Applying MEDDIC to Cuda's Sales Process
The MEDDIC sales methodology was developed by Jack Napoli & Dick Dunkel during their time leading the sales organization at PTC. At Cuda, we traditionally employ the SPIN selling framework so I'm new to MEDDIC. In this article, I'm going to walk through the MEDDIC process in the context of seeing how well we apply it at Cuda today.
If you want to follow along and apply MEDDIC to your sales process, you can reference this Hubspot blog post.
Metrics
What are the quantifiable metrics that matter to the buyer that our product can solve?
Our buyer's are primarily concerned with:
(1) Reducing the # of booked demo no shows.
(2) Shortening the time from engaging a lead to closed won.
(3) Increasing the conversion % of lead to closed won.
Increasing close rates & shortening sales cycles is top of mind for everyone in the sales org. Increasing conversion rates is top of mind for everyone in marketing & sales alike.
For Metrics, I'm giving us an A.
Economic Buyer
Who makes the financial decisions at the potential customer's company?
Generally, our buyers are early to mid stage startups. Most of the companies we work with are too early to have a head of procurement or CFO. At the earliest stages, sales is founder led and is run by the CEO. For those deals we work with the CEO directly. As the company grows to 20+ people, we start to work with Sales & Marketing department heads. Presumably they have their own budgets - but I've never thought before to ask who controls the purse.
For Economic Buyer, I'm giving us a D.
Decision Criteria
How is our product being evaluated?
Our buyers are primarily concerned with:
(1) Can we demonstrate a positive ROI during the trial period?
(2) Is it easy to set up?
(3) Does it integrate with the existing tool stack / will it break any of the existing automations?
We knew that (1) was important from the beginning and is really just the same KPIs we mentioned in Metrics. We quickly learned that (2) and (3) were important for marketing managers who are skeptical about adopting any software that is going to make their life more difficult. Fortunately we've been able to build out all of the necessary integrations and do the set up work on their behalf so that it doesn't block any deals.
For Decision Criteria, I'm giving us an A.
Decision Process
What are the usual steps in the decision process?
Truth be told I'm not sure what the decision process looks like for other tools our buyers purchase - but for their Cuda evaluation we've made it simple & frictionless.
We offer everyone a no committment free trial to evaluate the ROI. It only takes a few days for both marketing & sales to see the value.
We also save time on the negotation stage because we don't offer discounts! We just have two pricing plans (pay monthly or annually) and charge based on the number of seats someone signs up for.
For Decision Criteria, I'm giving us an A.
Identify Pain
What pain point does our product solve?
We know that our product solves several important pains - long sales cycles, poor conversion rates, demo no shows, and losing deals to competitors. What I'm learning as I look through other MEDDIC examples is that we fail to quantify just how severe the pain is.
For example, we may talk to a sales rep who is fed up with demo no shows. If we really embraced the MEDDIC philosophy, we look for more granular detail. For example, we may uncover that a sales person suffers 5 demo no shows per week. This costs them 2 hours in lost time and can be the difference between making quota. By positioning Cuda as a means to save 2 hours per week per rep, and increase sales by 40k per week per rep, we can create more urgency in the sales process.
For Identify Pain, I'm giving us a C.
Champion
Who is advocating internally on behalf of our product?
Is it fair to say that I know a champion when I see them? For every company we work with, I can name you the person who has been most influential in getting the deal over the line. That said, we don't have a process for systematically identifying & creating champions before they exist.
We also aren't effectively leveraging Champions to get referrals to new companies or to share testimonials that we can use with potential buyers.
For Champion, I'm giving us a B.
