MEDDIC Academy’s founder, Darius Lahoutifard, is a software industry veteran who has held executive positions at PTC and Oracle, among others. He founded and sold Business Hangouts, a live broadcasting service for Google G Suite that had amassed millions of users in just three years.
Initially, he worked in the field of robotics engineering. He then transitioned to sales, where his stellar results ultimately led to a managerial position. He was only 28 when he was promoted to head up a $10 million Schlumberger subsidiary.
He was soon promoted, but tech businesses were always his true passion. Lahoutifard joined PTC, where he grew his division’s revenue from $4 million to $27 million in three years and headcount from 6 to 150 workers in France, the stronghold of PTC’s primary competitor, Dassault Systemes. He led the PTC sales force to victory in Dassault’s home market. When MEDDIC was developed, it was at PTC. As an early executive, he helped define and implement MEDDIC, the sales methodology that would become the world’s most well-known.
After leaving PTC, he started four different Enterprise Software and Internet firms, selling two and leading sales teams at well-established organizations, including Agile/Oracle and Think3.
Beyond MEDDIC, he has an insatiable appetite for sales. He was the company’s initial point of contact with clients and workers (to recruit top talent) and investors (to raise a total of $20 million over five funding rounds).
Darius Lahoutifard went to Stanford for his Certificate in Organizational Analysis and got his Master of Science in Robotics Engineering from Ecole Centrale de Paris. He has written books and holds patents. He has lectured at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, and the University of Washington in Seattle. Darius has a broad cultural background, is fluent in six languages, and has lived and worked in different countries. He has experience throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States from living there and working there. He moved to California in 2009 and has been there since.
The most well-known sales qualification methodology, MEDDIC, can be used in any complex enterprise sales process. The MEDDIC sales process are both names for the same thing (imperfect).
- METRICS: Measure the potential gain leading to the economic benefit of your solution vs. competition or non-decision (aka status-quo).
- ECONOMIC BUYER: Identify and meet the person who has the ultimate word to release funds to purchase.
- DECISION PROCESS: Know and Influence the process defined by the client to make a purchase decision.
- DECISION CRITERIA: Know and Influence the criteria defined by the client to make a purchase decision.
- IDENTIFY PAIN: Identify and Analyze the pains which require your solution to be remedied.
- CHAMPION: Identity, Qualify, Develop and Test your Champion or your Internal Seller.
The salesperson is provided with a handy checklist in the form of the account’s current degree of understanding, command, and development of these factors. The MEDDIC process will provide a neutral evaluation of the sales campaign’s qualification level and the sales prediction’s reliability. The sales team can use the MEDDIC process’ unchecked items as a guide to take the necessary steps in the account to close the contract.
MEDDPICC ®, the next generation of MEDDIC, is a more cutting-edge approach to sales. It also includes the following two components, as detailed below:
- Metrics: Leverage of the measured potential gain and their economic benefit
- Economic Buyer: Interaction with the person in the account who has discretionary access to the funds
- Decision Criteria: Criteria used by the customer to select the solution and the vendor
- Decision Process: Process that the customer has adopted which leads the purchase decision
- Paper Process: Approval process in the account through which the purchase order request needs to go, before reaching the vendor
- Identify Pain: Actual pains at the company which would require your product/service to be relieved
- Champion: Powerful & influential persons at the company, who are favorable to your solution
- Competition: Knowledge of the competing vendors in the account, their strengths and weaknesses and their champions
An easy-to-remember list detailing the salesperson’s current level of expertise with each aspect above of a single account. The MEDDIC CHECKLIST will provide a neutral evaluation of the sales campaign’s qualification level and the sales prediction’s reliability. In addition, the sales team can use the MEDDIC list of unchecked items as a guide to take the necessary steps in the account to close the contract.
Keeps an eye on how far along a deal is and how qualified its potential customers are. Everyone in sales should do an annual self-evaluation. Invokes the subsequent step in the sales effort. There is no need for a price cut to seal the deal. Instead of leveraging the end of the quarter as a compelling event, you may create genuine pressure from the client side instead. Enhances the reliability of sales projections. Better qualifying leads to more closed sales and higher income. Saves money by eliminating unwinnable agreements earlier in the process. Facilitates the development of a shared vocabulary between the sales staff.
