Notes on Always Be Qualifying by Darius Lahoutifard

I finally got a chance to read ​ALWAYS BE QUALIFYING: M.E.D.D.I.C. by Darius Lahoutifard, which many had recommended to me. I had heard of MEDDPICC as a qualification framework but mostly only had direct experience with BANT, so I was excited to learn more about MEDDPICC.

I really liked the book's intro, and most of the pain points and challenges with qualification and sales resonated with me and sounded familiar. I liked the concise and tactical nature of this book, and I learned a lot. I'm excited to apply this stuff!

My main notes and takeaways are below.

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1 qualifying is closing
Why anything 
Why us
Why now

2 intro
Metrics: potential gain
Economic buyer: meet buyer
Decision process
Decision criteria and influence it
Identify pain
Champion identified 
Second C adds competition
Paper process: legal and purchasing 

3 metrics
How impact will be measured
Measurable
Everyday language 
Tells story
Result of comparison before and after
Impacts economics of business
Champion supported or authored
How to collect data
Not just about customer happiness
Needs to be measurable
Sources of metrics
Existing customers
Prospects
Discover existing pain from prospect 
Economic impact
Revenue
Cost
Risk mitigation 
Highlight metrics on website per vertical
Asking open ended discovery questions
Tell me about
How do you
Explain to me
Describe for me
Where to find metrics
Prospecting
Demos

4 economic buyer
Not procurement person
Authority to sign
Discretion over budgets and priorities
Usually c suite
Purchasing person tries to negotiate better terms but they don’t make the decision and are usually bluffing 
Ask champion who is EB and to give you insight into procurement process
Ask EB who else will need to review or approve purchase besides them 
Operational vs functional decision maker
IT dept
Usually whoever has the pain gets to decide
Executive committees
Figure out who is chairman and has final word
Tune sales pitch to each person
Individual contributors focus on how
Managers focus on what 
C suite focuses on why and when and who
Meeting with EB required at beginning and end to be a real deal

5 decision criteria
Vendor partner criteria
Reputation
Financial justification
How is value delivered
What financial impact will it have
Capability validation
Requirements 
Nice to have features
Scoring criteria
Influence decision criteria to have your differentiators required 
Value triangle is what we satisfy and competition does not
Focus on differentiators you have competition doesn’t
Weaken and question requirements you don’t meet which competition does

6 decision and paper process
Validation
Approval
Write down process and customer to do list
Paper process
Procurement
Legal
Administrative process
Can you tell me what exactly has to happen for your org to place a purchase order?
Share terms with legal shade of time
Compelling event
Pressure to make decision
Answer to why now question 

7 identify pain
Business pains
Capabilities and personal pains
Tell me about and open questions
What are you trying to improve
What do you like about things now
Consequences if pain left unaddressed
Urgency and compelling event
Reverse timeline
Address needs not wants
Get more info on the pain
Challenger consultant trying to help them as trusted advisor

8 champion
Sponsors our solutions 
Has access to EB
Respected in company
Personal win for champion
Champions vs coaches 
Champions will fight for you and help you against competition
Qualify the champion
Champions built over time
Someone who has implemented solutions in company in past
Look for people who ask questions in demos
Facilitator during meetings
Connect with champion after demos
Test the champion
Have him provide org chart and other inside info
Help validate metrics and ROI pitch
Have them answer why buy at all, why us, why now

9 ROI pitch
Payback period easier
Talk about cost per day of money out the window from not implementing solution

10 say no to qualify and close
Helps test the buyer
Explain why feature requests aren’t essential and should focus on benefits and how other customers don’t need it
Focus on the pain and how to eliminate
Push back on legal changes that would delay stuff weeks and cost them 6 figures

11 meddic vs bant
Bant ok for simple and transactional sales
Budget can be created when pain and metrics make sense

Conclusion
Excellence is habit