ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING

The First Book Ever Written on MEDDIC

Exclusive Preview

MEDDIC - MEDDPICC®

November 2024

By Darius Lahoutifard

THIS IS NOT THE FULL BOOK, Always Be Qualifying;

It’s only a PREVIEW of the book.

You can learn more about the full book here.

Or buy your Kindle, paperback or Hardcopy on Amazon.

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 Copyright © Darius Lahoutifard & 01consulting, 2020
All Rights Reserved.

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 IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICES
& DISCLAIMERS

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored,

shared or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher, except under section
107 or 108 of the 1976 United States copyright Act.
MEDDPIC® is a registered trademark owned by Darius
Lahoutifard. Some references may appear in this book to trademarks
belonging to others not affiliated with the author or the publisher (or
Affiliate), including references which may not display the ® symbol.
All references to trademarks belonging to third parties shall be
understood to refer to those registered trademarks owned by them.
Referring to them in the text is not intended to represent a claim of
ownership of those trademarks.
The information provided in this book is for informational
purposes only and is not intended to be a source of advice. The
publisher and the author do not make any guarantee or other
promise as to any results that may be obtained from using the
content of this book. The content presented in this book may not be
suitable for your situation. To the maximum extent permitted by law,
the publisher and the author disclaim any and all liability in the event
any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or
recommendations contained in this book prove to be inaccurate,
incomplete or unreliable, or result in any losses. The publisher and
the author are providing this book and its contents on an “as is” basis.
Your use of the information in this book is at your own risk.

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 Table of Content of the full book

EDITORIAL REVIEWS & QUOTES .....................................9

PREFACE ........................................................................ 15

WHO NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK ? ................................ 17

1. Your prospect claims they no longer have the

budget to purchase. ............................................................... 17

2. Opportunities on your forecast get delayed from

one quarter to another. ......................................................... 18

3. Your so-called Champion explains why the

Economic Buyer never meets with vendors. ........................ 18

4. Your prospect changes Decision Criteria,

reducing your chances to win. .............................................. 19

5. You learn that you have to run another POC

before getting the order......................................................... 19

6. Prospects’ Buyer or Legal Executive refuses to

sign your terms & conditions. .............................................. 20

7. Prospects Buyer asks for a significant discount

because they are a big name. ............................................... 20

8. You believe saying YES to every request from

your prospect is the key to success. ...................................... 21

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 9. You have taken the free “Introduction to
MEDDIC” course at MEDDIC Academy and consider that
you learned MEDDIC. ........................................................... 21

CHAPTER ONE .............................................................. 23

QUALIFYING IS CLOSING .............................................. 23

CHAPTER TWO ............................................................... 31

INTRODUCTION TO MEDDIC/ MEDDPICC® ............. 31

What does MEDDIC stand for?.............................. 32

How about MEDDICC (with a 2nd C)?.................. 33

Where do we cover the Competition? .................... 33

MEDDPICC ............................................................. 34

How did all this start?..............................................35

MEDDIC is a Qualification Methodology ............... 37

Important Characteristics of MEDDIC .................. 39

It is activity based ................................................... 39

It reveals gaps ......................................................... 40

It is self-assessing ................................................... 40

It brings a common language to your team ........... 40

Your Current Sales Process ..................................... 41

MEDDIC Helps You Avoid Useless Activities ....... 42

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 CHAPTER ELEVEN .........................................................45

MEDDIC VS. BANT .................................................45

Budget should not be a sales criterion of

qualification. ......................................................................... 46

Neither should Timing ........................................... 46

CONCLUSION ................................................................ 49

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 EDITORIAL REVIEWS &
QUOTES
“PTC achieved success thanks to the combination of a
remarkable product and a talented and productive sales
organization. In order to scale our go-to-market capacity, we
needed to institutionalize and codify the sales best practices
developed by the early team, so that new hires could rapidly
ramp to full productivity. That’s what led our sales leaders to
develop the MEDDIC methodology. I am delighted to see the
book on that methodology published. ALWAYS BE
QUALIFYING is easy to read and to apply. It’s sharp and
to-the-point, just as MEDDIC itself. It’s relevant now more
than ever. I highly recommend it to any sales team in
technology.”

- Steven C. Walske

Steve is renowned for building one of the most impressive

enterprise software sales-driven organizations in the world,
PTC, where MEDDIC was born. As CEO, Walske took PTC
from founding to over $1 billion in revenue. Under his
leadership, PTC had 40 consecutive quarters of increasing
revenues and profits as a public company. His disciplined,
methodical practice is now emulated globally. He now serves
on the board of several prominent Silicon Valley companies
including Synopsys (NASDAQ: SNPS), Medallia and Platfora.
He was previously Chairman at Bladelogic (acquired by BMC
Software) and Endeca Technologies (acquired by Oracle). He

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advises VC-backed companies on sales processes and growth
strategies for optimal revenue growth.

“Technology? SaaS? Private Equity? Accelerated

Growth? MEDDICC is the gold standard for world class sales
professionals and leaders. I have deployed MEDDICC in
multiple companies as a CRO/CSO – it is an extremely
simple, yet comprehensive qualifying tool to rapidly get to
the bottom line and uncover gaps. It is also incredibly
flexible – motoring through an entire list of deals or diving
deep into each one – the framework supports a tailored
approach to sales leader intent. Darius’s persuasive text, with
real world examples provide a foundation and set off best
practices ready for sales professional/leader use. I highly
recommend the book, Always Be Qualifying, to anyone in
sales.”

- Scott Rudy

Scott is currently Chief Sales Officer at Paycor ; He was an

early and successive sales leader at PTC for over 10 years.

"Salesmanship is not an art. It’s a structured process.

MEDDIC is easy to understand and provides a common
language for any company with the aim to build a
professional sales organization. ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING is
easy to read and provides a very good structure to the

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understanding of MEDDIC. The challenges of bringing a
product to the market and delivering relevant forecasts are
more relevant than ever. ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING will help
you understand how to better qualify opportunities, drive
sales to closure and reduce risk in your forecast."

- Göran Malmberg

Göran is currently Group CEO/President of Mentice AB

and Chairman /President of Mentice Inc. Mentice (STO:
MNTC) is the world leader in software and hardware
simulation solutions for endovascular therapies. Göran was
one of the initial sales leaders at PTC who contributed to the
early stage growth of the company as well as building the
starting blocks of the organization, including MEDDIC sales
methodology.

“In the best of times, selling complex enterprise software is an

all-in team-based effort; many a times, it’s even a 24/7/365
competitive engagement cycle with frequent changes across
multiple key decision making constituents and parameters.

Faced with dynamics as such, it’s critical for sales teams to

constantly and continuously gather both account and
opportunity intelligence, analyze it and strategize to make
updates and/or revisions to win playbooks. To do so, you
need a proven, structured and easy-to-operationalize Sales
Qualification Methodology.

MEDDIC delivers; the qualification workflow and critical

gates are laid out enabling both in-the-field execution and

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coaching/mentoring. And, the MEDDIC workflow is logical
and can easily be an overlay on most companies’ sales stages,
entry & exit criteria. Lastly, MEDDIC is also a great
qualification process for (big) deal reviews & inspections, and
provides a great, factual learning experience for the
expanded sales team.

This is an easy read, and if you are heeding the guidance and
advice herein, you and your teams will reap the benefits.

Jump in!”

- Kris Thyregod

Kris is currently Vice-President & General Manager EMEA at

Silver Peak where the book’s author helped implementing
MEDDIC globally. Kris has worked in technology for more
than 20 years, previously serving in sales and marketing
leadership positions at Riverbed, CA Technologies, Dell/EMC
and IBM. Mr. Thyregod is a graduate of the Copenhagen
Business School and Henley Management College with
advanced degrees in organization, strategy and business
administration.

"ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING is an easy read with no fluff.

After reading this book, the sellers and their managers can
surmount their challenges once they learn about successful
and unsuccessful qualifications. I really enjoyed the WHY
and the HOW of MEDDIC. By the end of this book, sellers and

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leaders learn how to close deals with no discounts in a timely
manner."

- Ramin Elahi

Sales Enablement training Manager, Infineon Technologies &

Adjunct Faculty, University of California SC Extension

“With the tremendous impact sales teams have on a

company’s top and bottom line, it is critical that the quota
carrying professional can ramp up quickly, disqualify
opportunities not likely to close, and relentlessly focus on
qualifying the opportunities that will exceed their goals.
Darius Lahoutifard’s Always Be Qualifying crystallizes the
techniques and mindset a top enterprise seller needs to
achieve these objectives. This book is not filled with academic
theories, but rather, it arms the seller with the highly
practical sales qualification methodology and techniques
known as MEDDIC, which Mr. Lahoutifard helped shape
while he was an early sales leader at PTC. He emphasizes the
need for sellers to continuously qualify opportunities
throughout the sales cycle, to stop wasting time on dead-end
deals, and focus on those that deserve their attention. It’s a
methodology that shifts the urgency onto the buyer so the
compelling event is not the sellers need to close a deal, but the
buyer’s need to avoid missed revenue, missed cost savings, or
reduction of risk. Always Be Qualifying also highlights the
unexpected benefit MEDDIC has on improved team spirit and

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cohesiveness because the MEDDIC methodology not only
improves sales performance, it creates a common language
and understanding across the entire selling team.”

- Kevin Matsushita

Kevin is Head of Partnerships and Alliances at MindTickle, a

technology leader in sales readiness & sales enablement
platform & software for improving seller effectiveness and
increasing revenue.

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 PREFACE

WHY THIS BOOK?

In the past few years, companies large and small have
called on me to get help with their non-performing sales team.
The described symptoms are different from one company to
another. Some need more revenue. Others complain about
unreliable forecasts, with deals slipping constantly from one
quarter to another before being lost or even abandoned a few
quarters later. Some CEOs notice unproductive sales teams
with an unusually high number of non-quota-carrying people
needed in the sales force, hitting the bottom line hard. All
these symptoms are related to the same illness: inability to
qualify.
Since most sales teams put in place organizations
including SDR (Sales Development Representatives) or BDR
(Business Development Representatives) who qualify leads for
Account Managers, there is a wrong unstated assumption,
widely spread, that once a lead is qualified, the inside sales or

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field sales will have to work on them until they are won or lost.
Ongoing qualification is often the issue. Qualification is not a
binary step of the sales process. Qualification is a mindset and
a habit to apply throughout the sales process, from the first
call to closing. This book covers both the Why and the How of
sales qualification.
I was an early sales leader at PTC where the MEDDIC
methodology took shape. I am also the founder of MEDDIC
Academy, the first platform to bring the qualification
methodology online. This book describes the M.E.D.D.I.C. and
the MEDDPICC® sales methodology in depth. This is not a
book of theories, research, or academic concepts but pure
execution techniques with practical recipes. At a high level,
MEDDIC is a checklist that helps sales professionals reveal the
gaps in an opportunity and execute correctly to fill those gaps
and close the deal or drop it early. This book is an excellent
complement to the training and workshops we deliver online
and in-person globally.

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 WHO NEEDS TO READ THIS
BOOK?

Enterprise sellers may look healthy, be in great shape,

be fun to interact with, and show amazing forecasts at the
beginning of the quarter. But sometimes, despite the great
look, they find reasons why their deals don’t close on time.
If you or your team members are experiencing any of
the following symptoms, you need to drop everything and get
an in-depth education on MEDDIC/ MEDDPICC® now.

1. Your prospect claims they no longer

have the budget to purchase.
Sounds familiar? A deal is in the “commit” forecast for
the second quarter in a row, and the prospect sends you an
email saying, “Unfortunately we’ll need to postpone the
project to next year, since the budget allocated for this project
is no longer available.” You consider this a legitimate case
where nothing can be done. If there’s no budget, then they
can’t buy, right? So you take it off the forecast and move it to
the pipeline for next year. You love working on long-term
deals and building the pipeline for the future.

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 2. Opportunities on your forecast get
delayed from one quarter to another.
You are in a deal review session with your sales
manager and share the news that a prospect sent you an email
saying, “Unfortunately we’ll need to postpone the project to
next year. This project is not a priority right now.” You dig in
with the prospect and find out that their CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) project is taking all their IT team’s
resources. You understand that you can’t do anything. If there
are no resources allocated, then they can’t run a POC (Proof of
Concept), etc., right? So you take it off the forecast and move it
to the pipeline until the prospect is ready to act. You are
excited that you are building your next year pipeline.

3. Your so-called Champion explains

why the Economic Buyer never meets with
vendors.
Your sales manager wanted you to obtain a meeting
with the EB. You asked your “champion.” He/she replied that
he/she can meet with the sales manager, but that the EB never
meets with vendors. Since it appears to be a rule at this
company, you share the information with your sales manager
and respectfully explain it’s not going to be possible at this

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account on your forecast. You enjoy the transparent
communication with your sales manager.

4. Your prospect changes Decision

Criteria, reducing your chances to win.
You are selling a SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM
solution, competing with an on-premises offering. Although
the prospect was only looking for SaaS architectures at the
beginning, they inform you that they have changed their mind,
and they now consider on-premises solutions can also be used.
They state that on-premises architecture presents some
benefits in terms of security. You think that’s a legitimate
observation and, since they are still considering the SaaS
model as acceptable, then there is no reason to object or
worry. You are happy that the prospect is moving forward with
the project. You put the champagne in the fridge.

5. You learn that you have to run

another POC before getting the order.
After running the POC, the prospect mentions some
aspects have been omitted in the POC and that you need to
run another one. You talk to your Sales Engineer and
Consultants and prepare them for another POC. You feel good,
since it will make your case stronger when it will be shown to

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the decision makers. You are more confident about this deal in
your forecast.

6. Prospects’ Buyer or Legal Executive

refuses to sign your terms & conditions.
You have been working on this deal for a year now. We
are a week away from the end of the fiscal year, and you are
checking emails, waiting for your PO. That’s when you receive
a call from your “champion” informing you that they are
preparing a PO with their General Procurement Terms that
they use with all vendors and that they won’t be signing your
license agreement. This symptom is usually accompanied with
high fever and above-normal blood pressure.

7. Prospects Buyer asks for a significant

discount because they are a big name.
They say they have the choice between two possible
vendors and that the other vendor has made an attractive
offer. Your solution now requires a 40% discount to be
considered for purchase. You are excited to have brought the
deal this far and to hopefully be the one who will sign this “big
name.” The discount appears high to you, but, hey, if your
sales management wants the deal they have to accept it, no?

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You invite your significant other to dinner to celebrate the
progress with the customer.

8. You believe saying YES to every

request from your prospect is the key to
success.
You are proud of your business background and have
been raised with the saying, “The customer is always right.”
So, if the prospect or customer is asking for something that
your company can’t deliver, then it’s not your fault. You feel
like a very positive and contributing member of the company
and decide to send the prospect’s requests to marketing and a
few more people in management as something the company
needs to solve in order to address your market. You also
expect congratulations in return.

9. You have taken the free “Introduction

to MEDDIC” course at MEDDIC Academy and
consider that you learned MEDDIC.
You learned all about MEDDIC. It’s done. Over! You
considered it was just another sales methodology. You are
proud to know what MEDDIC stands for. It’s not that bad, but
most of it doesn’t apply to your business anyway. Now let’s get
back to the good old habits.

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 If you are an individual contributor and are
experiencing the above symptoms or similar ones you need to
read this book, at a minimum.
If you are a sales manager and see these symptoms in
your team members, make sure you have a plan to implement
MEDDIC / MEDDPICC® in your organization.

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 CHAPTER ONE
QUALIFYING IS CLOSING

You have probably heard the famous line "Always Be

Closing" from the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" starring Alec
Baldwin, Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, and Kevin Spacey. These
words, spoken by the character played by Alec Baldwin, hardly
represented a new idea when they were quoted in the movie.
More than being just a slogan in a movie, "Always Be Closing"
is a concept, a motivational phrase, a philosophy, according to
which any good salesman must be in a constant state of
closing sales. And the fact that the acronym is ABC, it’s a
perfect way to assume that it’s the ABC of sales.
That type of sales is no longer tolerated among more
educated buyers or in more strategic Enterprise type of sales.
With the democratization of the Internet in the early 2000s,
information became accessible to buyers who became more
informed and took away the drive from the sellers. A seller
who is “always closing” with no real value added to the buyer
appears pushy and is disliked and ignored. Moreover, it’s not a
smart way to sell anyway, since there are situations where you

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need to take a lot of effort only to realize that the buyer will
never buy. Worse is even when the buyer ends up buying due
to a high pressure from the seller, not because they had
evidence of a match between their needs and the product.
They’ll regret it, try to cancel the sale, or return the product. In
the end, at best they’ll be an unhappy client, a counter-
reference, destroying the seller’s reputation.
Closing is obviously a key step of sales because, no
matter how well you perform elsewhere, if you don’t close the
client, then you have wasted your time. But as this sample
sales process shows, there are a lot of steps before closing. If
you miss some of these steps, and sometimes even if you miss
only one of these steps, you can miss the sale.

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 In other words, there are a lot of things that may go
wrong during a sales process that may lead to the delay of the
deal beyond your end of quarter (i.e. forecasted as
commitment in the quarter). Or they may even lead to the loss
of the deal. You may get outsold by a competitor who had a
stronger internal support than you. Or you may have
underestimated the importance of some features you don’t
offer. Or the decision makers may consider that there are
other investments with a higher priority than yours. I can go
on with the list of all the things that may go wrong so that, no
matter how great you are as a closer, you will still miss the
deal.
Let’s take two Account Executives, Megan and Aaron.
On paper they have very similar backgrounds: both have
bachelors from well ranked universities, and both have two
years of sales experience. Megan comes to us from Oracle,
where she was a Sales Development Rep. Aaron has a very
similar profile, joining us from Salesforce. Both are new to the
job, in their first quarter. Aaron appears to be very energetic
with quite a high level of activities, such as calls and demos; he
also spends more time in the office, while Megan seems to
leave often earlier than Aaron. Some say Aaron looks like Alec
Baldwin, the “Always Be Closing” guy.
Around the middle of the quarter, Megan’s forecast
has 10 lines with only three committed deals totaling $300k

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ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). Seven more deals are in
best case, totaling an additional $700k. Aaron has a more
impressive forecast with 10 deals in the commit column
totaling $1M.
One month later, that is two weeks prior to the end of
the quarter, on their updated forecast, Megan has $200k done
(two of the committed deals got booked) and still the same
$300k committed forecast for the quarter, with some more
deals in best case. The 3rd committed deal is still there in the
forecast, although not closed yet. But Aaron’s forecast is
already half what it was one month earlier, that is $500k.
Moreover he has not closed any of his deals yet. He explains
that in one case the client told him they are delaying the
purchase. In another case the project was cancelled since the
budget was allocated to another project. One client needs
more time to run the POC (Proof of Concept) and Aaron feels
strongly that the project is delayed by only a couple weeks but
won’t come in this quarter. For the last deal in the forecast, the
client is hit by a massive layoff. But Aaron is very confident
that this time his forecast is solid. He feels more upbeat than
ever, committing to $500k.
The quarter ends. Megan scores $400k. All three deals
are signed plus one of the best case deals. Aaron books two
deals for $200k total. Even three of those he had hoped to
book just two weeks before the end of the quarter didn’t close,

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but they were not lost. The great closer in Aaron manages to
bring in two contracts on the last day of the quarter. The sales
director sighs!
Lack of luck? Bad territory? Just a bad quarter? What
is the difference between Megan’s clients and Aaron’s?
Do you think Megan’s clients never have layoffs or any
delay in their projects? Of course they do.
Do you think Megan’s clients never need more time to
run POCs? Of course they do. It happens all the time, right?
So why did Megan have a better judgment than Aaron on her
deals?
The difference is the QUALIFICATION. It’s the
assessment of how solid each deal is. It is the ability to remove
those pink glasses and evaluate a deal’s solidity.
Megan focused on highly qualified prospects. She had
the same number of deals as Aaron, but she considered only
three of them strong enough to meet her qualification criteria,
to be considered in her “committed” forecast. She didn’t waste
time on deals that she knew would not close.
Aaron was not qualifying his deals, and was working
hard to close each and every prospect he could possibly talk to.
Despite putting more hours into his work, and despite being a
great closer with a likeable personality, he didn’t make it.

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 Successful sellers are those
who spend their time with
prospects who will end up
buying.

It is common sense, isn’t it? Still, too many sales people fail to
execute qualification. Sellers need to objectively and
constantly assess their prospects in order to know if they can
be qualified and if they will be closed before a given date.
One short but deep set of simple (but not easy)
questions you should ask yourself to qualify an opportunity is
the following three famous whys:

Why anything?

Why us?

Why now?

Why anything? Why would the prospect consider

buying anything at all? This is about the “I” of MEDDIC as
we’ll see later.
Why us? Why would the customer award this
contract to us? This puts us in the customer shoes and tries to

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look objectively the reasons why the main decision makers will
trust us. We will see later that this is related to several
elements of MEDDIC such as the “M”, the “DC” and the “C” of
MEDDIC.
Why now? Why wouldn’t the customer delay the
decision? What creates the urgency that is pushing the
customer to buy now, instead of sometime in the future? We
will see later that this relates to the “compelling event” as we
cover the “E” and the “DP” of MEDDIC.
Here’s my definition of Sales Qualification:

Sales Qualification is the act of

assessing prospects, as quickly
as possible to determine
whether they will buy from us
and become successful users of
our products and services
within a given timeframe, for a
given amount.

Now when Aaron learns MEDDPICC® and

understands the value of qualification, and he applies it, his
numbers will explode, thanks to his high level of activities,
focused on the right opportunities.

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 One hard thing for Aaron will be to stop wasting time
with a prospect that does not meet the qualification criteria.
But it’s necessary to cut some useless activities so that he can
focus on more qualified deals and spend his time bridging the
gaps in those accounts, taking them to closing.

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 CHAPTER TWO
INTRODUCTION TO MEDDIC/ MEDDPICC ®

MEDDIC and MEDDPICC, are recognized sales

methodology used in technology and other enterprise sales
context, especially when the sales cycle is rather long and
complex. It helps vendors to:

• Increase revenue thanks to higher sales productivity

• Improve forecast accuracy thanks to a higher level of
intelligence into the prospect’s decision-making
process
• Reduce costs thanks to savings of presales resources
and efforts
• Increase profits thanks to higher revenue AND lower
costs
• Create common language in the sales force, leading to
more cohesive team spirits

Senior sales leaders who come to discover

MEDDPICC® usually describe it as a sharp and practical

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methodology in comparison to other methodologies, which are
abstract or theoretical and not practical enough.

What does MEDDIC stand for?

MEDDIC is the world’s most renowned Sales
Qualification Methodology, applicable to any Enterprise Sales
Process, which is rather complex. The definition of MEDDIC is
the acronym it represents, composed of six elements. They
represent the MEDDIC checklist as described below:

METRICS: Measure the potential gain leading to the

economic benefit of your solution vs. competition.
ECONOMIC BUYER: Identify and meet the person
who has the final word in releasing funds to make a purchase.
DECISION PROCESS: Know and influence the
process as defined by the client to make purchase decision.
DECISION CRITERIA: Know and influence the
criteria as defined by the client to make purchase decision.
IDENTIFY PAIN: Identify and analyze the pains that
require your solution to be relieved.
CHAMPION: Identify, qualify, develop, and test your
champion, the person who sells inside the account on your
behalf.
In a nutshell, MEDDIC tells you that if you do the
above in any complex B2B sales opportunity, you win the sale.
If you can’t achieve these elements, then avoid spending time

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on this opportunity for now, and focus on those you can, or
prospect more and bring in new opportunities in the pipeline.

How about MEDDICC (with a 2nd C)?

MEDDIC has a few variants. MEDDICC, with two Cs
in the acronym, adds “Competition.” Obviously, knowing your
competition and strategizing your account plan based on who
you are competing with is absolutely a must. But is MEDDIC
without that second C incomplete? Or does it mean you are
ignoring the competition? Absolutely not! As a matter of fact,
“Competition” is inherently present in every action you engage
in the account.
In fact, some MEDDIC elements, such as “Metrics and
Decision Criteria,” would not make sense if you don’t refer to
competition.

Where do we cover the Competition?

Metrics represent, a comparative measure of benefits,
compared to the competition, which could be the incumbent
system or the non-decision. Metrics force the seller to consider
competition. During MEDDIC courses at MEDDIC Academy,
one of the key concepts that you learn is how to link a set of
decision criteria to a vendor, whether it’s one of your
competitors or your company. Decision Criteria is also another
element that forces sellers to consider competition. Are the

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decision criteria in your favor or in favor of one of your
competitors? Is the playing field level or tilted?

Adding a C for competition, helps to emphasize that

we need to know who we are competing with, what their
weaknesses and strengths are, and, most importantly, who
their champion is.

MEDDPICC
MEDDPICC emphasizes the paper process and the
Competition. Sellers need to understand the process through
which a purchase request has to go inside that company for
such a deal and execute accordingly. Anyone with experience
in complex enterprise sales knows that interactions with the
legal department or purchasing team could be a nightmare if
they are under-estimated. Especially since these interactions
are at the end of the sales cycle and the deadline for the PO
may be compromised, whether it is the end of quarter for the
vendor or the implementation expectations for the client.
These issues take time to resolve, often leading to a delay in
the purchase order. It is absolutely necessary for the Account
Executive to understand the “paper process” and to anticipate
the issues. For instance you can avoid those issues by sharing
your company’s standard contract or TOS (Terms Of Services)
earlier in the process.

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 Some would say that the paper (purchasing and legal)
process is part of the decision process, just like the technical
approval process and business approval process. Well, the
difference is that often the champion knows very well the
technical and the business process all the way to the approval
by the Economic Buyer. But they don’t always know the paper
process themselves. That’s why it does make sense to add it to
the checklist, to make sure we understand it, and that our
champion understands it. That’s why we adopt a proactive
approach with the legal and purchasing departments, to avoid
any delay in the PO.

How did all this start?

MEDDIC is the result of the Sales and Qualification
techniques developed at PTC (Parametric Technology Corp.).
PTC is a software company known for having built one of the
strongest sales cultures in the context of Enterprise Software
(now SaaS). The company had over 40 quarters of continuous
growth during the 90s. The initial Global Sales Management
team at PTC, that I was a part of, developed different elements
of MEDDIC in the field. We used to meet in Boston every
quarter to share our notes and experiences. Our challenge was
to grow as fast as possible before being copied by the
competition. We had to execute well and quickly. In sales
management, if you want to grow fast, you should be able to

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hire well and quickly, and to train the new hires well and
quickly so that they ramp up quickly and generate revenue. So,
we had to be able not only to identify our key to success, but
also be able to articulate it in a sharp and easy way so that the
new hires could learn quickly and execute. That was what we
shared in the sales management meetings every quarter. Later,
PTC training managers at the headquarters in Boston
leveraged these best practices from the field. They put them
together into a formal practice course for new hires and gave it
a name: MEDDIC!

In my case, I was hired to run France, which was one

of the most strategic regions for the company and was where
two of my predecessors had already failed because the region
was where we had our toughest competition, Dassault
Systemes. I took PTC Southern Europe from $4M to $27M in
three years, beating Dassault in their own fiefdom. Dassault is
a French company that had over $4B revenue in 2019. As
anecdotal note, Dassault was, and still is, the only vendor that
PTC never managed to beat globally (in terms of revenue,
market share, head count, etc.). What my team did in
Southern Europe was all done by rigorously applying
MEDDIC, even though the acronym was not used at that time
yet.

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 MEDDIC is a Qualification Methodology
Designed for complex Business-to-business sales,
MEDDIC helps sellers to qualify whether a prospect will close
in a given time period, usually a quarter. And if it does not, it
tells us what needs to be done so that the deal does close in the
defined timeframe.
This methodology takes the effort away from fostering
dead-end leads and helps sellers to focus more on identifying
and nurturing the opportunities that have a higher chance of
making a sale. As previously mentioned, very often the
problem is not with a salesperson’s skills in negotiating or
closing a sale but rather on his/her judgment to properly
assess if a deal is going to close or not and, consequently, their
decision whether that prospect is worth their time in the short
term. This is commonly called SALES QUALIFICATION, as
described in the previous chapter.
The fact is, you could have a stellar sales pitch and
amazing sales skills, but if you don’t have the right judgment
and assessment of the deal’s strengths and weaknesses, then
you will not be able to properly direct your efforts. Every sales
process needs to begin with first understanding your prospect,
understanding their needs, and qualifying them for their
likeliness to make a purchase before spending any more time
and effort on them. Even if you make sure that the customer is

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in your target market, they may still have reasons for not being
a closable opportunity for this quarter.
MEDDIC brings this concept into a foolproof
methodic approach that many big and small companies have
successfully applied.
It is important to know that MEDDIC is not a sales
process; it is a qualification methodology, which can be used
with any process that determines whether or not a customer is
a qualified buyer that you should invest your time and effort
into. It focuses on identifying the key elements or criteria of a
customer to determine whether or not the customer will end
up buying and if you have the solutions that they seek.
As mentioned in Chapter One, instead of considering
the ABC of sales, Always Be Closing, MEDDIC is built with the
mindset of ABQ: Always Be Qualifying. This is an important
shift and effective way of understanding your customers, and
even people in general, to effectively communicate with them
and assess their needs and desires. It helps you to assess what
you can offer; this is true in personal relationships as well. It is
like learning their language so that you can decide if you can
or want to speak it.
MEDDIC isn’t a process on its own, but rather it is a
method that works well with any sales process that you may
already be working with. So instead of replacing your current
sales process, MEDDIC will integrate into it to make it more

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effective. MEDDIC can help identify the loopholes in your
sales process. It pushes you to ask yourself:
“Where am I now?”
You need to begin by identifying where exactly you are
in your sales process with a specific customer. How good is
your interaction with your customers?
We can use MEDDIC together with a process that is
currently productive with the customer, with one that the
customer decides to take you through, or with one that your
company chooses to use.

Important Characteristics of MEDDIC

The following are some important characteristics of
MEDDIC that make it so unique and effective.
It is a short checklist: Once you learn this
methodology, all you will need to do is check these six or eight
elements whenever you are trying to make a sale. This is
universal because it works with every business model and
structure. These elements don’t need to be altered in any way.
This isn’t a conditional methodology, making it very easy to
implement.

It is activity based
This means that the analysis and assessment of a deal
within the framework of MEDDIC will lead to a certain
number of action items by the sellers. They will have to do

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something to uncover the unknown or to change things in the
account.

It reveals gaps
MEDDIC helps you identify gaps between what you
have already accomplished in the accounts and what elements
you still need to take care of.

It is self-assessing
You don’t need to seek help from your manager,
mentor, coach, or an expert in the industry to understand this
methodology. You can easily assess and identify the different
elements of this process by yourself.

It brings a common language to your

team
MEDDIC helps to create a common language among
the sales team. For instance, when you talk about identifying
pain, your sales engineer, your consultant, your customer
service rep, and your manager all know what you are referring
to. You and your team will no longer have different answers or
confusion regarding these key elements of a sale. You all will
be on the same page regarding whom the Economic Buyer
(EB) is, whom the champions are, and what the metrics should
look like.

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 Your Current Sales Process
What is your sales process? The good thing about
MEDDIC is that it will work alongside your sales process to
further strengthen your chances of successfully closing a deal,
or it will help you to see the red flags early and decide to drop
it or to reduce efforts on it.
Most processes have a similar format. They usually
start with prospecting and discovering; at this point, the
MEDDIC questions will be general. The next step in the sales
process is usually the scoping and go-no-go. This is where the
MEDDIC questions become more specific. And then the last
phases usually highlight elements like Validation, Proposal,
and Closing; this is where you will need to confirm your
MEDDIC questions as you get close to signing the contract.
The MEDDIC methodology is highly effective not only
in identifying wins and losses, but also the NO Decisions.
MEDDIC helps both the reps and the sales managers.
From the reps perspective, MEDDIC provides a checklist that
helps identify the key elements to successfully closing a sale.
As a sales representative, you really need to understand if
you’ve answered all the required questions to drive the
opportunity towards closing. You also need to be able to
identify all the missing elements, as well as have a good
understanding of what your next step needs to be once you

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have all the information that you require. MEDDIC helps us to
successfully guide and track these questions.
MEDDIC helps sales managers develop a common
language amongst their team members. MEDDIC can help
identify the missing elements, outline the next activity, and
forecast the stage that the opportunity is at. It also helps sales
managers identify where you need to go next or what you need
to do to move further ahead in the sales process. It also helps
set short term goals for easier implementation and tracking.

MEDDIC Helps You Avoid Useless

Activities
Here is what a sales process without the MEDDIC
methodology implemented at the right times looks like: you
initiate contact with a customer, and you spend your time and
effort on developing resources (these could be the POC, the
pilot, the custom demo, a reference call or IT review). Once
you have all the elements ready, you run them through with
the economic buyer, and they tell you that the solutions don’t
resonate well with the company, that they don’t promise to
deliver the quantifiable results that they had expected
(metrics), or that they are just out of their budget. You are left
hanging dry after all those efforts and investments because
you hadn’t really taken the necessary steps to ensure that your
solution and the customer’s ‘pain’ were indeed a good fit.

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 Now, most salespeople will tell you that this is just
part and parcel of the business that you need to be prepared
for dead-ends like these. But MEDDIC helps identify a dead-
end much earlier in the sales process. It stops you in your
tracks before you invest too much time and effort on an
opportunity that doesn’t QUALIFY or deserve that time and
effort because it won’t close.
With the implementation of MEDDIC, the same sales
process looks like this: you initiate contact with a customer,
and then you run it through the elements of MEDDIC in order
to identify the pain and the key person who is responsible for
making decisions. It then provides quantifiable outcomes of
your solution and then takes the next step only if the customer
responds positively to your qualification process. You then
only invest time and effort on customers that will close.

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 CHAPTER ELEVEN
MEDDIC VS. BANT
During a recent Sales Kickoff, as we reviewed
qualification criteria from the sales rep’s perspective, one rep
asked a question about BUDGET. It reminded me of my very
first sales qualification method that I learned in the 80s,
BANT. This book would be incomplete without talking about
BANT.
BANT is one of the oldest sales qualification
checklists, which seems to make a lot of sense.
1. BUDGET
2. AUTHORITY
3. NEEDS
4. TIMING
These are typically the things that you want to check
before spending time with a prospect, one may say. I consider
them to still be valid if you are both in an inbound call
situation AND if you are in a simple sales process, typically
transaction sales, with a very short sales cycle. In other words,
if someone calls you, wants to buy your product, and asks for a
small effort, such as a short demo or a quick quote, then you

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should ask those four BANT questions and, if all is good, you
deliver what they ask and quickly move to the closing phase.
In all other cases, BANT should be BANNED!

Here’s why:

Budget should not be a sales criterion of

qualification.
Why? Because of Metrics, the M of MEDDIC. If you
have Metrics, or if you can obtain and document them, then
since you know how to transform it into ROI and take it to the
EB, you don’t need any budget prior to your work. The EB will
redefine priorities to get the economic benefit ASAP.
Remember, as discussed in the ROI chapter above, buying
from you becomes an act of saving costs or revenue boosting.
Since when does an EB need to have budgeted anything to
save money or to increase revenue? The beauty of MEDDIC is
that it transforms the urgency of sales into urgency from the
prospect to buy in order to save costs or to increase revenue.
You don’t need to have a budget for any of these. Any EB is
able to prioritize expenditures so that they can achieve and
observe those savings ASAP.

Neither should Timing

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 Since the MEDDIC approach creates urgency thanks
to the economic impact, even a non-scheduled purchase
becomes possible. So, timing should not be a qualification
criterion either. A convinced EB will always accelerate a
project, for their own benefit, to start seeing gains sooner.
BANT used to be popular. It does not work anymore.
It was actually never aggressive enough for any company
offering a product or service that brings measurable gains. The
success of MEDDIC proves that neither the budget nor the
timing should be in your qualification criteria. Also, MEDDIC
proves that there is a lot more to Sales Qualification than just
the NEED (which is the “I” of MEDDIC or Identify Pain) and
the AUTHORITY (which is the E of MEDDIC or the Economic
Buyer). Existence of Metrics, the knowledge of Decision
Criteria and the Decision Process, the existence of a
Champion, and the understanding of the Competition
represent a lot of things to consider in order to fully qualify an
opportunity.
Since budgets are typically annual, when they exist it
means that a pain has been expressed at least a year ago,
decision criteria have been defined, and sometimes even an
RFP has been written. Experience shows that your chances of
qualifying such a deal or winning it are always much lower
than when you get into an account sooner, identify pain, get

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metrics, help write decision criteria, and sell without a
preexisting budget.
As an example, all the four letters of BANT can be
checked, but you may still easily lose the deal when the RFP is
written under your competitor’s influence and the decision
criteria are not in your favor (Decision Criteria). In another
case, you will most definitely lose a deal even of all four
elements of BANT are solidly checked but your competition
has a strong champion and not you (Champion). I can keep
going with examples involving the EB or DP. These are the
reasons why BANT is incomplete, wrong and can be
misleading. You would disqualify opportunities who may be
closed while wasting time on those which have no chance of
closing.

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 CONCLUSION
I hope you liked this free ebook.

Next is for you to get hold of the original (full) book,

(learn more about it here and put all the lessons into practice.
Like every lesson we learn in our personal or professional
lives, only practice allows the lesson to become a habit. Here
are other action items for you to develop your sales
qualification skills:
- Take self-paced courses online
https://trainings.meddic.academy/

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- Join an upcoming vILT (Virtual Instructor-Led Training)
at https://meddic.academy/vilt-virtual-meddic-
workshops/ or directly here.
- If you are a sales leader, make sure you check out our
Leadership courses and programs at https://infinite-
sales.com

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51 ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING – MEDDIC - MEDDPICC®
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 This was,

ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING
MEDDIC - MEDDPICC®
(the Preview, NOT the full book)

Update: November 2024

Copyright © Darius Lahoutifard, 2020

All Rights Reserved.

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