Sales Methodologies in Alliances - Under Development

The business of a partner business is sales. Methodologies are the secret sauce.

The partner business is at its core, there for sales. Period. The business of a partner program is sales. As such, standard B2B sales methodologies need to be used both in the actual sales with/to/thru partners as well as the recruiting.

While there are many benefits to using sales methodologies, I think the single most important benefit is communication. Communication is perhaps the most important component in creating partnering success, and using a sales methodology as a way to communicate sales potential in opportunities is the key. When you speak about opportunities in terms of the methodology that you are using, you are removing the “extra” information from deal and only concentrating on the things that will help you clarify, qualify, communicate, and close deals.

In one of my leadership roles, I was in charge of Latin America for a tech company. We made the decision to move th region from direct to channel, and I insisted in training our leading partners (all, including our SIs, distributores, and OEMs) in using MEDDIC and Command of the Message. Obviously we put a strong training and coaching program in place to ensure adoption. After finding some initial resistance, I made it clear that it was NOT OPTIONAL and we would over time only work that way. I even changed the incentives to drive adoption. The result was complete success. MEDDIC enabled us to exit low chance opportunities early and to focus on low hanging fruit, quickly identify holes in our target opportunities, and reduce time wasted. When you speak in MEDDIC when speaking about opportunities, you are removing the emotional side of opportunity qualification and clarifying where the holes are. I recently spoke to one of the partners that we “forced” into using MEDDIC and they are not only still using it, but they credit their growth since then to the methodology.

So, what are the benefits? There are so many it’s hard to include all, but here are a few:
Deal qualification and movement: you get clear alignment and discovery of the needs of the prospect, which leads to better relationships with your target companies, and a focus on whats important for the customer and what value you bring. You get a significant reduction in wasted time and therefore reduction in your sales cycles. You get a better feel for the deal, the objections, and how to handle them (and with whom). And you get internal beneftis as well, such as ensuring the process is followed, making it easier to understand the deal and coach the team member, and enables you to make data-driven (instead of emotional) decisions. This applies exactly the same to internally led partner deals as external.
Internal Benefits: You can quickly identify risks, move forecast commits accordingly, get accountability from both your internal and external stakeholders, have a consistent way of evaluating your deals, ensure alignment with the parther and internal cross-funcational teams, etc. All this leads to faster sales cycles, higher productivity of alliance (and retention because they will now make money), lower CAC, and higher overall health of the business.

In this section I will discuss the methodologies that I have used thru the years and how they apply in alliances. We will focus on the ones below. I use a mix of them, but heavily rely on MEDDIC. MEDDIC to me is simply elegant. And yes, although I’m calling it MEDDIC, I’m actually referring to MEDDPICC which adds the P for Paper Process and the second C for Competitor. I mix it with other methodologies depending on requirements. I created a quick cheat cheat on what to use based on your situation:

MATURITY OF YOUR TEAM
- NEW REPS (OR LESS DISCIPLINED): NEAT, SPIN
- EXPERIENCED: MEDDIC + Challenger

PROSPECT BEHAVIOR:
- EDUCATED: MEDDIC + Challenger
- RISK FOCUSED OR SKEPTICAL: MEDDIC + Miller Heimen Value or Sandler Selling or Solution Selling

INDUSTRY BEHAVIOR:
- REGULATED INDUSTRIES: MEDDIC + Challenger or SPIN
- OLDER/CONSERVATIVE/SLOW MOVING: MEDDIC + Miller Heimen Value or Sandler Selling or Solution Selling
- HIGHLY COMPETITIVE/MANY SOLUTIONS: MEDDIC + Miller Heimen Value or Sandler Selling or Solution Selling

Remember, that for this to work, you HAVE to invest time into training and coaching. This is what I’ve done with partner sales teams in the past: Start them easy, with a high level overview of your chosen methodology. For example, if you use MEDDIC, just a slide or two on why you are going to enforce it, and then an explanation of what MEDDIC is. The MEDDIC sales academy has a wonderful page that explains it all (as well as a bit of history too)… you can find it here: https://meddic.academy/definition-meddic/. Then do workshops, try e-learning, etc. You can find a lot of those online or on YouTube, but I will be happy to give you what I use (just send me an email requesting my deck). Just as important is to role play. Take your reps thru the conversation, making sure that they understand what a real Champion is, how to identify Metrics, etc. Then break down their deals into MEDDIC. Work with them on their calls, making sure they are capturing the info needed in the methodology as it moves the deal forward. Ensure that as you do pipeline reviews now become in the language of MEDDIC. I use a simple one pager that has the deal info and the ranking, from 1 to 5 on the MEDDIC letters. This speeds up the conversation and enables them to focus on what is missing. Note that its critical to re-inforce the importance of using MEDDIC as the communications mechanism. During one of my leadership roles, I actually used commission percentages that were based on the usage (ie, a percentage of the STANDARD commision was based on the usage of MEDDIC, not a kicker). With AI now, I actually put the deals thru a MEDDIC screen to re-inforce. And then, review your process with your team(s). You can’t improve what you don't measure, so track compliance and effectiveness and adjust accordingly.

Now, for measurement, I will have a whole page on Dashboards and Dashboarding and how to make them easily but impactful, but it is critical that you measure your KPIs and your outcome. Make sure that you make it part of your tracking, your compliance, and your workflows. Share those dashboards internally with your sales teams and externally with the engaged partners. Start small with simplicity and dont overcomplicate things. Complexity is the enemy of smoothness and often result in abandoned partnerships.

So what are the best known methodologies?

MEDDIC/MEDDPICC

I LOVE MEDDIC/MEDDPICC. It has made me a ton of money in my life and it has saved me a lot of time. I started using it now almost 15 years ago and I used it in many different ways.