Could This be Your Most Valuable Sales Tool?

If you (or your salespeople) are involved in complex B2B sales, then there is one particularly valuable sales tool that must be applied to every significant sales opportunity, regularly revised and kept up-to-date from the start to the end of your sales process (or, even better, your prospective customer’s buying decision journey - but that’s a topic for another article).

Can you guess what it is? It’s your opportunity qualification framework, tailored to your company’s key offerings. If you apply the same consistent principles to qualifying every significant opportunity, you are guaranteed to win more business - and to spend less time chasing so-called “deals” that are either never likely to do anything - or even if they did, would never be likely to buy from you.

Top performing salespeople have too much respect for their own time to waste it on opportunities that they have little chance of closing, whereas their less effective colleagues cling on to weak deals because they think that disqualifying them will make their pipeline smaller. But let’s face it, a small, well-qualified pipeline is ultimately far more valuable than a large one filled with rubbish.

Why BANT is inadequate

Whilst it seems obvious that at some point in its evolution, every ultimately successful opportunity needs to have a Budget, a sponsor with Authority, a clear Need and a Time frame. But BANT by itself (which was first developed in the 1950’s by IBM to help them sell mainframes) is a completely inadequate approach to understanding the dynamics of today’s complex B2B buying environments.

That’s probably why MEDDIC and its variants (most particularly MEDDPICC) has become the qualifying framework of choice in many complex B2B sales environments. But even MEDDIC has its roots back in the 1990’s - and the world has clearly moved on since then.

This is why I now believe that an expanded and updated version - known as MEDDPICC+ - is today’s most reliable way of accurately qualifying complex B2B sales opportunities, and why adding two additional considerations - Ideal Customer Profile Fit and Close Date Confidence helps to make it even more powerful and effective.

The 10 MEDDPICC+ Qualification Factors

The 10 key MEDDPICC+ qualification factors (and their working definitions) are as follows:

1. ICP Fit: How closely does the organisation align with your Ideal Customer Profile? Why this is important: the further away an organisation is from your ICP, the less likely they are to do business with you
2. METRICS: What are the specific, measurable, operational and economic outcomes your customer needs the project to deliver? Why this is important: if these metrics are unclear, your prospect’s internal business case is likely to be weak
3. ECONOMIC BUYER(S): What is your relationship with the person/group with final decision authority over whether, when and how the project goes ahead? Why this is important: these people are critical to approving any proposal
4. DECISION CRITERIA: What are the criteria the key stakeholders will use when deciding between their potential options? Why this is important: your chances of winning are reduced if you don’t understand or haven’t influenced these criteria
5. DECISION PROCESS: What are the steps and timetable the key stakeholders will follow when deciding which option to choose? Why this is important: if you don’t know this, you will struggle to accurately predict the close date
6. PAPER PROCESS: What is the approval the process the customer must follow before finally approving the project and issuing an order: Why is this important? If you fail to understand this, you may suffer unexpected delays
7. ISSUES & IMPLICATIONS [I²]: Is the customer’s current or anticipated pain intense enough to ensure they take urgent action? Why this is important: this is probably the single most important initial qualifying question - if their pain isn’t significant, they will probably conclude they can live with the status quo
8. CHAMPION(S): Have you identified and engaged one or more champions, and are they powerful enough to persuade their fellow stakeholders? Why this is important: it is vital that you avoid confusing an enthusiastic “fan” with a genuine champion
9. COMPETITIVE ALTERNATIVES: What are all their options (including other projects) and how do they believe we compare? Why this is important: your competition will often come from beyond other apparently similar vendors
10. CLOSE DATE CONFIDENCE: How has the close date been determined? Is it based on:
    

•  When they MUST make a commitment by, supported by evidence?
•  When they would LIKE to make a commitment by (but this could slip)? or
•  When you HOPE they will make a commitment by (without confirmation from the customer)?

Why this is important: close dates that are based on anything other than “customer MUST” have a very high probability of slippage

Always Be ReQualifying

In complex B2B sales, “always be requalifying” is a far more helpful mantra to follow than “always be closing”. Your prospect’s circumstances will inevitably change during the course of any lengthy buying decision journey. You cannot afford to treat qualification as a one-off event.

But if you embrace MEDDPICC+, if you are honest about what you know and don’t know, if you resolve to address the gaps in your knowledge, and if you avoid hope or assumption, your opportunities will be far better qualified, your forecasts will be far more realistic, and you will close far more business.

You can download my guide to Mastering MEDDPICC+ here.

This article was first published in Top Sales World Magazine.