Podcast appearances and mentions of andy whyte

Join us this week as Dan & Lloyd share how we bagged £125K in new business last month! From the art of 'qualifying out' prospects with strategies borrowed from top sales books like MEDDICC by Andy Whyte and GAP SELLING by Keenan, to the surprising realisation that customer perception can sometimes matter more than actual results. We spill the beans on our own missteps and successes and highlight why ongoing, genuine relationship-building can be the golden key to unlocking major deals.Try Adobe Express (pod sponsor).

Seeing people using Decision Criteria incorrectly is heartbreaking, because this element of MEDDPICC can truly unlock success in your deals. In this episode, the MedMen dive into everything that people get wrong with Decision Criteria.Andy and Pim explore common errors people make when approaching the Decision Criteria, such as assuming that customers will always possess them and that once identified, these criteria remain set in stone. Remember, you are a professional seller, but your customer is not a professional buyer! It is your responsibility to guide them to the best solution for their needs.If you have any questions about influencing Decision Criteria, or any suggestions of what you'd like to see the Med Men cover next, make sure to comment below!Until next time - cheers! ABOUT MED MEN:Med Men is a MEDDICC MEDIA production, where CEO Andy Whyte and CRO Pim Roelofsen dive into aspects of the MEDDIC framework, and look good doing it.

Attention to detail is needed when dealing with the Economic Buyer. You don't want to under-qualify them, but over-qualifying them can do equal damage! In this episode, the Med Men take a close look at what people typically get wrong with the Economic Buyer.Andy and Pim talk about the need to accept change - that as circumstances and deals change, so will the Economic Buyer. But, if you keep your wits about you, you can still find success with the Economic Buyer. If you have any questions about identifying or engaging with the Economic Buyer, or any suggestions of what you'd like to see the Med Men cover next, make sure to comment below!Until next time - cheers! Med Men is a MEDDICC MEDIA production, where CEO Andy Whyte and CRO Pim Roelofsen dive into aspects of the MEDDIC framework, and look good doing it. *Who are Pim Roelofsen and Andy Whyte?**Pim Roelofsen* Born and raised in the Netherlands, Pim lived in the Dutch Caribbean and London, before making the move back home. Having been involved in tech sales for 10 years, Pim is passionate about MEDDICC and is a big believer that more organizations should adopt the qualification framework for sales and beyond. Pim empowers sales organizations across the globe to implement the tried and tested framework as MEDDICC CRO. *Andy Whyte* The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years. Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™. Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales. Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

Metrics - they're not easy, but that means if you nail them, you have the edge in your deals. In this episode, the Med Men break down the three things that people get wrong when it comes to Metrics.Andy and Pim talk about the importance of asking yourself the question, “Who cares about this?” as well as how you can carry Metrics through to all stages of the Customer Lifecycle. If you have any questions about using Metrics, or any suggestions of what you'd like to see the Med Men cover next, make sure to comment below!Until next time - cheers! Med Men is a MEDDICC MEDIA production, where CEO Andy Whyte and CRO Pim Roelofsen dive into aspects of the MEDDIC framework, and look good doing it. Who are Pim Roelofsen and Andy Whyte?Pim Roelofsen Born and raised in the Netherlands, Pim lived in the Dutch Caribbean and London, before making the move back home. Having been involved in tech sales for 10 years, Pim is passionate about MEDDICC and is a big believer that more organizations should adopt the qualification framework for sales and beyond. Pim empowers sales organizations across the globe to implement the tried and tested framework as MEDDICC CRO. Andy Whyte The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years. Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™. Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales. Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

Today's guest is Andy Whyte, CEO of MEDDICC and author of the book on MEDDICC. He has been a sales leader for 20 years. His discussion with Paddle's own Andrew Davies illuminated a lot about how one can effectively use MEDDICC. Andy can help you understand how to better identify customer pain points, demonstrate value, engage with stakeholders, and manage the sales process effectively to close deals and drive revenue growth for your SaaS business.High Level Overview:Understanding MEDDICC: a method of reverse engineering how customers buy or don't buy.The three pillars of professional buyers: selling value, stakeholders, and processDon't just focus on getting the signature on the paper, focus on getting the customer to “go live”.Build a common vocabulary between sales and marketing to enable both teams to cooperate effectively.Building trust and credibility with potential customers involves understanding their business, pain points, and connecting through proof points of other existing customers.A Crash Course on MEDDICC:MEDDICC is a sales methodology that stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion, and Competition. It focuses on creating a structured and strategic approach to qualify and close complex deals, helping sales teams navigate through the sales process while ensuring alignment with the buyer's needs and priorities:Metrics: Quantify the potential value of the solution for the customer, using specific KPIs or metrics to demonstrate the positive impact it will have on their business.Economic Buyer: Identify the person who has the authority to make the final purchasing decision, and engage with them to understand their needs, pain points, and criteria for a successful solution.Decision Criteria: Understand the factors that influence the customer's decision-making process, including technical, functional, and financial requirements, as well as any unique considerations for their specific situation.Decision Process: Gain insight into the customer's internal decision-making process, including the steps they will take, the key stakeholders involved, and any potential obstacles or roadblocks to be aware of.Identify Pain: Discover the primary pain points or challenges that the customer is experiencing, and determine how your solution can effectively address and solve those issues.Champion: Find an internal advocate within the customer's organization who understands the value of your solution, is willing to support it, and can help influence the decision-making process in your favor.Competition: Be aware of competitors in the marketplace and be prepared to differentiate your solution by emphasizing its unique strengths, features, and benefits.By implementing MEDDICC, sales teams can effectively navigate complex deals while ensuring they address the needs and priorities of potential customers. This methodology enables a structured and strategic approach to the sales process, ultimately leading to a higher likelihood of success in closing deals and fostering strong, lasting customer relationships.Further LearningsAndy Wrote the book on MEDDICC. Check it out here.Follow Andy on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Andy Whyte has literally written the book on the power of the MEDDICC sales system. His book, “MEDDICC: The ultimate guide to staying one step ahead in the complex sale,” outlines how to apply the MEDDICC framework to any sales deal. But before Andy became a powerhouse in sales, he was an account executive at impressive companies like Oracle and Sprinklr. He also led many successful sales teams at various companies before starting out on his own. Today, Andy is the CEO and founder of MEDDICC, an organization that helps build elite competency in sales teams. In today's episode, Andy talks about how the best salespeople are good at solving their customers' problems. He shares his three critical parts to selling, how companies can best adopt and implement MEDDICC, and the big changes he's seen in sales as companies evolve from enterprise-led to product-led. Press play to hear Andy's thoughts on…Overcoming challenges in sales"There's not often a deal where everything's green, and everything's great, right? If there ever is, you know, they get called a bluebird. There's often challenges. What we like to say is the best salespeople are the ones who are the fastest to identify what the challenges are, and they're the ones who put their hands up."Time efficiency "I'm really big on this idea of just being more efficient with your time and therefore double down on your winners. You can only double down on the winners if you have a framework that's going to help you identify who the winners are, which is bringing it all back to MEDDICC."

Adapt and overcome was probably the theme of this discussion on ScaleUp Radio. Today I interviewed Antony Thompson, who is the co founder of Loopin. They have a great mission, which is to provide a million managers by 2030, the ability to reduce burnout and attrition in their teams with the help of AI.  So, no surprise Loopin itself is a tool based on AI that helps managers to manage all sorts of aspects of resilience, burnout, but essentially around high performance teams.  This is a fascinating discussion. Both Anthony and his co-founder, Ben are ex Marines although they didn't actually serve together.  There's lots of reference to how they have taken some of those values of really looking after each other in the Marines – for example look after the person to the right and to the left of you and keeping each other accountable, but also looking after yourself. You'll hear how they've taken some this into Loopin around managing those high performance teams.  Lots of great parts of the story including how they came within 9 days of running out of money and were down to their last £240 when investment money came in.  So quite a roller coaster of a journey, which I think take us back to that adapt and overcome and that resilience.  Plenty of discussion around people so you might like to take our checklist on levelling up your team. It may give you some ideas, some of the things that Antony talked about and some other things as well. You can check how you're doing against what we consider to be great aspects of building your team habits.   Antony can be found here: linkedin.com/in/ant-thompson-loopin https://www.letsloopin.com/ support@letsloopin.com     Resources The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team by Patrick Lencioni - https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-five-dysfunctions-of-a-team/patrick-m-lencioni/9781118016701 The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy - https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-compound-effect/darren-hardy-llc/9781399805780 The One Thing by Gary Keller - https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-one-thing/gary-keller/jay-papasan/9781848549258 Meddic by Andy Whyte - https://www.waterstones.com/book/meddicc/andy-whyte/dick-dunkel/9781838239701   Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.   If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here: https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/apply   You can get in touch with Kevin here: kevin@biz-smart.co.uk   Kevin's Latest Book Is Available!    Drawing on BizSmart's own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brentexplores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up.    More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/ Things on Mac - https://culturedcode.com/things/ HubSpot - https://www.hubspot.com/ Duolingo - https://www.duolingo.com/    

In this Masters of MEDDICC, hosted by Andy Whyte, Richard breaks down how both sales reps and sales leaders can break through emotional and mental barriers to become the best they can be. That can be anything from embracing a stoic approach to the sales rollercoaster to building a strong network to fall back on when times are tough.Richard has taken brave step after brave step, quite literal huge jumps (from Australia to the States!) to pursue that next challenge and embody the mindset of becoming the best he could be instead of embracing comfort.This podcast tells the story of this incredible sales career and explains his learnings along the way. He also talks about some of his favorite deals and the best MEDDIC learnings from them, as well as having to create success in so many different organizations and industries.This is a must-listen for anyone in sales, regardless of whether you are trying to build more mental resiliency, learn how to build a sales super team, or even gain wisdom from deal reviews from a sales legend, who cut his teeth with the very best of them.More about Richard Dufty:Richard moved with Symantec from Sydney Australia to Silicon Valley in 2007 after closing the biggest deal of the year globally. Rising through the ranks Richard helped grow various business units including Managed Security Services to $200M+.Richard then joined AppDirect as their first VP and helped lead them from $1m to $100m in 4 years to unicorn status. Richard is currently CRO with Australian founded, now San Francisco HQ cybersecurity company Arkose Labs and helped them grow 3X in the last 2 years.When not in SF or traveling around the globe, Richard spends his weekends at home in Southern California with his wife Aya, and Kids Chloé (12), Riley (2) and Noah (6 months).More about Andy Whyte:The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years.Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™.Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales.Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

SE's (Sales Engineers or System Engineers) are an essential part of a typical account team, referred to as ‘The Brains' by Andy and without them - it's incredibly difficult to get deals across the line. It's becoming increasingly more common for customers and those new to implementing MEDDIC to ask ‘Should we include SE's on our MEDDPICC adoption journey?' You already know what we think: MEDDIC is best adopted when it's applied as a common language. And in this episode, the Med Men give their verdict. Watch this episode to find out more about this all-important topic.If there's something you'd like Pim and Andy to discuss in the next episode of MEDMEN, comment below!Until then, May your Champions be strong! *Who are Pim Roelofsen and Andy Whyte?**Pim Roelofsen*Born and raised in the Netherlands, Pim lived in the Dutch Caribbean and London, before making the move back home.Having been involved in tech sales for 10 years, Pim is passionate about MEDDICC and is a big believer that more organizations should adopt the qualification framework for sales and beyond. Pim utilizes this framework as an individual contributor whilst taking a holistic approach across the on-scale international implementation.Out of the day-to-day, Pim chairs the Pavilion MEDDIC channel.*Andy Whyte*The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years.Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™.Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales.Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

Today we are joined by Andy Whyte, author, host, and founder of MEDDICC.com. We explore the fundamentals and dispel the misconceptions of MEDDICC to help you achieve consistent results. A must listen from the author of one of the most important books written on MEDDICC best practices.

THE BOYS ARE BACK.. and with a bang! SDRs, we all love them.. they are a vital part of our sales process and the way in which we interact with customers. They're typically the first point of contact for customers too. In the same breath, they're usually the newest to the industry in which they're working in, and the newest to the product that they're selling.. So why is it that we task them with this great responsibility of capturing a prospects attention, without setting them up for success with a qualification framework? Watch this episode to find out just some of the reasons why MEDDIC can help not only the business but SDRs too, whether that's applying some of the methodology to identify and contact Champions, being able to identify pain and introduce metrics in discovery or setting up your SDR for early success as they inevitably prepare to move up the ladder to an AE role. If there's something you'd like Pim and Andy to discuss in the next episode of MEDMEN, comment below!Until then, May your Champions be strong! **Who are Pim Roelofsen and Andy Whyte?****Pim Roelofsen**Born and raised in the Netherlands, Pim lived in the Dutch Caribbean and London, before making the move back home.Having been involved in tech sales for 10 years, Pim is passionate about MEDDICC and is a big believer that more organizations should adopt the qualification framework for sales and beyond. Pim utilizes this framework as an individual contributor whilst taking a holistic approach across the on-scale international implementation.Out of the day-to-day, Pim chairs the Pavilion MEDDIC channel.**Andy Whyte**The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years.Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™.Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales.Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns, 20/20/20 Mastery Mission.  20 topics, 20 guests for 20 minutes.  We're here to unlock tribal wisdom from tech sales legends to help you get one step closer to mastery.  Today we are joined by Andy Whyte, enterprise sales leader, author of MEDDICC, and founder of the leading resource for enterprise sellers, MEDDIC.com. In this interview, Andy explains what salespeople commonly get wrong with sales qualification and why nobody ever regrets qualifying out of opportunities, but so few people do it enough. “We're really focused on qualification, but we work so hard to get opportunities that there's almost a reluctance to qualify out. One of the things I learned earlier in my career was if you go to qualify out, only good things happen.” Andy discusses how sales qualification is often misunderstood as being a checkbox exercise, or even worse, it is used to qualify 'Can this customer buy', rather than 'Does my solution provide enough value to my customer'. He goes on to address the common misconceptions around MEDDIC and explains the origins of the framework and how to use it more efficiently and effectively to qualify deals and generate a clear path to success. With over fifteen years of experience working in SaaS and helping organizations improve their sales velocity, Andy offers his tips on how to view your qualification strategy through your customers eyes and leverage the proven MEDDIC methodology in your sales cycles so that you can articulate and quantify pain, demonstrate the value of your sales solution, and ultimately accomplish a perfect “mutual qualification”. Presenting strategies and best practices on how to successfully implement MEDDIC and navigate qualification, Andy helps us to understand how to stay ahead of complex deals by adopting the “MEDDIC mindset” and focussing on the three pillars of sales - value, stakeholders, and process. Listen to our story session to discover how to apply Andy's strategies to real business scenarios and learn tactics for using MEDDIC to execute your customer interactions with more purpose, achieve better results and reap the rewards of having a well-qualified pipeline of opportunities.

This is part 3 and the final portion of Jake's conversation with Andy. In this episode, Jake and Andy wrap up their conversation, and hear their thoughts on how all of MEDDICC doesn't need to be included on the first call.One of the most commonly used frameworks companies utilize is MEDDICC. Jake sat down with Andy Whyte, the Founder of MEDDICC to discuss what is MEDDICC, Jake's issues with MEDDICC, where it is misapplied in sales departments, as well as how MEDDICC doesn't need to be completely filled out on the first call.Enjoy this week's episode with Andy Whyte!As always, hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss out on the rest of the series, as well as any new featured Thursday guest on “The Jake Dunlap Show.”This is a Mini Episode Monday episode, where every Monday, Jake will be bringing you bite-size clips from sales calls he has done, interviews he has been on, or simply, his hot take on a given topic.______________________________________________________________________Jake Dunlap, CEO and Founder of Skaled Consulting, is an industry influencer and C-Level Sales leader with more than a decade of experience. Jake has developed and led high-performing sales and operational functions for Fortune 500, Global 2000, and start-up organizations. Jake and the team at Skaled specialize in building out repeatable, sustainable processes.As a thought-leader with more than 60,000 followers across his platforms, Jake's audience gains valuable insights into scaling an organization, sales best practices, and general career motivation. Prior to Skaled, Jake was the first sales hire and VP of Sales at Glassdoor which was acquired by Recruit Holdings for $1.2Billion in 2018. ►Connect with Jake DunlapLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlapInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jake_dunlap_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaketdunlapWebsite: https://www.jakedunlap.com/ ►Connect with Andy WhyteLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andywhyte/

This is part 2 of a 3 episode series where Jake and Andy discuss the best and worst of MEDDICC deployments: When it Fails and When it Sells.One of the most commonly used frameworks companies utilize is MEDDICC. Jake sat down with Andy Whyte, the Founder of MEDDICC to discuss what is MEDDICC, Jake's issues with MEDDICC, where it is misapplied in sales departments, as well as how MEDDICC doesn't need to be completely filled out on the first call.In this episode, you will hear:Jake's thoughts on when MEDDPICC is misappliedHow you don't need champion to close a 7 figure dealThe differences between an admin, champion, and cheerleader.Enjoy this week's episode with Andy Whyte!As always, hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss out on the rest of the series, as well as any new featured Thursday guest on “The Jake Dunlap Show.”This is a Mini Episode Monday episode, where every Monday, Jake will be bringing you bite-size clips from sales calls he has done, interviews he has been on, or simply, his hot take on a given topic.______________________________________________________________________Jake Dunlap, CEO and Founder of Skaled Consulting, is an industry influencer and C-Level Sales leader with more than a decade of experience. Jake has developed and led high-performing sales and operational functions for Fortune 500, Global 2000, and start-up organizations. Jake and the team at Skaled specialize in building out repeatable, sustainable processes.As a thought-leader with more than 60,000 followers across his platforms, Jake's audience gains valuable insights into scaling an organization, sales best practices, and general career motivation. Prior to Skaled, Jake was the first sales hire and VP of Sales at Glassdoor which was acquired by Recruit Holdings for $1.2Billion in 2018. ►Connect with Jake DunlapLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlapInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jake_dunlap_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaketdunlapWebsite: https://www.jakedunlap.com/ ►Connect with Andy WhyteLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andywhyte/

This is part 1 of a 3 episode series where Jake and Andy discuss the best and worst of MEDDICC deployments: When it Fails and When it Sells. In this episode, you will hear MEDDICC Explained, as well as Jake's Issues with it.One of the most commonly used frameworks companies utilize is MEDDICC. Jake sat down with Andy Whyte, the Founder of MEDDICC to discuss what is MEDDICC, Jake's issues with MEDDICC, where it is misapplied in sales departments, as well as how MEDDICC doesn't need to be completely filled out on the first call.In this episode, you will hear:MEDDPICC ExplainedJake's Issues With MEDDPICCMEDDPICC as a process, not a frameworkEnjoy this week's episode with Andy Whyte!As always, hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss out on the rest of the series, as well as any new featured Thursday guest on “The Jake Dunlap Show.”This is a Mini Episode Monday episode, where every Monday, Jake will be bringing you bite-size clips from sales calls he has done, interviews he has been on, or simply, his hot take on a given topic.______________________________________________________________________Jake Dunlap, CEO and Founder of Skaled Consulting, is an industry influencer and C-Level Sales leader with more than a decade of experience. Jake has developed and led high-performing sales and operational functions for Fortune 500, Global 2000, and start-up organizations. Jake and the team at Skaled specialize in building out repeatable, sustainable processes.As a thought-leader with more than 60,000 followers across his platforms, Jake's audience gains valuable insights into scaling an organization, sales best practices, and general career motivation. Prior to Skaled, Jake was the first sales hire and VP of Sales at Glassdoor which was acquired by Recruit Holdings for $1.2Billion in 2018. ►Connect with Jake DunlapLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlapInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jake_dunlap_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaketdunlapWebsite: https://www.jakedunlap.com/ ►Connect with Andy WhyteLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andywhyte/

Andy Whyte is the founder of meddicc.com and the author of the book MEDDICC. In this episode he shares with you how MEDDICC helps you to: Win more complex sales Shorten sales cycles Invest time in deals that can close Differentiate against competitor Have more fun selling Andys Website: https://meddicc.com/  DEAL Alerts: http://eepurl.com/g0DUUH Jiris Website: https://www.jirisiklar.com Contact: dealpodcast@jirisiklar.com 

Nobody Regrets Qualifying Out. But so few people do it enough. Andy Whyte has a few thoughts here on value, stakeholders & process.

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, Andy Whyte (CEO & Founder, MEDDICC) joined Alex Theuma to share his tips on staying ahead in the complex sale. Andy discusses: - why he chose to start writing about MEDDICC in his free time and launched his book 'MEDDICC' - how he organically spotted an opportunity and founded MEDDICC - what MEDDICC is and why the top SaaS companies use it - the hardest thing about selling SaaS, whilst focusing on the value, stakeholders and process. and more. Andy will be speaking at SaaStock Remote on 22-24 March 2022, about How to Understand, Educate & Influence Your Prospects (And Convert them into Customers). Register for free to get his how-to guide: https://www.saastock.com/remote-2022/

On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Andy Whyte explains what salespeople commonly get wrong about sales qualification. Andy is the founder of MEDDICC.com and the author of “MEDDICC' the book. Coming soon. Transcript: Coming soon.

FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYSAsk about the last time they bought something before asking for buying process.Don't be afraid to call out when a deal doesn't appear to be a top priority anymore.Get your execs involved when dealing with the buyer's executive team.Demonstrate the research you've done EARLY in the sales cycle.PATH TO PRESIDENT'S CLUBFounder MEDDICC™RESOURCES DISCUSSED:Andy's YouTube channelTime is running out to register for our upcoming 30MPC Live webinar.Download our exclusive cold calling battlecard by signing up for the newsletter.Efficiently and effectively engage prospects with Outreach to drive more pipeline, close more deals.Gong improves your win rates, starting with their Discovery Cheat Sheet + our top discovery tactics.Share demos, proposals, and customer stories that push opportunities over the finish line with Vidyard. See our top video tips + use promo code 30MPC to upgrade to a Pro account free for 30 days. Dooly instantly syncs notes to Salesforce and automatically adds contacts to accounts. Access the sales template we use to qualify and close more deals, faster.Automate conversational texting for the entire customer journey with Skipio. Check out our best practices for texting prospects.HELP US OUT!What do you love about our podcast? Please consider leaving a rating and review for the show. We always enjoy reading your comments and feedback!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

NEW PODCAST ALERT!Introducing Mad Men.. no wait that's not right, we mean MED MEN. A brand new podcast bought to you by us, uncovering common questions around MEDDIC.Our first Pilot sees Pim Roelofsen and Andy Whyte discuss the considerations around implementing MEDDIC and how three phases could support a company in becoming a truly world-class sales organisation.In this episode, Pim and Andy discuss;[00:20] Experience in implementing MEDDIC / MEDDICC / MEDDPICC[01:40] The three phases a company should consider prior to implementation[06:52] Building MEDDIC momentum across teams[11:58] Celebrating gaps that sales teams uncover[13:28] Carrying out deal reviews with a wider audience[18:00] What different businesses should consider before implementationIf there's something you'd like Pim and Andy to discuss in the next episode of MEDMEN, comment below!Who are Pim Roelofsen and Andy Whyte?Pim RoelofsenBorn and raised in the Netherlands, Pim lived in the Dutch Caribbean and London, before making the move back home.Having been involved in tech sales for 10 years, Pim is passionate about MEDDIC and is a big believer that more organizations should adopt the qualification framework for sales and beyond. Pim utilizes this framework as an individual contributor whilst taking a holistic approach across on-scale international implementation.Out of the day-to-day, Pim chairs the Pavilion MEDDIC channel.Andy WhyteThe founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years.Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™.Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales.Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.https://meddicc.com/meddic

Join host Adam Michalski as he interviews Drew Mohoric, Strategic Partnerships at Harver.Adam and Drew discuss the unique aspects of the HR partnership landscape, Drew's path into partnerships, and much more. Topics Covered:How Drew got started in partnershipsWhat the HR partnership landscape is likeBest practices when working with HR partnershipsWhat Drew has learned from his career in partnerships thus farWhere Drew sees the future of HR partnerships headingPartner with Harver:HarverPartner with HarverPartnership Jobs:Join Partnership Leaders as an Account ExecutiveCareers at CodaCareers at CheckrCareers at MedalliaJoin Radar as a Technology Partner Manager!Sponsors:Partnership LeadersPartneredSubscribe at www.partneredpodcast.com.Interested in joining the podcast? Reach out to hello@partnered.com.

Join host Adam Michalski as he interviews Andy Whyte, Author of MEDDICC - The Ultimate Guide to Staying One Step Ahead in the Complex Sale. Adam and Andy discuss MEDDIC and MEDPICC, which are sales methodologies  used by elite sales companies like Sprinklr, AppDynamics, and Snowflake to generate billion-dollar revenues streams. We also dive into how Andy thinks about partnerships and selling with your ecosystem.Topics Covered:What is MEDDICC and why does it matterHow you can apply MEDDICC to your companyWhat is MEDDPICC and how do partners fit into MEDDICCWhat you can do today to start leveraging these proven methodologies in your sales cyclesWhere Andy sees the future of sales headingGet in touch with Andy:Andy WhyteMEDDICC.comMEDDICC - The Ultimate Guide to Staying One Step Ahead in the Complex SalePartnership Jobs:Careers at CodaCareers at CheckrCareers at MedalliaJoin Radar as a Technology Partner Manager!Sponsors:Partnership LeadersPartneredSubscribe at www.partneredpodcast.com.Interested in joining the podcast? Reach out to hello@partnered.com.

Andy Whyte is the author of MEDDICC: The Ultimate Guide to Staying One Step Ahead in the Complex Sale, a book Jeremey calls a “must-read” for anyone wanting to understand the methodology. Ollie Sharpe, Salesloft's VP of Revenue Operations for EMEA, joins as a first-time co-host to converse with Andy about testing champions, the different flavors of RFPs and why MEDDICC made such an impression on Andy. Visit Salesloft.com for show notes and insights from this episode.

Once a resident DJ and water cooler salesman, Andy Whyte is the author of MEDDICC, and the founder of the MEDDICC Masterclass.  MEDDICC is a Sales Methodology that wins more deals faster; the MEDDIC Sales Qualification Framework is used by the world's most successful sales teams.  Andy and I bond over our passion for complex technology sales, our ADHD superpowers, and have a Pretty Good time doing it. Check out:Tweeling Books | 10% discount | code: CARA10 | https://www.tweelingbooks.ca/Kits Scrubs | 15% discount | code: prettygoodpodcast15 | https://kitscrubs.com/Dazzle by Pari | 15% discount | code: TPGP15 | https://www.dazzlebypari.com/Cole Young | coletayloryoung@gmail.com | @colethegod

Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast, I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. The world of sales is becoming increasingly complex with more stakeholders involved in buying decisions, intensifying competition, and rapidly changing expectations of the skills and knowledge that sellers need to be successful. In navigating this complexity, the MEDDICC methodology can help provide a common language for everyone in the sales organization to more efficiently and effectively qualify deals and generate a clear path to success. Andy Whyte's book, “MEDDICC,” lays out strategies and best practices to successfully implement the MEDDICC methodology, and I’m so excited to have him on the podcast today to share some of the key insights from his book. With that, Andy, could you please introduce yourself to our audience and then tell us a little bit more about your book. Andy Whyte: Yeah. Hey Olivia, very good morning to you. Hello to the audience. Thank you very much for having me on the show. I’ve been listening to the back catalog, and I’ve been really enjoying the episodes so it’s great to be on the show, thank you for having me. As you said, my name is Andy Whyte. At heart, I’m a sales guy. That’s pretty much what I’ve always done since leaving school. Went into sales and started doing door to door sales selling home improvements, then worked in a cell phone store selling cell phones, and then got into SaaS and started climbing the ladder up of doing more senior roles and taking on larger propositions from selling to SMB's to selling to enterprises and all different kinds of SaaS solutions. More recently, I went into sales leadership within the last five or six years with a couple of different startups. The book came about really for a couple of reasons. One was I stumbled across MEDDICC myself as an individual contributor back in 2014 or 2015, and I just felt like it was something that as soon as I learned about it, I was like where’s this been all of my career? I don’t know anyone else who’s ever stumbled across some methodology or something, but it just made me feel, not happy because I’d found it, but sad because of all the time I’d wasted on deals before and deals that I’d lost and all this stuff. I could have saved myself the heartache if I had MEDDICC, so I embraced MEDDICC, loved it. It really helped me as an individual contributor, and then as a sales leader it helped me a lot as well in enterprising up the teams I was leading. One of the strange things around MEDDICC is it's 25 years old this year, but no one really had ever stopped to document it or put any kind of book together for it. I definitely saw that as an opportunity to put some of my ideas and thoughts around MEDDICC down on paper. What started as a first blog post iterated into where we are today with a book and a lot of great experiences that have come from that. That's the background story of myself and MEDDICC. OF: Fantastic. Well, again, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today to dive a little deeper into your book, which I know I personally learned so much from. In the book, you note that MEDDICC is a qualification methodology, so I’m curious, how does that differ from a traditional sales methodology and what makes MEDDICC different and unique compared to some of the other qualification methodologies that are out there? AW: Yeah, that’s a great and actually really important question because it’s funny, it is a methodology of course, MEDDICC you can call a framework as well. I tend to swap between both of them. It’s in sales, so by definition you’d say, well, isn’t it a sales methodology? I guess you could call it that. The only reason why I like to point out and not refer to it as a sales methodology is because generally, the definition of a sales methodology is how you talk to your customers, how you engage with your customers. MEDDICC is much more around qualifying where you are with those customers, should you be engaged with those customers. It doesn’t necessarily dictate how you should engage and what messaging to use and how to talk to the customers. Likewise, the same with the sales process. Some people refer to it as a sales process, and it’s not. It’s a framework that sits underneath the methodology and the process, and the reason why it’s important just to differentiate the two is that you can really only have one sales process and one sales methodology. If you were to think of MEDDICC as being a sales methodology, you would assume that you can’t overlay it over the top of the framework methodology you already have. That's why it’s important to differentiate the two. Then when you think about MEDDICC as a qualification framework or methodology, it’s funny how when you get into the qualification framework world, it seems to be a world of acronyms. I can’t even remember most of them. The most famous ones are obviously MEDDICC and BANT. There’s a whole load of other ones. There’s one called CHAMP. There’s some with G's and C's and all this sort of stuff in there. I think where MEDDICC really comes into its own is that it sees you all the way through the sales process and beyond into post-sales and actually pre-sales process. MEDDICC looks so broadly, not just at the qualifying actual moment in time, but it talks about who you’re going to be working with, the proposition that you’re taking to those people, and what would those people be interested in. It can really go pre-sale as well and start to help influence how you market your products and how you message the value of those products as well. And how, of course, all the people internally talk about the different stages of revenue. That's where I think MEDDICC really comes into its own. It’s not to say that the other qualification frameworks aren’t good, but it goes very broadly across the entire sales process. OF: Definitely. As you mentioned, MEDDICC is an acronym and in the book, you walk through each of the different stages of the MEDDICC methodology and also some additions that companies are beginning to use. At a high level, I’d love if you could just dive into what those stages are, and also when it might be appropriate to supplement them with some of those additional steps. AW: Yeah, no great question. As I said a moment ago, MEDDICC is 25 years old this year and it was born inside of a company called PTC. Really where it came from was a guy called Dick Dunkel who invented it. He worked in sales enablement, probably one of the firsts, PTC was probably the very first people to do sales enablement, and he’d come out from the field with the task of helping PTC to level up all the new salespeople they were hiring. One of the exercises they did was to look at why PTC were winning deals, why they were losing deals, and why deals were slipping. What he found wherever he went, whatever sales team inside of PTC he went to, was that there was a continuity in the answers to those questions. These actually rolled up to being the elements of MEDDICC, which was at the time six elements, which is MEDDIC with just one C on the end and two D's. That obviously served us very well. It’s proliferated almost like no other methodology since that time, but what’s actually happened as technology landscapes have evolved, there’s been two particular elements that have come into be popularized inside of MEDDICC. That’s why a lot of people will know MEDDICC as MEDDPICC because it has an extra P in there. As I said, one of those letters is the “P,” which generally stands for paper process. What this is, it goes without saying, but it’s the process that occurs when you start to talk about contracts. SLSA's, DPA’s, there’s all of these three-letter acronyms that exist now that weren't around when MEDDICC was created because generally it was on premise software, you owned the licenses and data privacy wasn’t such a big thing. The paper process has become much more complicated. It’s also the big reason why deals slip, because of the paper process. What a lot of organizations will do is they’ll call the extra P out and that's why the extra P stands for paper process. The extra C is for competition, which again is a similar situation as time has evolved. Now, I think there’s something like a hundred new SAS companies a day. Competition is not just your rival solutions, there are other initiatives that exist that could be taking the same budget or resources that you're going for. It’s not just about money, it could be that the teams are helping to implement whatever solution you’re talking about. Inertia is a competitor as well, the customer just staying with what they’ve done or what they’ve already got. Then of course they can build it and sell so easily now with cloud structure and that sort of thing. Competition becomes much more of a thing today than it used to be all those years ago. That’s why you had the two letters in. For anyone that’s listening that doesn’t know anything about MEDDICC or know what the other letters are, very super high level, you’ve got the “M,” which is for the metrics. These are the quantifiable measures of value, so this is the KPIs if you like. The economic buyer, this is the overall authority, the best way of finding this person is the person to say no and others say yes, and they say yes while others say no. Then you have the two “D's,” which stand for decision criteria, decision process. It’s the what and the how the customer is going to make a decision-type process I talked about. The “I” stands for identify the pain or implicate the pain, which speaks for itself. Then you’ve got the champion, which is for me, the most important part of MEDDICC. It’s the one person who’s going to be your person inside of the customer who’s giving you information, helping you to navigate towards a successful outcome. Then as I said the next one after that is the second “C” for competition, which I talked about. OF: That’s great. One of the key points that stood out to me is you also highlight the importance of discovery, but specifically how it should be thought of as a mindset rather than a stage. I’d love if you could explain that a little bit further. Why is that mindset of discovery impactful in enterprise sales? AW: Yeah, great question. I might be a bit controversial here, but I’m going to go as far as saying, if you’re a salesperson and you’re not doing discovery, then you’re not being a salesperson. You’re being an order taker because if you can’t learn from the customer and adapt to suit the challenges and goals that they’re trying to aspire to or solve then you really are just going to be talking about your own product. Hopefully, if it works out for you, if you’ve got a good product and it’s well suited, then you’ll be taking the order. That’s the first thing I'll say is proper selling cannot be done without discovery. Why I say it's a mindset is because it’s not really about going in with a bank of questions that you need to try and find the answers to. Quite often when people have that mindset of, I just need to do this stage of discovery, it’s not a great experience for the customer. On the other end, it feels a bit like an interrogation. The mindset of discovery is to be genuinely curious because inside of you, you know that to really have the best chance of finding a good fit for your solution, you need to really genuinely understand the customer’s business. You need to understand their goals, you need to understand their challenges, you need to understand where they want to get to and what could be hurdles in the way for them there. Then see, and this is a really important thing, see whether your solution is a good one. Not always will it be a good fit. It may be that the customer does not have enough interest. It may be that your solution is not the right solution for them. I think that we really need to popularize qualifying out in sales. As much as you should be curious to try and find opportunity and strengths for your solution, you should also be thinking, well, do I really want to have to invest the amount of time the deal needs if it’s not going to work out for me, if it’s not going to be a right opportunity for me. Having that very open-minded genuine curiosity is going to lean you into finding real value that you can uncover. Then where MEDDICC comes into that, I always look at it like this. Generally, in discovery you’re trying to understand a few things. You understand the lay of the land you’re trying to qualify, but you’re really trying to find some pain. I quite liken it to a bit like mining for gems is the discovery, and finding the pain is like finding a gemstone, maybe they call it a diamond. Where MEDDICC comes in is it’s going to help you turn what is still a valuable gemstone, it’s going to help you turn that into a diamond ring by putting metrics against what the value of solving that pain would be. That’s where the pain, the metrics, buddy up to. The other point on this actually, which is important, why discovery is a process is because it's something you do throughout the deal. In enterprise sales by nature, they’re generally complex, they're generally long, there’s generally multiple stakeholders involved. Every single stakeholder, every different part of the deal, have new things to learn and will adapt and shift. If you’re up against a good competitor, they’ll be trying to adapt and shift it towards their strengths and towards your weaknesses. You have to be in your toes to make sure you bring it back towards yourself. Discovery is something you should be doing right up until the ink on the signature for the contract is drying That’s in my mind how I see it. OF: Great. You touched on some of the skills that make salespeople successful just now but explore that a little bit more in the context of today. As the world of work has evolved really rapidly in the past year, the skills that are required to be successful in sales have also now evolved as well. In the book, you talk about some of the characteristics of great sellers. I’m curious from your perspective, what are some of the key attributes of really elite salespeople in today’s environment? AW: Yeah, I have one favorite for this and it’s definitely not something that I came up with, but it’s something I heard and it’s outside of sales and it really resonates with me. This is the idea of taking action over having the intention to take action and actually being able to take action. I think that’s something that in sales is critically important. That’s really the difference for me between the elite salespeople and those that could be elite who have all the skills, have all the knowledge, have all the experience, but just never quite make that step up to being what we know as elite. The best example that I think will resonate with the audience on this is we’ve all been in those team deal reviews, where somebody is presenting a deal and as a team, it’s a great thing. One of the things I love about sales is how we can come together as different professionals who have different roles in sales and hear someone talk about their deal and brainstorm how we can help them make progress. Wherever I worked, there’s always been a salesperson who is not elite, but they know all the answers. They’ve got the answer for everybody’s problem in their deal, and they’ll tell you it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. That is having intention for me, they know what the right things to do are, but when it’s really, really important, they don’t do it. In a MEDDICC sense, they’ll know how important it is to access the economic buyer. They’ll talk about it to everybody, but they won’t do it themselves. They’ll say, well, it’s hard to get there and all this stuff, which it is of course, but that’s kind of the beauty of it. For me to answer your question, it’s really about taking that next step to taking action. In reference to this world we’re in right now where most of our meetings are remote, we’re missing out on that beautiful time that we never really valued before, which is the time where you’d meet the customer in their reception area, and they’d walk you to the office room and then you get to the meeting room and then you’d get the walk back. That might only be 10 minutes, but in that 10 minutes you would build rapport, you would build relations, you could ask for debriefs, you can ask for an insight ahead of the meeting, all that kind of stuff. We don’t get that anymore, but we can. That’s the difference between action and intent. You can most definitely put some time in with that potential champion let’s say before the meeting. You can put some time in after the meeting. In fact, you could top and tail any meeting you have with anyone else by doing that. That’s what the elite sellers will do. Those that are a little bit below elite will know that that’s a good thing to do, they know that’s within their grasp, but they won’t take that step. That’s probably an example of the difference between elite in today's world. OF: I love that. Another thing that it really stood out to me in your book is you write that the most significant factor to the success of your MEDDICC implementation lies in your frontline sales managers’ hands and enablement often works very closely with frontline sales managers. I’m curious if you have any advice for how enablement can give frontline managers the support that they need to properly execute the implementation and really engage them as champions of the process? AW: Yeah, that is a fantastic question. I think being a frontline sales manager is one of the loneliest jobs in sales because you’re in this accountability sandwich where above you, self-leadership, we’re always asking you for numbers, for the reports, all this stuff. Below, your sales team is looking to you to protect them from the noise above, but also help empower them. You don’t really have, except for your peers themselves, but they’re also in a funny way because it’s a competitive industry they're almost your competitors and you have sales managers on the same level as you, you don’t really have anyone who's your buddy, except for sales enablement. Sales enablement are the people, especially in a MEDDICC implementation, who are like your secret weapon for success because what you need for successful implementation of MEDDICC above anything else is momentum. You need to have some forward momentum and wins with it. What I mean by that is, you’ll know this much better than I and your audience will know this a million times better than I do, there’s this thing that happens in all good sales organizations that are trying to evolve and develop and move themselves forward where one minute or one month it will be a new sales tool that comes in. It’s a new analytics tool. It’s going to help you figure out something that you didn’t know about your deals. The next minute it’s a new sales methodology. What tends to happen is you get this flavor of the month scenario happen and underneath it, the sales team, the individual contributors are like okay, what is it this month. MEDDICC, okay, we’ll be hearing about MEDDICC for the next month I guess and then it’ll be something else. What you need to really turn the tide with that kind of mentality is you need to be able to show the value to the salespeople. The great thing about MEDDICC is aside from managers, as an individual contributor, it can really help you to figure out what you need to do with your deals regardless of anyone else around you. To get the salespeople to have that mentality, they need to see some wins. Sales enablement is like the best friend for sales managers there because they can help keep the managers on their toes, help share best practice with them, remind them because as you know, sales managers have a lot of things on their mind. Reminding them of certain elements of MEDDICC that could help in certain scenarios and share successes. I think just that as a partnership really, really helps. Then there’ll be a lot of things in the sales enablement locker, a lot of documentation, a lot of collateral that relates very closely to MEDDICC. I think that bringing those into decision criteria is a great example. Decision criteria are really around, especially technical decision criteria, it’ll be around what are the criteria for which the customers base that decision? Well, most good sales organizers I know have a document that suits that. It’s about sales enablement empowering people to get that document across. The last thing I’ll say on this point is that where MEDDICC really comes into its own is as a common language for the revenue teams to use. It means everyone is talking about the same thing the same way. An example of this, champion is probably the most used phrase in sales. Outside of MEDDICC, if you meet two different salespeople, they’ll have completely different definitions of what a champion is. What MEDDICC does helps you define what is a champion? What is this part of it? What are the metrics? It’s really going to help sales enablement and sales managers to increase the efficiency of their conversations and really make sure they’re talking about the right things. When they are talking about the same thing, they’re defining it the same way as well. OF: Absolutely. I just have one final question for you. We’ve talked a little bit about the complexity of sales today and I’m curious to learn, how can MEDDICC really help foster deep engagement with customers given this increasing complexity? AW: Yeah, that is a good question. I think one of the things that’s adding complexity to sales today is the massive choice that customers have. As I mentioned earlier, when we think about competition, it’s not just solutions that are rivals of yours, you’ve got other initiatives and other things that the customer could be looking to do. It could be looking just to stay the same. Risk is dangerous, change is risky. Build it themselves is another thing. Then there’s this whole other scenario, which is that whilst there are of course people listening to this that will have Germany working for an organization who has a solution and you may have two, three, maybe five other vendors that do a similar solution. There’s this whole Venn diagram now of solution providers that do the same thing and then something else, and then something else. As a customer, you can have 10 options to solve that one thing you want to do and some will do it very well, but some will do it not quite as well, but they’ll do all these other things as well. That creates a lot of complexity for customers. The thing I think salespeople always forget is that our customers are not professional buyers. 99% of their day job is spent doing their job. They only spend 1% thinking about buying that bit of software to help them do their job. They're not out there spending all day reading G2 Crowd and all this stuff. They’re not necessarily experts in buying, so what you really need to be able to do is to approach the customer with, again, that curious mindset to really understand what it is they’re trying to solve and genuinely talking about how your solution can help solve that problem, if it can. Sometimes, like I said earlier, sometimes you may not be the best person to help them. One thing is for sure, if you went into an engagement with a customer and you were to genuinely take an interest in what they were trying to solve, what their problems were, and you turned around and said, hey look, thank you for your time today, but actually, I don’t think we’re the right fit for you, let me help you put you in the right direction of who is, I guarantee you a year, two years, five years down the line, when that person is an ideal prospect for you, that person will take your call and meet you 100%. You would have bought so much credibility and that person is probably likely to introduce you to other people that you can help. I think this is a long game. I think if you have a long game mindset in sales, it will help you out a lot. The short answer to that question, other than that long version, would to be that trusted advisor to your customers and have that genuine curiosity to help them solve their problems. You’ll be surprised at just how much more information the customer provides you if that helps you do your job better. OF: That’s great. Well, Andy, thank you so much again for making the time to join our podcast today. I certainly learned so much from you and I know our audience did too. Thanks again. AW: Well, thank you for having me on and thanks everyone for listening. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening for more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast, I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. The world of sales is becoming increasingly complex with more stakeholders involved in buying decisions, intensifying competition, and rapidly changing expectations of the skills and knowledge that sellers need to be successful. In navigating this complexity, the MEDDICC methodology can help provide a common language for everyone in the sales organization to more efficiently and effectively qualify deals and generate a clear path to success. Andy Whyte's book, “MEDDICC,” lays out strategies and best practices to successfully implement the MEDDICC methodology, and I’m so excited to have him on the podcast today to share some of the key insights from his book. With that, Andy, could you please introduce yourself to our audience and then tell us a little bit more about your book. Andy Whyte: Yeah. Hey Olivia, very good morning to you. Hello to the audience. Thank you very much for having me on the show. I’ve been listening to the back catalog, and I’ve been really enjoying the episodes so it’s great to be on the show, thank you for having me. As you said, my name is Andy Whyte. At heart, I’m a sales guy. That’s pretty much what I’ve always done since leaving school. Went into sales and started doing door to door sales selling home improvements, then worked in a cell phone store selling cell phones, and then got into SaaS and started climbing the ladder up of doing more senior roles and taking on larger propositions from selling to SMB's to selling to enterprises and all different kinds of SaaS solutions. More recently, I went into sales leadership within the last five or six years with a couple of different startups. The book came about really for a couple of reasons. One was I stumbled across MEDDICC myself as an individual contributor back in 2014 or 2015, and I just felt like it was something that as soon as I learned about it, I was like where’s this been all of my career? I don’t know anyone else who’s ever stumbled across some methodology or something, but it just made me feel, not happy because I’d found it, but sad because of all the time I’d wasted on deals before and deals that I’d lost and all this stuff. I could have saved myself the heartache if I had MEDDICC, so I embraced MEDDICC, loved it. It really helped me as an individual contributor, and then as a sales leader it helped me a lot as well in enterprising up the teams I was leading. One of the strange things around MEDDICC is it's 25 years old this year, but no one really had ever stopped to document it or put any kind of book together for it. I definitely saw that as an opportunity to put some of my ideas and thoughts around MEDDICC down on paper. What started as a first blog post iterated into where we are today with a book and a lot of great experiences that have come from that. That's the background story of myself and MEDDICC. OF: Fantastic. Well, again, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today to dive a little deeper into your book, which I know I personally learned so much from. In the book, you note that MEDDICC is a qualification methodology, so I’m curious, how does that differ from a traditional sales methodology and what makes MEDDICC different and unique compared to some of the other qualification methodologies that are out there? AW: Yeah, that’s a great and actually really important question because it’s funny, it is a methodology of course, MEDDICC you can call a framework as well. I tend to swap between both of them. It’s in sales, so by definition you’d say, well, isn’t it a sales methodology? I guess you could call it that. The only reason why I like to point out and not refer to it as a sales methodology is because generally, the definition of a sales methodology is how you talk to your customers, how you engage with your customers. MEDDICC is much more around qualifying where you are with those customers, should you be engaged with those customers. It doesn’t necessarily dictate how you should engage and what messaging to use and how to talk to the customers. Likewise, the same with the sales process. Some people refer to it as a sales process, and it’s not. It’s a framework that sits underneath the methodology and the process, and the reason why it’s important just to differentiate the two is that you can really only have one sales process and one sales methodology. If you were to think of MEDDICC as being a sales methodology, you would assume that you can’t overlay it over the top of the framework methodology you already have. That's why it’s important to differentiate the two. Then when you think about MEDDICC as a qualification framework or methodology, it’s funny how when you get into the qualification framework world, it seems to be a world of acronyms. I can’t even remember most of them. The most famous ones are obviously MEDDICC and BANT. There’s a whole load of other ones. There’s one called CHAMP. There’s some with G's and C's and all this sort of stuff in there. I think where MEDDICC really comes into its own is that it sees you all the way through the sales process and beyond into post-sales and actually pre-sales process. MEDDICC looks so broadly, not just at the qualifying actual moment in time, but it talks about who you’re going to be working with, the proposition that you’re taking to those people, and what would those people be interested in. It can really go pre-sale as well and start to help influence how you market your products and how you message the value of those products as well. And how, of course, all the people internally talk about the different stages of revenue. That's where I think MEDDICC really comes into its own. It’s not to say that the other qualification frameworks aren’t good, but it goes very broadly across the entire sales process. OF: Definitely. As you mentioned, MEDDICC is an acronym and in the book, you walk through each of the different stages of the MEDDICC methodology and also some additions that companies are beginning to use. At a high level, I’d love if you could just dive into what those stages are, and also when it might be appropriate to supplement them with some of those additional steps. AW: Yeah, no great question. As I said a moment ago, MEDDICC is 25 years old this year and it was born inside of a company called PTC. Really where it came from was a guy called Dick Dunkel who invented it. He worked in sales enablement, probably one of the firsts, PTC was probably the very first people to do sales enablement, and he’d come out from the field with the task of helping PTC to level up all the new salespeople they were hiring. One of the exercises they did was to look at why PTC were winning deals, why they were losing deals, and why deals were slipping. What he found wherever he went, whatever sales team inside of PTC he went to, was that there was a continuity in the answers to those questions. These actually rolled up to being the elements of MEDDICC, which was at the time six elements, which is MEDDIC with just one C on the end and two D's. That obviously served us very well. It’s proliferated almost like no other methodology since that time, but what’s actually happened as technology landscapes have evolved, there’s been two particular elements that have come into be popularized inside of MEDDICC. That’s why a lot of people will know MEDDICC as MEDDPICC because it has an extra P in there. As I said, one of those letters is the “P,” which generally stands for paper process. What this is, it goes without saying, but it’s the process that occurs when you start to talk about contracts. SLSA's, DPA’s, there’s all of these three-letter acronyms that exist now that weren't around when MEDDICC was created because generally it was on premise software, you owned the licenses and data privacy wasn’t such a big thing. The paper process has become much more complicated. It’s also the big reason why deals slip, because of the paper process. What a lot of organizations will do is they’ll call the extra P out and that's why the extra P stands for paper process. The extra C is for competition, which again is a similar situation as time has evolved. Now, I think there’s something like a hundred new SAS companies a day. Competition is not just your rival solutions, there are other initiatives that exist that could be taking the same budget or resources that you're going for. It’s not just about money, it could be that the teams are helping to implement whatever solution you’re talking about. Inertia is a competitor as well, the customer just staying with what they’ve done or what they’ve already got. Then of course they can build it and sell so easily now with cloud structure and that sort of thing. Competition becomes much more of a thing today than it used to be all those years ago. That’s why you had the two letters in. For anyone that’s listening that doesn’t know anything about MEDDICC or know what the other letters are, very super high level, you’ve got the “M,” which is for the metrics. These are the quantifiable measures of value, so this is the KPIs if you like. The economic buyer, this is the overall authority, the best way of finding this person is the person to say no and others say yes, and they say yes while others say no. Then you have the two “D's,” which stand for decision criteria, decision process. It’s the what and the how the customer is going to make a decision-type process I talked about. The “I” stands for identify the pain or implicate the pain, which speaks for itself. Then you’ve got the champion, which is for me, the most important part of MEDDICC. It’s the one person who’s going to be your person inside of the customer who’s giving you information, helping you to navigate towards a successful outcome. Then as I said the next one after that is the second “C” for competition, which I talked about. OF: That’s great. One of the key points that stood out to me is you also highlight the importance of discovery, but specifically how it should be thought of as a mindset rather than a stage. I’d love if you could explain that a little bit further. Why is that mindset of discovery impactful in enterprise sales? AW: Yeah, great question. I might be a bit controversial here, but I’m going to go as far as saying, if you’re a salesperson and you’re not doing discovery, then you’re not being a salesperson. You’re being an order taker because if you can’t learn from the customer and adapt to suit the challenges and goals that they’re trying to aspire to or solve then you really are just going to be talking about your own product. Hopefully, if it works out for you, if you’ve got a good product and it’s well suited, then you’ll be taking the order. That’s the first thing I'll say is proper selling cannot be done without discovery. Why I say it's a mindset is because it’s not really about going in with a bank of questions that you need to try and find the answers to. Quite often when people have that mindset of, I just need to do this stage of discovery, it’s not a great experience for the customer. On the other end, it feels a bit like an interrogation. The mindset of discovery is to be genuinely curious because inside of you, you know that to really have the best chance of finding a good fit for your solution, you need to really genuinely understand the customer’s business. You need to understand their goals, you need to understand their challenges, you need to understand where they want to get to and what could be hurdles in the way for them there. Then see, and this is a really important thing, see whether your solution is a good one. Not always will it be a good fit. It may be that the customer does not have enough interest. It may be that your solution is not the right solution for them. I think that we really need to popularize qualifying out in sales. As much as you should be curious to try and find opportunity and strengths for your solution, you should also be thinking, well, do I really want to have to invest the amount of time the deal needs if it’s not going to work out for me, if it’s not going to be a right opportunity for me. Having that very open-minded genuine curiosity is going to lean you into finding real value that you can uncover. Then where MEDDICC comes into that, I always look at it like this. Generally, in discovery you’re trying to understand a few things. You understand the lay of the land you’re trying to qualify, but you’re really trying to find some pain. I quite liken it to a bit like mining for gems is the discovery, and finding the pain is like finding a gemstone, maybe they call it a diamond. Where MEDDICC comes in is it’s going to help you turn what is still a valuable gemstone, it’s going to help you turn that into a diamond ring by putting metrics against what the value of solving that pain would be. That’s where the pain, the metrics, buddy up to. The other point on this actually, which is important, why discovery is a process is because it's something you do throughout the deal. In enterprise sales by nature, they’re generally complex, they're generally long, there’s generally multiple stakeholders involved. Every single stakeholder, every different part of the deal, have new things to learn and will adapt and shift. If you’re up against a good competitor, they’ll be trying to adapt and shift it towards their strengths and towards your weaknesses. You have to be in your toes to make sure you bring it back towards yourself. Discovery is something you should be doing right up until the ink on the signature for the contract is drying That’s in my mind how I see it. OF: Great. You touched on some of the skills that make salespeople successful just now but explore that a little bit more in the context of today. As the world of work has evolved really rapidly in the past year, the skills that are required to be successful in sales have also now evolved as well. In the book, you talk about some of the characteristics of great sellers. I’m curious from your perspective, what are some of the key attributes of really elite salespeople in today’s environment? AW: Yeah, I have one favorite for this and it’s definitely not something that I came up with, but it’s something I heard and it’s outside of sales and it really resonates with me. This is the idea of taking action over having the intention to take action and actually being able to take action. I think that’s something that in sales is critically important. That’s really the difference for me between the elite salespeople and those that could be elite who have all the skills, have all the knowledge, have all the experience, but just never quite make that step up to being what we know as elite. The best example that I think will resonate with the audience on this is we’ve all been in those team deal reviews, where somebody is presenting a deal and as a team, it’s a great thing. One of the things I love about sales is how we can come together as different professionals who have different roles in sales and hear someone talk about their deal and brainstorm how we can help them make progress. Wherever I worked, there’s always been a salesperson who is not elite, but they know all the answers. They’ve got the answer for everybody’s problem in their deal, and they’ll tell you it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. That is having intention for me, they know what the right things to do are, but when it’s really, really important, they don’t do it. In a MEDDICC sense, they’ll know how important it is to access the economic buyer. They’ll talk about it to everybody, but they won’t do it themselves. They’ll say, well, it’s hard to get there and all this stuff, which it is of course, but that’s kind of the beauty of it. For me to answer your question, it’s really about taking that next step to taking action. In reference to this world we’re in right now where most of our meetings are remote, we’re missing out on that beautiful time that we never really valued before, which is the time where you’d meet the customer in their reception area, and they’d walk you to the office room and then you get to the meeting room and then you’d get the walk back. That might only be 10 minutes, but in that 10 minutes you would build rapport, you would build relations, you could ask for debriefs, you can ask for an insight ahead of the meeting, all that kind of stuff. We don’t get that anymore, but we can. That’s the difference between action and intent. You can most definitely put some time in with that potential champion let’s say before the meeting. You can put some time in after the meeting. In fact, you could top and tail any meeting you have with anyone else by doing that. That’s what the elite sellers will do. Those that are a little bit below elite will know that that’s a good thing to do, they know that’s within their grasp, but they won’t take that step. That’s probably an example of the difference between elite in today's world. OF: I love that. Another thing that it really stood out to me in your book is you write that the most significant factor to the success of your MEDDICC implementation lies in your frontline sales managers’ hands and enablement often works very closely with frontline sales managers. I’m curious if you have any advice for how enablement can give frontline managers the support that they need to properly execute the implementation and really engage them as champions of the process? AW: Yeah, that is a fantastic question. I think being a frontline sales manager is one of the loneliest jobs in sales because you’re in this accountability sandwich where above you, self-leadership, we’re always asking you for numbers, for the reports, all this stuff. Below, your sales team is looking to you to protect them from the noise above, but also help empower them. You don’t really have, except for your peers themselves, but they’re also in a funny way because it’s a competitive industry they're almost your competitors and you have sales managers on the same level as you, you don’t really have anyone who's your buddy, except for sales enablement. Sales enablement are the people, especially in a MEDDICC implementation, who are like your secret weapon for success because what you need for successful implementation of MEDDICC above anything else is momentum. You need to have some forward momentum and wins with it. What I mean by that is, you’ll know this much better than I and your audience will know this a million times better than I do, there’s this thing that happens in all good sales organizations that are trying to evolve and develop and move themselves forward where one minute or one month it will be a new sales tool that comes in. It’s a new analytics tool. It’s going to help you figure out something that you didn’t know about your deals. The next minute it’s a new sales methodology. What tends to happen is you get this flavor of the month scenario happen and underneath it, the sales team, the individual contributors are like okay, what is it this month. MEDDICC, okay, we’ll be hearing about MEDDICC for the next month I guess and then it’ll be something else. What you need to really turn the tide with that kind of mentality is you need to be able to show the value to the salespeople. The great thing about MEDDICC is aside from managers, as an individual contributor, it can really help you to figure out what you need to do with your deals regardless of anyone else around you. To get the salespeople to have that mentality, they need to see some wins. Sales enablement is like the best friend for sales managers there because they can help keep the managers on their toes, help share best practice with them, remind them because as you know, sales managers have a lot of things on their mind. Reminding them of certain elements of MEDDICC that could help in certain scenarios and share successes. I think just that as a partnership really, really helps. Then there’ll be a lot of things in the sales enablement locker, a lot of documentation, a lot of collateral that relates very closely to MEDDICC. I think that bringing those into decision criteria is a great example. Decision criteria are really around, especially technical decision criteria, it’ll be around what are the criteria for which the customers base that decision? Well, most good sales organizers I know have a document that suits that. It’s about sales enablement empowering people to get that document across. The last thing I’ll say on this point is that where MEDDICC really comes into its own is as a common language for the revenue teams to use. It means everyone is talking about the same thing the same way. An example of this, champion is probably the most used phrase in sales. Outside of MEDDICC, if you meet two different salespeople, they’ll have completely different definitions of what a champion is. What MEDDICC does helps you define what is a champion? What is this part of it? What are the metrics? It’s really going to help sales enablement and sales managers to increase the efficiency of their conversations and really make sure they’re talking about the right things. When they are talking about the same thing, they’re defining it the same way as well. OF: Absolutely. I just have one final question for you. We’ve talked a little bit about the complexity of sales today and I’m curious to learn, how can MEDDICC really help foster deep engagement with customers given this increasing complexity? AW: Yeah, that is a good question. I think one of the things that’s adding complexity to sales today is the massive choice that customers have. As I mentioned earlier, when we think about competition, it’s not just solutions that are rivals of yours, you’ve got other initiatives and other things that the customer could be looking to do. It could be looking just to stay the same. Risk is dangerous, change is risky. Build it themselves is another thing. Then there’s this whole other scenario, which is that whilst there are of course people listening to this that will have Germany working for an organization who has a solution and you may have two, three, maybe five other vendors that do a similar solution. There’s this whole Venn diagram now of solution providers that do the same thing and then something else, and then something else. As a customer, you can have 10 options to solve that one thing you want to do and some will do it very well, but some will do it not quite as well, but they’ll do all these other things as well. That creates a lot of complexity for customers. The thing I think salespeople always forget is that our customers are not professional buyers. 99% of their day job is spent doing their job. They only spend 1% thinking about buying that bit of software to help them do their job. They're not out there spending all day reading G2 Crowd and all this stuff. They’re not necessarily experts in buying, so what you really need to be able to do is to approach the customer with, again, that curious mindset to really understand what it is they’re trying to solve and genuinely talking about how your solution can help solve that problem, if it can. Sometimes, like I said earlier, sometimes you may not be the best person to help them. One thing is for sure, if you went into an engagement with a customer and you were to genuinely take an interest in what they were trying to solve, what their problems were, and you turned around and said, hey look, thank you for your time today, but actually, I don’t think we’re the right fit for you, let me help you put you in the right direction of who is, I guarantee you a year, two years, five years down the line, when that person is an ideal prospect for you, that person will take your call and meet you 100%. You would have bought so much credibility and that person is probably likely to introduce you to other people that you can help. I think this is a long game. I think if you have a long game mindset in sales, it will help you out a lot. The short answer to that question, other than that long version, would to be that trusted advisor to your customers and have that genuine curiosity to help them solve their problems. You’ll be surprised at just how much more information the customer provides you if that helps you do your job better. OF: That’s great. Well, Andy, thank you so much again for making the time to join our podcast today. I certainly learned so much from you and I know our audience did too. Thanks again. AW: Well, thank you for having me on and thanks everyone for listening. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening for more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Our guest on the Sales Code Leadership Podcast this week is Andy Whyte who talks here about giving value as a leader and creating a network effect around you as a leader. Andy has himself, interviewed many great sales leaders for his own podcast and shares many insights and advice for those aspiring to move into a sales leadership position in the tech sector. Andy at heart is a sales guy. To be more precise a sales geek. After a short stint in working in theatre, he started his career selling double glazing door to door before moving into retail and then B2B sales in the SaaS sector where he has been since. Having worked at a number of companies, from pre-launch start-ups through to giant corporations like Oracle, Andy has built a broad experience of sales and sales leadership that when combined with his love for the sales qualification framework MEDDICC has led to him writing a book on the topic which was closely followed by an online MEDDPICC Masterclass with many more innovations in the pipeline.

Andy Whyte joins me on the podcast to talk about MEDDICC as a qualification framework in our sales process.You'll Learn:1. MEDDICC or BANT?2. How to deal with metrics when you don't yet have tangible ROI of your product or solution?3. How to get MEDDICC right in your deals. About Andy WhyteWhat I love about sales is how closely correlated to sports it is.The most elite athlete can lift any team up and help them win.However, an elite athlete needs much more than just natural ability.- The elite athlete needs discipline- The elite athlete needs to understand the field- The elite athlete needs to know the plays- The elite athlete needs to know how to win - their own strengths and their opponent's weaknessesSubsequently when compared to an average athlete:- The elite athlete will find more opportunities to score- The elite athlete will convert more of those opportunities- The elite athlete will convert more points from those opportunities , and,- The elite athlete will score more those points more quicklyNow replace the word 'athlete' above with 'seller.'If you extend this analogy to Mixed Martial Arts, then the fighters' natural abilities, such as their strength, speed, and agility, are important. But, in a fight between a naturally gifted fighter with no framework and an overweight, untalented, old, and out-of-practice fighter who has a black belt in a martial art... my money is on the black belt ALL DAY!!In sales, you can be the most naturally gifted seller in the world. But, if you go into enterprise-level deals without a framework, you are going to get hurt. You are going to get beaten by less talented sellers who follow a framework.In this analogy, MEDDIC is the OG. MEDDIC is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu of the sales frameworks and methodologies world.The world's greatest MMA gyms and the world champions they produce tend to use Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, just as the world's greatest sales teams use MEDDIC.MMA fighters' use of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has evolved over the decades to adapt to the octagon's changing landscape just as MEDDIC has evolved to suit the changing landscape of the enterprise (MEDDICC/MEDDPICC etc.).Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn't the only 'framework' in MMA. Champions have used Karate, Judo, Boxing, and Wrestling, but, put simply no other framework has the quantity of Champions as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Likewise, most Champion's who use one of the frameworks above also have a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu belt too.Just like how Jiu-Jitsu compliments other styles and frameworks, so does MEDDIC. It effortlessly collaborates with other frameworks and methodologies, helping sellers to meet their full potential.https://meddicc.com/andy-whyte/

Andy Whyte, who wrote the MEDDICC book talks about a proven method about how to open up the discussion on the initial sales call with a prospect. In this episode, I'll teach you how to open up the discussion on your sales call so your chances of success dramatically increase. Questions? Connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know!

Today on Masters of MEDDICC, I am joined Dick Dunkel, the creator of MEDDIC. Dick started his sales journey selling books door to door in college while studying civil engineering. His first professional sales job was with Xerox, followed by PTC. PTC would be where he came up with the six elements of MEDDIC. In this episode, Dick shares his experience from how he came up with MEDDIC through to how it has helped him shape his career, along with the tools he learned and carried onto future positions. One topic of particular interest is how Dick is using MEDDPICC at Celonis today to instill a qualification-focused sales process that helps sellers to remain on the right path and to get customer buy-in at every step. “When we lead as sellers, customers will follow”TIMESTAMPS:[00:30] Introduction to Dick Dunkel [02:53] Moving from Xerox to PTC         [04:26] What created a higher accountability environment at PTC?[09:31] The seller's mindset[09:48] A fair exchange of value[14:32] The very first MEDDIC implementation  [17:41] Developing an intermediate sales training class[21:54] Powerbase selling[22:55] MEDDIC as a wide concept[23:51] The correlation between the fastest-growing companies and how MEDDICC is deployed[28:10] The small wins [30:52] Managing the extra layers  [34:54] Pessimistic salespeople, but not when qualifying out KEY POINTS:1.     Create a high accountability environment by starting at the top and allowing it to trickle down to the sales rep.2.     Develop a fair exchange of value by, for example; singing an NDA in order to implement a free exchange of information3.     Small victories lead to bigger victories; operate by taking small steps and implementing MEDDICC.4.     The MEDDPICC checklist, a checklist you have to accomplish in that stage in order for you to advance. LINKS AND RELATED SOURCES:MEDDICC.com, the number one resource for MEDDIC onlineLearn MEDDPICC with the MEDDPICC Masterclass Watch more episodes and other MEDDIC related content on YouTubeMEDDPICC InstagramMEDDPICC on TwitterMEDDICC on LinkedIn

Andy Whyte, Author of "MEDDIC", Joins me to discuss his book, break down what MEDDIC stands for & answers the question, "Is MEDDIC just another sales methodology?"   Links https://www.linkedin.com/in/andywhyte/  https://meddicc.com/the-book/ 

While Gerry is out - CONGRATS on the new baby, Hilly! - Ryan is joined by Andy Whyte - Head of Sales at Branch and the Author of MEDDICC. They talk about the importance of the phone is moving the needle forward at the top of the funnel.