The Missing TV in MEDDIC
Why Alec Bladwin's Glengarry Glen Ross sales pitch is rubbish and how sales leaders can use trust and value to create a high performing culture
Sales has a terrible reputation.
“Coffee is for closers” makes for good cinema but is pernicious, outdated and dangerous for your clients, company and career! I love sales and here is why Alec Baldwin is so wrong.
TLDR: the short answer is CAC & LTV (cost of acquisition and lifetime value). Happy existing clients are cheaper to engage and provide more value over the life of the relationship than new customers.
Will the names on the infamous “Glengarry Leads” list recommend their friends after getting burned by Alec Baldwin’s hard sell? Yes a hard sell might get that $80k car but who will pay for the gas if none of your clients want to work with you ever again? High client churn kills software companies and will kill your career too!
The very best sales people I know build long-lasting client partnerships. These high performing individuals taught me the winning sales formula isn’t just Always Be Closing. It combines research, data, strategy, marketing, teamwork, charm and curiosity. Sales is the opportunity to be of service to clients or “rendre service aux clients”.
Before I jump into my missing TV theory
I want to define Enterprise sales, which is my main focus. Enterprise sales is defined as a minimum deal size of $100k+.
This deal size requires the identification of needs, a strong relationship with stakeholders and a trigger for change. An Enterprise deal is multi-threaded, meaning you reach a buying decision by engaging and influencing multiple stakeholders. Typical buyer teams include tech, product, marketing, finance, legal, security, data protection and procurement.
Fortunately, sales frameworks to increase the likelihood and predictability of winning big deals. My favorite is MEDDIC, an acronym for Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision Process, Decision Criteria, Identify Pain and Champion. Notice, the framework focuses on the client’s needs, not a product or feature.
A senior sales leader I spoke to recently argued that not every MEDDIC factor should be equally weighted - smart! His point was that Pain and Champion are the essential points in MEDDIC. If his team doesn’t have those two elements he discounts the likelihood of their deals closing.
I completely agree, however my biggest challenge is the assumption that prospects will share sensitive information with sales people.
In my experience, people don’t easily provide their company’s metrics, roadblocks, internal processes or power structure. Senior sales have the business acumen and experience to identify these elements, but how do sales leaders train more junior salespeople to do the same?
Hence the missing TV - Trust and Value!
Here are 4 easy steps with tactics and techniques that have helped me and my sales teams quickly built trust by adding value for our biggest prospects:
1) Add value early with:
Social selling
Post content to LinkedIn. Prospects should be aware of your company and have a positive impression of you as someone who engages, adds value and isn’t transactional.
Product knowledge
Know the metrics, onboarding process, and relevant features and use cases for your prospect’s peers. Promote best practices in writing and presentations to encourages prospects to reciprocate.
Recent news
Show you pay attention by sharing information about your prospect's company, competitors and industry (see step 3).
2) Do your prospect’s homework.
Understand the market, where they are growing and how you fit into their objectives. Here are several good public and private data sources:
Glassdoor and job boards
Identify growing departments and regions via job openings and new country launches. If you’re lucky you will find business metrics in the job description that spells out the metrics of success for each position. (Hat tip Raphael the master of this!)
Prospect’s website
How do they pitch themselves to their clients? Also investor and press communications are usually vetted by the CEO so a good sense of the high level business priorities.
Public company filings
Legally required to file information with national securities regulators, such as the Securities Exchange Commission in the US. These filings are often long and dry with hidden gems inside. The key sections focus on growth and risks.
Private companies
Not required to file documents but often publish fundraising announcements with plans to expand into new products and regions. Specialist research companies like CB Insights, Preqin, Crunchbase, and Pitchbook, track investors, news, and fundraising. Fundraising announcement trigger a company on many sales teams’ target list which leads to a lot of immediate outreach. Startup fundraising tends to happen in 12 to 18 month cycles. Rather than wait for an announcement, can you anticipate an upcoming fundraising for your main targets? Don’t ignore your existing clients’ fundraising announcements as this will prompt your competitors to engage!!!
Technographic data
For software that benefits from or is dependent on pre-existing technology, companies like Wappalyzer and BuiltWith provide data on 1+ million websites including their publishing platforms, Client Relationship Manager, analytics, payments provider, Cloud, CDN and marketing technology vendors.
Research the person you are meeting, and look for posts from key executives, relevant job titles and recent hires (especially previous users of your product!)
SimilarWeb
A great tool for sales and marketing intelligence. It enables you to identify and qualify prospects based on the amount of web traffic, app installations, daily active users, vertical rank, and changes to technology. They have research intelligence that identifies potential future growth with country-level traffic analysis of a company’s career page.
3) Share relevant information
Not every prospect is in the market for a solution when you contact them. So don’t just force your sales message. Set up an email sequence with relevant, personalized information over time. Some examples of things to highlight.
Company or competitor news
Find an article from a major news source or industry press with interesting insights and analysis.
Relevant blog posts
Curate content such as a post about new marketing best practices, where to recruit experienced product managers, SEO engagement trends or a sales podcast with a super guest. Tailor it for your prospects’ vertical or job title, with a short summary, your company name and nothing salesy! Simple, memorable and adds value.
Write your own content
Can’t find what you’re looking for? The hardest and most time consuming approach is to write your own content! This takes time to do well. Get feedback from friends, family and professional editors (If you don’t know anyone, check Upwork).
4) Scale your engagement with personas
Think about what unlocks value for different job functions. Can you capture the needs and priorities of the types of people you engage? Aim for 3-4 different personas that summarize your prospects from senior executives to developers to operations.
Word of caution
Your persona should not be a job title, which is too company specific.
Ensure your full engagement plan focuses on the persona.
Make sure the language of your outreach, the channel you reach out on, the wording of your slide deck and your value proposition is aligned with your prospect.
Ultimately your best clients are your oldest clients, they are the ones who recommend their friends, suggest product development ideas, share market intelligence and don’t churn when your competitor offers them a 5% discount.
Conclusion
Sales methodologies are a framework to build valuable long-term relationships. Yet they depend on trust. To succeed, sales leaders need their sales team to get information and earn the right to be consultants.
Creating a high performing Enterprise sales culture requires focusing on partnerships rather than transactions and on sales people who builds trust by adding value.
And a big thank you
Thank you to the great sales leaders who invested in me and showed a better way to do sales! John Willis, Michael Feinberg, Damien Soissons, Laurent Sultan, John Orchard, John Barrows and Keenan. Merci infinitement!