Welcome to The Partnered Podcast Episode 076 with Andy Whyte, Author of MEDDICC - The Ultimate Guide to Staying One Step Ahead in the Complex Sale.
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.
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Welcome to The Partnered Podcast, the podcast where we interview the world's best SaaS leaders. We discuss a range of ecosystem topics with a focus on best practices for how you can close more deals with your company's partnership ecosystem.
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[00:00:00] Adam Michalski: Welcome back to The Partnered Podcast! I am super pumped to have Andy Whyte on today, Founder of MEDDICC and author of MEDDICC the book, The Ultimate Guide to Staying One Step Ahead in the Complex Sale. And Andy, to kick things off, can we talk a little bit about your journey and your path into sales?
[00:01:04] Andy Whyte: Yeah. Hi Adam.
Thank you. First foremost, having me on your show. I was digging into some of the back episodes, so some really great content in there. So to be among some of those great thought leaders is, is super cool. So yeah, my background, I think probably pretty typical to most people in our industry of revenue.
Right. They never plan to get into sales. My first kind of job out of school, I joined the theater and worked in, in that world for a little while and kind of quickly realized they didn't have enough talent or good looks to kind of make it to the kind of level that I'd be happy at. So I, I fell into sales as, as so many of us do.
And my first job was actually B to C sales, going door to door selling in what we knew. K we call double glazing. So it's like home improvements, like new windows doors, that kind of thing. It's, it's, it's literally the bottom rung of sales. You know, I know in the U S that's kind of a, a stigma around secondhand car sales.
This is way below that. So that was like my introduction. It was like commission only door to door, you know, learn more than. Anywhere else. And then I kinda just was on, you know, this, this classic kind of journey to kind of just get a better job, a job that made me feel better about myself, but also have more money and eventually kind of brushed over into.
B to B sales at, in SAS. And yeah, worked from like startups to giants, like Oracle to a few unicorns along the way, one of which, where we work together. And yeah, it's kind of made that bridge into, into enterprise and then fancy trying leadership. And that's kind of what I was doing before doing what I do now, which is talk about med.
Yeah.
[00:02:36] Adam Michalski: So let's talk a little bit about MEDDICC and while you may not have, you know, the, the looks, as you said for, for actor, which it's up to you, but I think the you have the voice by the way, you know, that that voice is fantastic. So but all jokes aside. So let's talk a little bit about MEDDICC and I want you to kind of explain it, like you would explain it as a two year old, like to a two year old, like let's, let's get a super high level here and then we can dive a little bit further into the
[00:02:58] Andy Whyte: weeds.
Yeah. I think the best way to do. And one of, and it's actually one of the reasons why I think MEDDICC has been so successful because it's like 25 years old now as a sales methodology, right. There's not too many sales methodologies that are that old, that are still around relevant today and arguably more relevant today than ever.
And so the best way I can. Bring those two things together to describe, to answer your question is that how MEDDICC came around and it was, it was basically, there was a company called PTC, very successful company, and it's cuddled, very long story short. They a guy called Dick Dunkel. There was working with the different sales teams cause there's over a thousand salespeople in this company and they were looking at.
Do they win deals? Why do they lose deals and why to deal slip and what they found, or what Dick found is he was like touring around the world and meeting all these different sales teams. Different regions was that they'll S six commonalities in the answer as to why they won deals, why they lost deals and why deals slipped.
And by the way, I know deal slipping is not a common term everywhere. It means that, you know, you've, you've forecast, it's closed on a Sunday. It doesn't, you still win it, but it closed at a later date, which is obviously better than losing it, but not great for forecasting. Does the six commonalities in the answers.
And what Dick was able to do is to basically align those to a framework and manage, to sort of make the framework fits into the acronym of MEDDICC, which is obviously easy to remember. As, as time has evolved as, as kind of the, the proliferation of the cloud has come along, there's been some. Letters that have been added into that, that make it more relevant today, but that's, that's kind of where it came from and what you find in those, in those initially of those six letters is eight letters now is a super high level against explaining it to your question.
Like the two lead material metrics. That's the value you provide. That's the measurable impact quantify. Value your solution provides the economic buyer. That's the overall forest. That's the person to say no. When others say yes and yes, others say no really important. You engage with that person. Then you have the two DS, which is decision criteria, which is kind of like what the customer is, basing their decision on, you know, what, what things they judging you on, what things they need.
Then there's the decision process, which is the kind of, if, if the criteria is the, how the, I'm sorry, the criteria is the, what, this is the, how the decision process is the, how are we going to get this to. What's that process. And then you've got P which is an interesting one. We'll talk about it's either used for people process or partners.
And then I would stand to implicate the pain, which is kind of self-explanatory. Then you've got C for champion, which I think everyone in our industry knows what a champion is, but in, in MEDDICCal terms we really kind of qualify. To a very specific criteria, what champion is because that's so important in the sales cycle and then the final seat, which stands for competition, which sounds really straightforward.
But from a MEDDICC perspective, competition is any one person thing, entity initiative that is competing for the same budget or resources that you are. So, you know, your competitor. Somebody building internally or competitive to be another project, another SAS product, another, you know, another initiative that's going to be using the same project manager of a sing budget or anything like that.
So it's much more broad than just your rivals, which is what most people think about as competition. So there you go. That's the, that's the two, I don't have two year olds. We'll get that, but maybe. Eight year olds.
[00:06:09] Adam Michalski: Yeah, no, that, that is, that is very good. That's very good. And I mean, it definitely sets the high-level stage here.
And I even remember back, you know, when I was a sales person, it was a framework that was definitely widely pitched. I think that you're doing a much better job, but kind of making it forefront and allowing folks to actually use. In their day-to-day. So really arming salespeople with the ability to actually like fully utilize this framework, obviously with what you're teaching as well, as well as your book.
I'm going to push you one step further though. And like, could you kind of I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Can you put together like a quick example of, of how you can think about MEDDICC from start to finish?
[00:06:40] Andy Whyte: Good. Good one. So the way I think about it is this is there's kind of a few different components in any kind of complex or enterprise deal where there's, you know, multiple stakeholders and, and like a value on the table.
And that kind of splits down into a few things. One is like the, who the stakeholders are and what they care about, and that will be every stakeholder. And when you start to get to those levels and plexus, Different stakeholders have different things. They care about different pains. They're trying to solve different things, ways they've measured, even.
So, you know, getting, having a framework to attach to your solutions, each different stakeholders, you know what they care about is, is important. Then how do you actually. How'd you actually communicate the value you provide to those stakeholders. So that's kind of very much a value proposition and MEDDICC helps very much to help you link the pain you find to some quantifiable, measurable impact too.
So you can, you know, make it whatever you're saying to those stakeholders, make it kind of, rather than from a perspective that isn't just, you know, features and benefits and bells and whistles. And then there's like the final part. Really important, but often overlooked, which is the process like how we, and so often today with so many innovative technology solutions out there we're going into these opportunities and the customers don't even know what our solutions do, let alone how we can help them.
And so the idea of there being a kind of a process in places is quite far away from being the truth often. So when I think about the process, I'm talking about how do we even get this onto the customer's agenda? Of being more than just an idea to being something they're going to evaluate right. The way through to like, okay, we're going to buy this.
How are we going to buy this? And how are then we go into procure it right through that paper process as well. So just to summarize there, it's kind of like, there's free things. It's like value first and foremost, who's that value relevant for? And importantly, like not just. What, what, what value do we provide, but how do we do that or differently, or better than the other options that are out there.
And then once, you know, you're bought in, or, you know, once, once the customer's kind of, there is a clear opportunity to how are we going to actually turn this opportunity into a real deal that, that, you know, we can get signed off and, you know, revenue recognized.
[00:08:50] Adam Michalski: Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Now we're getting to the meat of it.
Cause that, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's like, I'm almost thinking if I was trying to sell MEDDICC or your terminology too, I would imagine the buyer would be a VP of sales. You know, I'm going to understand that they want to shorten their sales cycles, who they want to increase their pipeline. So you could quantifiably say that you can increase it by X percentage, you know, 50% or something along those lines and the way in which you do.
So. The, you know, obtaining the course which you can purchase an XYZ fashion something along those lines.
[00:09:22] Andy Whyte: Exactly. Right. It's the thing that's really often overlooked in MEDDICC, which I think is what mine is my favorite part. I wouldn't say it's like the most powerful part, because I think champion you can't get away from the importance of a champion in your deal.
But the bit that I really think separates. Good to great to elite is how people work with the decision criteria, how you can go into an opportunity and, you know, good salespeople will go in and they'll say, right, what's the criteria in which this customer's gonna be based their decision. And that they're okay.
I kind of whether the customer has it clearly mapped out or not, they'll kind of get an understanding of what things are important to the customers. That's what good salespeople do like great salespeople. They will influence the decision criteria. So they'll go in and they'll hear, okay. I see what you're trying to do here, but have you thought about this and they'll make it, they'll introduce the value in such a manner that the customer is like, oh, actually, yeah.
I hadn't thought about that. I should, yeah, that should be part of what we considering for this project. And then the elites, the elite ones are the ones that, you know, they, they, they hit the ground running so fast because they've done so much preparation and they've taken all of their knowledge and understanding industry.
They've spoken to. Others, other stakeholders outside of potentially outside of the company, they're going to meet. So partners being one of them. And they go into that first meeting and they're so well armed with how they're going to win that, that, that, that deal because they know exactly what strengths they have over any other option.
And they kind of hit the ground running really fast to, to, to influence the criteria towards those things right out of the gate.
[00:10:51] Adam Michalski: And that's where I want to focus. I think like the next bulk of questions here, because I think that that's fascinating. You and I were discussing prior to this, that there's almost a version of this.
You think you referenced it as med pick, you know, where partners come into the equation. And as you mentioned, the, those, those elite salespeople are the ones who really do a lot of diligence upfront and make sure that they understand every single aspect of the sale so that they can navigate that deal.
Like. So let's talk a little bit about where partners fit into that equation. Because I'm, I'm super interested to see, kind of get your, get your thoughts on, you know, how do those elite elite salespeople leverage the partner ecosystem to make sure that they can navigate that deal?
[00:11:25] Andy Whyte: Yeah. So there's always something that, that I felt every time I worked with an elite salesperson there was always these there's always the, the thing that my key takeaway was this, this feeling that.
Everything seems easy for fairly self people. You know that the top, top 1%, maybe top 5%, whatever that, you know, wherever that bar is in sales teams, I've worked in the top top the best of the best. When have you heard them talk about their deals? They always just seem easy. They're like, wait, oh, that's why this was in the early career.
I was like, well, if I only had that opportunity, I'd be as successful as them. And obviously, you know, we know there's much more to that. What I think about when I, when I, when I dig into what, what was making it easy for them was they were doing certain things. They recognize the things that are going to help them be successful.
They're very, very focused on where they allocated their time. And so they qualified very well up front, whether there was kind of not, not a, not a deal for them there, but whether there was enough value in the opportunity for it to be worth, not just their while where the customers Wilde to, to enter into an engagement.
And a lot of that upfront qualification a lot. Sort of learning about opportunities. So you pick the right opportunities comes from looking from the outside in, before you've even met the customer and kind of learning what the lay of the land is, learning who else is involved, who else has sold their, what I often will do analogies with sales, to sports, like a lead sports.
And how I think there's just so many parallels there in terms of, you know, you think about elite athletes, elite salespeople, Prepare how, like, you know how they work with their team, all those kinds of things. For me, there's like in sales, if you, if you, if you've got an elite sports team, you know, in gang week, part of the preparation, they look at tapes of their opponent, right?
Whether it's a, if it's a box, they'll watch yo previous fights their parents, wherever it's like a sports team, football team, they'll watch games of their previous, their upcoming opponent, and they'll learn, what do they do? You know, what will happen? What are they, how they become successful? And the, the version of that in sales is.
The partner network. Who else, who else has sold to this organization? I'm about to sell to? And if you can find out who those people are, then it's like, it's like having 'em, it's like playing a computer game with like the cheats on, or it's like playing a computer game with one of those. It's like, here's how you complete this level Armin.
But like for Christmas, once I got Zelda, my Nintendo and with it, it came with like a booklet and I'm like, what is this? And it was literally a walkthrough diet of how I'm going to complete the computer game. If you can find a partner that is sold to that organization before they can give you that walk through guide, of course, there may be different stakeholders.
It's not going to be perfect, but you're going to be able to learn so much about how. To be successful by following someone else's footsteps. Who's trodden that path before you. It's like, it's easy pickings for you there. But for some reason, I know it's not easy, but some reasons, so many salespeople don't take that opportunity.
[00:14:27] Adam Michalski: This I, I mean, I, you put that so eloquently that I, like, I want to basically use that as a, as a quote because it's so, it's so true. And what I found is that, well, obviously I'm personally very, very passionate about this. I mean, that's a large thesis behind partnering and what we're doing at our company.
But what I also think is really interesting is like what we've seen. You know, very few salespeople actually really know how to run this motion effectively. When, as you mentioned, when it is, it's essentially a cheat sheet, you know, it allows you to navigate the deal, understand all the pitfalls of the areas where you need to avoid who you should be speaking to, who you shouldn't be wasting time with, how to actually get the deal done.
All of the things that you know, that theoretically would be a no-brainer, but ultimately we, I think we still find that a large percentage of salespeople. Utilize the partner ecosystem effectively, in your opinion, why, why is that? Is this something that folks are just used to selling direct or is it, is it bigger
[00:15:20] Andy Whyte: than that?
Yeah, cause I, I I've, I've had a lot of success as an individual contributor with. System community, but we ecosystem I'll get the right word right in the minute. But I'm trying to think about, you know, there's been times I've worked places where we've had great partners, you know, we've been like the number one partner for a giant.
Yeah, one of the top five tech companies in the world and one part of the year, and yet we've not managed to sort of capitalize on our, I'm trying to think in my mind why that is. I think so much of it comes down to relevance and relationships. Yeah. You know what what's w if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna utilize this, this opportunity, that's there.
I need to be able to have the right message to reach out to the person, the right. Relevant person. So I guess that's part of it would be, you know, who do I talk to? And, and then there's this whole kind of like, what's in it for them kind of element, which is always like a question mark, but it's, I guess one of the challenges I'd say is getting to the right person If you think about some of these big organizations like Salesforce, Oracle, Adobe, you know, finding the right person who knows the account, there might be a challenge.
And I guess that's where like the, the, the partner executives, partner managers come in and can help. But yeah, I think that's, that's got a probably if I'm, if I'm, if I'm thinking, why is the most common problem I've seen there, it's getting access to the right. The person who can help. We had a great, I think, you know, probably the best, the best way I've seen partners, a partnership running like organically was what we had at branching braised, like where we had a shared slack channel and that kind of thing.
So I think that's a really good example there. But you can't, you can't have slack channels for every partner, I suppose. So how, you know, that's a challenge. But yeah, I think it's probably around just finding the right person and, and having a relevant message for them so that they're there.
[00:17:04] Adam Michalski: 100% and you, I mean, you train some of the most prolific sales teams out there, like, you know, snowflake, Octa, Datadog app dynamics.
When you work with those folks I'm curious to get your take on a, just your overall training methodology, how you go about training these folks on MEDDICC. But then also, you know, we can dive a little bit into, on how you train them to actually effectively use, you know, partners to, to really, you know, drive MedPAC
[00:17:27] Andy Whyte: effectively.
Yeah. So. How a trend it's for me, ma MedPage MEDDICC is a there's two parts to it. That's kind of like the theory, which is like, what does each letter stand for? What does it mean? Why do you, why, why is it important? We pay attention to these things. And for me, there's not that much shorter. You know, available content expertise on those things.
For me, the real difference comes and real edge comes where you can start to talk about, okay, you know what it means, you know why it's important, but how can you actually execute those elements of MEDDICC into your deals? How can you actually drive metrics into the conversation? How can you actually create a decision criteria?
So those things are very much around. For me, a lot of rhythm around preparations going into that meeting fully knowing how you've helped other companies, like the one you're about to meet before. How did you help them? What were they, what was the situation before you engaged? How has it now afterwards, how do you measure the success of that and the value that you bring?
How do you do it different and you'll better than anyone else. And that those are the kinds of things that really open up conversations. That's how customers love to be sold to, because you're going in and you're saying, Hey, here's a problem that I think you might have based on the research that I've done.
So first and foremost, I've separated myself from the majority of salespeople out there because I've actually done some research. I'm not just my preparation limit. Wasn't just changing my slide deck to have your logo on it. I've actually done some research. So first off customers, like, thank you. You've actually, you know, I feel good already.
Good. That you're not going to waste my time here. And then secondly, you're saying, Hey, not only have I done my research, but I found someone else liked, I think is like you, that we've made successful before, because before they work with us, they have these problems. Do you have the same problems? Yes, you do.
Great. Now we've found some like relevant pain that not only have we found before, but we weren't. I'm now going to tell you how I've helped companies solve that pain and better than that, not only how I helped them solve them, but how we measure the success. And the value they got from solving that. So there's your business case, and then even better still, you're probably wondering how are we going to do all this?
Well, here's the decision criteria. Here's how we do it different you're better than anyone else to, to kind of help you formulate that whole thing you need as a customer in your mind about, you know, not just the heart, but the head of why you should invest in this solution. So that for me, Centered around preparation.
You can't, you, I mean, you can, if you have a lot of experience, maybe kind of black battle a little bit, but you're never going to be as good as the person next to you. That puts that time in to really go in there knowing the customer proposition.
[00:19:53] Adam Michalski: Yeah. That, and I remember, I mean, w we would do. My, my prior lives would always be like a pre-call, you know, sheet where I would go through it.
I'd make sure that every single box was checked. Make sure that I understand who they're working with, make sure that I understand who the right stakeholders are or could be, make sure they understand what their potential pain points could be. You know, check out the news sources, all the areas that you would, you know, think so that you're as prepared as possible.
Going into that call. I guess the question is, is like, how did. Dymatize that across sales teams, because I think like, you know it's in everything that you're saying makes perfect sense, but I would imagine that, you know, the theory and the execution there, there's probably some drop-off like there, when you're trying to roll this out across the sales
[00:20:29] Andy Whyte: team, there is.
Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's one of the things that the metrics and MEDDICC can help with. There's a few, the way we formulize it is we say that metrics is two parts it's metrics, ones, which your proof points, mirror, existing customer base, and then you should open up your, you should go into that first meeting.
Some really not just relevant from a industry perspective, but rather than from what you think will be a use case perspective metrics of how you've helped other companies and the measurable impact they got from that. And then you evolve those , which are the personalized value. So you're gone and you say, Hey, we helped Coca-Cola reduce XYZ.
30% by doing this and then like Pepsi, like, well, that's very interesting to us. And then you say, well, let's dig it. Let's build a business case. And you find out with Pepsi, it's actually 23%, but you've, that's how you evolve. Evolver and then once for them to make it from you have a headline proof point to something that's actually a business case to the customer.
So. If you implement MEDDICC and you have those that M one M two structure, then you've kind of have to do the preparation to, in order to land properly in that first meeting with them once. So that's something that I've seen that some organizations have taken to this so well, and it's, it's like I talked to a a VP of sales yesterday and he said it was listening to a call back and he said it was.
He said, like he, he had like goosebumps on the back of his neck because the sales person opened up with this this, like, where are you relevant? And one, you know, proof point from an existing customer that was relevant to the customer they're talking to. And the customer just warmed up. You could just hear it on the call that the customer just warmed up and was like, oh, okay.
These people know what we're talking about. If they've got a rough. Like case study that they've mentioned, and I want to know more about it because I think this sounds like it could help us. So that's, that's how I think you can kind of introduce it early on and help, but from a. You're absolutely right.
From a perspective like that preparation, that, that kind of core sheet and the lay of the land thing is so important. Not just because, you know, there's a lot of technology out there that it's very relevant for the solution you're selling. What solution, what tech stack that the company you're selling to has that's of course often very, very true.
That, but there's, there's so much value in those insights from understanding, you know, I'll, I'll do an example that I think most of the listeners would understand if you're going into a company and you see, they use a solution for email marketing, like MailChimp, which is historically like the credit card solution.
You might be like, well, hang on a minute, you know? Is there anything they only attack, you can see they're running is MailChimp. Okay. Maybe they don't invest that much in you know, stations. Whereas if you'd like, if you look and you can see that, like wall-to-wall Salesforce, Adobe, or, you know, one of the, you were like, okay, this company spends money.
So even little nuggets like vac and kind of put you on the right trajectory, in the right mindset to, to kind of find out the things that can be important to you early in that conversation.
[00:23:17] Adam Michalski: Yeah. And I think that's something that, you know, to your point, I mean the best salespeople know this, the best sales team will spend that time because they know that although it's more time upfront, it's higher ROI and it allows them frankly, to qualify.
It allows them to close the deal faster and just make sure that they're focusing on the right opportunities. Three more questions that I have for you. First one that I wanted to discuss was just, you know, I think we've both seen it, you know, at organizations where salespeople are, you know, very oftentimes used to kind of doing things their way.
Oftentimes, you know, even most organizations, it's still more of an art than a science. And everybody openly has their own like style, you know, when they actually sell it, which is totally fine. And frankly, It was great, you know, because everybody's going to allow, you know, certain folks will mesh better with certain prospects.
The question that I have is like, I mean, how do you, and why they're in your training experience or just in your PRI prior experience as a sales leader, you know, get folks to work more effectively with partners. Like how do you convince those salespeople to actually really. The partner ecosystem, because oftentimes what I've seen is that many of them are adverse to that.
You know, they don't want to introduce new elements to the sales cycle. They'd rather just sell, you know, the way that they're used to selling and the way that they've been successful at before. And they might not be as open to different possibilities of leveraging the partner ecosystem. Even though folks like you, and I know like when they get a partner involved, they're going to get more opportunities.
They're going to close deals faster. They're going to understand how to navigate these deals. Right. There's still that disconnect over there. And I'd be curious to get your take on like how you overcome that or think about overcoming it.
[00:24:41] Andy Whyte: Yeah, I think the way I would think about that is I'd reverse engineer.
If I was looking at it, if I was a sales leader, looking at team or partner partnership leader, looking at the, the, an organization I'd reverse engineering because there's always the ones like you. And I, you know, when we were individual contributors who You know, winning with a partner where we saw the value there and we would use it as much to be coached.
Right. But there was probably a time in our careers where we didn't, because not because we were like adverse to it, but because we hadn't seen the value of it. And so my advice would be in any organization, any team find the ones that have cracked the code, the ones that understand the value upon network and shine, the lights on those people in the value that.
From it and the successes they've had from it and share those successes with the rest of the team. Because like, to my earlier point, if like the cheat codes thing of like walkthrough guide, If it's, if it, if that is true, if you believe that, which, you know, let's have you have the discussion. If the person doesn't believe it's true, they think the partners are going to help them.
That's a whole different thing because that's, person's motto a true partner. But like, if you, if you believe that is true and you're a salesperson and you know that there is a guide out there that's going to help you. If nothing else, just get some insight into how this company buys or how, how a stakeholder's emotions are, whatever it is.
It won't be a wasted conversation there won't not be a wasted conversation. Then you're leaving that stone out there and turned as a sales person. Then you're not doing a good enough job. You're just not doing a good enough job. It's like, you know, it's the same as not sending a follow-up email. It's the same as not sending an agenda.
It's things that you're doing that you could do to make you more effective, more successful. The you're not doing, and there's no excuse for that, unless it's like laziness. That's the only thing that can be, unless there's like an education thing where you don't believe the parents can help them. That's a whole different conversation that needs to be had.
But in my, in my career, I've, I've never, ever come away from any kind of investment into spending time with a partner where I came away and thought, you know what? That was a waste of time. Because even if the auction, even if they don't, even, if they can't help the opportunity, they'll give you some little nugget of information.
I had this one. Once he's probably the best deal I've ever done in my career. And to cut quite a long story short, it was a company that I really wanted to sell to. It was like right in our ideal customer profile, we had like references, lots of references of peer companies to them. I knew if I could get in the room, I'd have a great chance of selling to them with my solution.
And I also happen to know that free of my people in my network, who I knew quite well had sold to this company. That's why I took them all out to breakfast and I, you know, it was on the company, you know, it was money, very well spent on the company. So you take these behalf for breakfast might. And when my scrambled egg went cold, because I would just sat there with my notebook, writing down so many notes because these free salespeople were kind of.
I mean, it's funny because this house people have egos, but like, they'll try to basically show me, oh, I know the most about this company. No, no. I know the most and they always just started getting pages and pages of notes from everything, from their legal process to like people's personalities. And it does a ton of stuff.
It came out that, but, but one key thing happened. They were, they were all. Stuck with how I was going to sell to the chief commercial officer who was a new person who had come in. They're like, yeah, I F I dunno, rather than you than me, this person's a nightmare. In fact, this person is such a nightmare that the person who I had identified as my potential champion had resigned because they couldn't work for this person.
So my champion was out the way. Because of the CCO. Anyway, I kind of came away from that with tons of information that breakfast, tons of information, ready for my meeting, but still come with this question, mark, about the CCO, at least that evening got a text message from one of the people that said that one of the people at breakfast that said, Hey, ho Hoff, the prosecutor's under your hat.
But that CCO has been for. And even better, the your potential champion has rescinded their resignation. So I was like, my whole strategy had gone from being like, I know what I've got to do, but I've got this big question. Mark being like question marks gone, and now needs to double down on this champion.
Now we did win that deal. That was a great deal. It was, as I say, it wasn't the biggest deal, but it was definitely the deal working. Like it would be my interview day. If I was going for a sales job, it'd be the one that I would use to talk about. Like the one I'm most proud of, but something happened a bit later on in that deal.
We were final presentation. Things were looking rock and roll, right? Things are looking really good for us. In fact, I, I, this is probably the best demo I've ever seen from my sales engineer ever that this, this is someone we knew as well, that worked in our last company with us. And just the world-class demo.
And I could not have been happier at that moment, but then all of a sudden, one of these stakeholders, there's like 10 people from this company in the room, one of the stakeholders just pipes up and just starts throwing FID. Like they're like, yeah, you know, this is not going to be as good as they make it sound or that and pesto that we're also considering they also do this very, very well.
And just constantly or bickering comments like that from nowhere. And it was like against the vibe of the meeting and Everett and we all kind of like, well, you can't work with, they will kind of comments. Because he was being quite vague and it kind of put a road down on the meeting and we kind of came away thing like, oh, I'm not sure what was that all about?
Maybe we discussed it a lot and we couldn't really figure out. We just assumed he was, this person was on board with it. The best that we could really, there was no cohesion in his comments to say, oh, they, they will, there must have been with this company. Anyway, we won the deal. It didn't manage to harm us that much.
In the end. About three months later, I'd actually become friends with my champion and we were having a beer and he says, oh, I know I keep meaning to show you. And he pulled up. Fun. And he's, he's scrolling through in his phone to find a a conversation and he finds it and it was like the company named that I worked for and it's their internal WhatsApp group.
And he finds this bit where the CTO had messaged into the. Same guys. This is going to, well, we need to, when there's a first negativity out here, because we're not gonna be able to negotiate, I've always. And so that's when that guy piped up and started kind of for negativity and, and my champion, who, again, remember, like I had, I had initially given up on my whole plan of how I'm going to cultivate and build the champion.
Cause I thought he was resigning and I would never have found that information out in. Yeah that we had. So I changed my whole strategy to make sure I did double down on building a champion. And it's really important because in that chat, he actually told him to stop. He was like, that's enough now guys like, quit it.
Like we're this is getting a bit bit embarrassing. And so there's a classic champion, like selling internally for you, but the whole thing goes back way, way, way back and you know, so much value from why that opportunity was so good. It goes back to that breakfast where there's free different, you know, free different SAS companies that all sold to the same company before.
You just gave me gold, absolute gold that I would never found out.
[00:31:03] Adam Michalski: I w I love this story and I feel like it's something that I just want to like, take this audio clip and show it to every single sales team, because I mean, you know, it, there's no better illustration, like you sold the deal so well, because of that information and because of being able to actually create that network, you know, with all the other sellers who are selling the same business that you were, that they literally just had to insert FID into the meeting just to negotiate.
But, which is hilarious when you think about it, but it just illustrates like how important that information is otherwise. And you can't get that information from a public source, but you can get it from, you know, your partner ecosystem and discussing it with people who already closed the deal that you want to close or are trying to close the deal that you want to close.
And that's where I think that partnerships are just so effective and, you know, like most sales teams don't realize that they're sitting on this massive goldmine of a network, right. We've been trained our entire lives to know that like your, your net worth is, you know, your. Okay. Is your net worth, you know and yet the biggest network out there, your partner ecosystem that will actually allow you to close deals, you know, most effectively is oftentimes or the vast majority of the time, not really fully utilized.
So I guess the, yeah, the last question that I have for you is just around, like, where do you see the future of like sales and partnerships going, you know, over the coming years, do you think that there's going to be, to be more collaborative less collaborative or just overall? What are your thoughts?
[00:32:18] Andy Whyte: Well, hopefully. Companies will be smart enough to realize there's now technology solutions out there that can help them bridge a lot of these challenges that we've talked about. A lot of challenges I saw early in my career. And so hopefully with that in mind and, and, and the more as the more as we have these kinds of open solution sets, where it becomes so important that different technologies talk to each other, and that it's just, it's just not acceptable anymore from a technical perspective.
Silos. So from a technical perspective, I think companies have to be much more open from a technical perspective and therefore commercially relationship wise, the partnership should follow suit. Absolutely. And I think. That's something. Yeah, I think we'll see more and more of, I think one of the things, you know, as, you know, if we take med pick as an example with where, where companies, I've got a number of customers now who sell, they have solutions, they have sales people.
You know, if you look from the outside in, they have your typical setup of a revenue organization, customer success, they have salespeople have SDR, BDRs, all that kind of stuff. But they don't sell directly. They have. A third party to actually, you know, to transact the license. And I think, you know, in those situations, what I see there is where MEDDICC helps is a lot of what we talked about there with that challenge about how can we kind of empower that, that partner network so much of it is the relevance.
And it's like, if I'm in. If I'm part of the manager and I'm wanting to go, if I've been given the remit of like, Hey don't, can you go and speak to this? A partner of ours about this company who we have an opportunity with and every time I'm having to go. Talked about company I'm having to use, like how I'm having to think up.
Like what, what, what, what is the proposition we've got? Why is it relevant to them? And it's different every time that's a strain, that's unnecessary strain that makes the job a little bit harder for everyone. It makes the job harder for the sales person trying to communicate. So the partner manager makes the partner manager job hardest, communicates that partner.
And then their counterpart probably as part of manager as well to then, you know, it's like China. It's like, it's like the message gets every time the message gets passed on to get that. Whereas what dish does a framework that says, Hey, this is how we help companies like this. This is how we help. Here's some references if companies we think that just like the one we're trying to sell to here's how we've helped them.
This is, this is how we do it. This is the value they'll get and deliver that as like a hand wrapped proposition to the partners. And then every, because it becomes uniform, then it becomes a common language every time that the salesperson says to apartments, Hey, here's the proposition? Can you pass it on?
Super easy to understand. And we actually got some feedback from that client that said one of their partners are saying, Hey, what's happened. Like every time we get, like every time we get information from you about what you bring to the table, it's now really clear. And we really liked this new format you're using.
So it works both ways. Yeah.
[00:34:58] Adam Michalski: Yeah. And I, I think, I mean, that's such a good point and that ultimately it's a, win-win when, you know, it's a, it's a win for the sales person. It's a win for the company you're selling to because the ma the message is much more catered, and now you're actually not wasting their time.
But it's also a win for the person who is being able to deliver the information to the other sales person, because then they ultimately have an IOU now that they can redeem at the future state and be able to get information themselves or an introduction or a recommendation. So I really do think it's one of the.
Most effective ways to actually kind of, you know, not only prospect to understand how to prioritize your book of business, but also just being able to kind of get time to value and time to close, like as, as you know drastically reduced as possible. Andy I'll, I'll be completely honest. I mean I'm biased here, but I think this is one of the best podcasts that I've done recently.
So I would love to continue this for a while because I think the intersection of sales and partnerships is something that's fascinating. And we'll certainly see a lot of change over the coming years. So we'll definitely have to have you on again, but for, for. What I want to do is just can you tell folks how they can get in touch with you?
You know, get your book or get in touch for her for training purposes?
[00:35:59] Andy Whyte: Sure. Yeah. So my, my website's MEDDICC.com even with one C or two CS, so you can find me there. That's a great
[00:36:05] Adam Michalski: domain. I can't believe you got that.
[00:36:08] Andy Whyte: It is good. It is good. And yeah, so you can find me there and obviously LinkedIn is a really good place to kind of connect and with me on that.
The place that you can get the book on Amazon. And I guess like an all good book, retailers have never said that out loud, but I guess that's what people say. So yeah, that's where to find me
[00:36:25] Adam Michalski: fantastic. And for our listeners, what I'll do is I'll link out to all those in the show notes. Highly recommend the book of for nothing but great things.
And yeah, if you want to get in touch with Andy for just conversation or for training purposes, we'll also link out to that as well. But Andy, thank you so much again. I wish I had more time here. We'll certainly have to have you on again, but I'm wishing you the best. And we'll have to discuss, you know, the evolution of sales and partnerships over the coming years to see how things evolve and love
[00:36:49] Andy Whyte: to look back.
Thanks to having you on.
[00:36:51] Adam Michalski: I heard I'll talk soon.
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