timeline for making a decision on this project or purchase order? 
• How long does it typically take from inquiry to implementation or purchase order placement? 
• Are there any specific milestones or checkpoints that must be met before proceeding with a purchase order or implementation plan? 
• How much interaction or input will stakeholders have in choosing a provider or solution partner for this project or purchase order? 
• What will be the process for evaluation and selection of vendors and solution providers? 

Identify Pain: 

• What are some of the pain points that led to seeking out a solution to begin with? 
• How do these pain points impact your business operations and bottom line every month? 
• What would happen if these pains were not addressed as quickly as possible? 
• What are some of the biggest challenges that could arise if these pains were not resolved in time? 
• How would failure to address these problems eventually impact your bottom line results? 

Champion: 

• Who is managing this initiative at your company? 
• Who within your company needs convincing that investing in our solution is necessary? 
• Who within your company thinks that this initiative should be prioritized first over other projects and initiatives? 
• Is there someone who understands our technology better than others, who could become an internal champion for our product throughout your organization? 
• Is there someone at higher level management who can be championing our product internally, ensuring its successful adoption once purchased?

Is MEDDIC different from SPIN Selling? 

MEDDIC and SPIN Selling are different sales methodologies.

MEDDIC is more focused on lead qualification and segmentation while SPIN selling is designed to help salespeople identify and address the specific needs of their prospects by asking strategic questions. It is used to uncover the prospect's pain points and identify the key drivers that would make them take action. The method is widely used in B2B and B2C sales and it's more oriented to consultative selling.

Both methods have different approaches but share the goal of understanding the customer's needs, pain points, and decision-making process to guide the sales process. You can use the two methods together or separately based on your sales team's needs. For example, using the MEDDIC process to qualify leads and then using the SPIN Selling method to have effective and need-based sales conversations.

What's MEDDPICC, MEDDPICCR?

Extra letters in MEDDIC+ acronyms stand for: 

P: Paper Process, how you move deal through the approvals, tenders, RFIs/RFPs and other bureaucratic procedures) 

C: Competitors, meaning any person (including insiders) or organization that might compete with your offer

R: Risks, any risks related to a potential deal.

How to implement MEDDIC in HubSpot CRM? 

The best place of how to implement MEDDIC in HubSpot are Playbooks with a combination of Custom properties, Workflows and Contact/Deal Score properties. 

A playbook can be thought of as a compilation of proven approaches and tactics which a person or team can rely on to be successful in their role. With HubSpot's dedicated playbooks tool, users  have a centralized location in their CRM to store and easily access these methods and tactics when needed.

Here's how you can setup MEDDIC in HubSpot: 

• Set up custom properties in HubSpot to track the different components of the MEDDIC process. For example, you can create custom properties for questions + properties for tracking if Champion and Budget holder were identified
• As a second step, create a new Playbook (requires HubSpot Sales Hub Professional/Enterprise) and add the questions from your MEDDIC questionnaire. 
• Set a section of properties on the left sidebar of Contacs/Deals (depending on whether you want to qualify leads or deals)
• (optional) Add workflow to automatically move a deal to the next stage or update customer lifecycle stage.
• (optional) Setup a lead scoring based on MEDDIC question properties

Here's how Hubspot Playbook with MEDDIC questions looks:

Need help implementing MEDDIC for HubSpot? Please get in touch with us

See also: Ultimate Marketing Guide for B2B Software and Tech Companies