Behind the Scenes: The Making of Salesroom’s MEDDIC Report Feature with Dustin Dean

In sales, having the right tools can make all the difference between closed-lost and closed-won. At Salesroom, we’re dedicated to creating features that not only streamline the sales process but also help sales professionals shine. One of our standout tools is the MEDDIC Report feature, crafted with the expert guidance of MEDDIC authority, Dustin Dean.

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Dustin brings a wealth of experience from his time at PTC, where MEDDIC was originally developed. His deep understanding of MEDDIC and its practical application made him the ideal partner for this project.

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We’re excited to offer you an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how the MEDDIC Report feature came to be. And who better to guide you through it than Dustin himself? With his extensive expertise and passion for MEDDIC, Dustin will help you grasp the fundamentals and show you how to leverage MEDDIC effectively.

Take it away, Dustin!

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The Fundamentals of MEDDICC: According to a MEDDICC Expert

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What would you do to increase the overall quota attainment rate of your sales team by just 10%?  What would it mean to your month, quarter, year towards growing your business?

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MEDDIC (or MEDDICC or MEDDPIC as derivatives) has been successfully employed by 100s of software companies over the last 25 to 30 years. It was created at Parametric Technology Corporation (Nasdaq: PTC) in the 1990s by Dick Dunkel, along with John McMahon and Jack Napoli. Utilizing the elements of MEDDICC, PTC grew from $0 to $1B in just a handful of years. By today’s standards, that may not sound like much, but trust me—30 years ago it was unicorn growth.

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MEDDICC was created to give salespeople and sales leaders a way to orient themselves in a sales campaign, to some degree checking off what has been achieved, but much more importantly, what STILL needs to be done to successfully close business. Looking at every aspect of a deal to understand why the deal WON’T close, and then developing strategies and tactics to eliminate or neutralize those risks.

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Elements of MEDDICC are thrown around loosely today. Champion…Metric…Decision Criteria…but few sales people have a deep understanding of what each of the letters of the acronym really mean, and without that knowledge, it becomes another bullet point 'skill' listed on everyone’s resume.

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A lot of people think that MEDDICC is an old, out-of-date approach to selling. That it’s been replaced by progressively more modern selling 'strategies' (Miller Heiman, SPIN, TAS, Strategic Selling, Challenger—Sale/Customer, etc). In reality, the best sales leaders in technology today utilize MEDDICC as it’s always been intended—as a complement to any sales methodology, not to tell you how to do something (such as inferring pain in Challenger Sales) but to tell you what and when to do something.

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For example: Is the person you think is your Economic Buyer actually so? Or is there someone else that has discretionary authority over budgets that could either give more budget, or take budget away? Do you have a Champion-approved Metric (with before and after comparison, involving P&L impact)? Or are you assuming because the customer 'has budget' that Metric has been addressed? MEDDICC involves the search for information and knowledge—which, as we all know, is power, and determining what to do with it. Finally, you then put in the very hard work to execute. And if you use MEDDICC as intended, trust me—it is hard work.

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From Concept to Creation: How a Great Idea Turned into So Much More

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When I was first introduced to Roy (CEO & Co-Founder) and the team at Salesroom, I was curious, mainly because the colleague who recommended I speak to Roy was someone I respected greatly. I was a bit skeptical, as in past sales leadership roles, I had found the promised value propositions of Gong, Chorus.ai, and similar tools to be lacking. Not in terms of the features they offered, but more in the practical execution to advance sales deals. At best, they were great at assembling ever-increasing libraries of video content, helpful with sales training and ongoing enablement. Salespeople could use them to review their notes after a call to try to put together a summary for their management. Sales leaders might take the time, at 1.5x speed, to review certain important calls (although behind closed doors, I have rarely met a sales leader, especially a leader of leaders, who could actually find time to review video calls beyond the most important to the biggest 2-3 deals of a quarter). But the promise of AI incorporated into the meeting, and the advanced billing of being able to cultivate both structured AND unstructured data with the scope of AI sounded interesting.

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When Eric (Head of Sales) first introduced the platform to me, one of the first cool things I saw was the flagging of competitors’ names to allow the AI to raise battle card information. I could see the value in helping a salesperson know in the moment the key traps that could be set or the ways to deflect or manage an objection set by a competitor.

Then I saw the call summary roll-up and thought about how a manager could use that to see which of the prescribed steps of the sales process a sales person checked off, and which they didn’t. 

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Things like engagement scores and sentiment analysis were compelling to help give some indication of who was “in” the virtual room and who was checked out of the meeting. Then, honestly, my mind started wandering a bit (not sure how that affected my engagement score). 

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I have led sales teams of 2 people to 100+. I have done countless trainings of sales tactics and reviewed countless deals with sales people. At every company I have worked with, I have given basic MEDDICC training not only to sellers but to Customer Success, Sales/Solution engineering, Marketing, and Product. Giving the latter groups exposure to MEDDICC was intended as an intro to the language sales people used, and how they communicated the value proposition for the company. But, obviously the most intense focus was on imparting knowledge to the salespeople to help them learn to use MEDDICC as a navigational tool on the fly. The challenge was taking the classroom learning and applying it consistently with leadership guidance.

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There are two ways to build MEDDICC into a sales team culture. One would be to hire salespeople with some recognized lineage in their background that has given them a deeper understanding (PTC, EMC in the old days, Mongo or Snowflake more recently) or ideally someone that had worked for someone you knew as a fellow practitioner of MEDDICC. Or, two, assemble a team of hungry, intelligent, and coachable salespeople and teach them.

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There is a theory of learning, sometimes known as Competency Quadrants. On one end of the spectrum, when people are first exposed to a skill, they “don’t know what they don’t know”. They are “unconsciously incompetent”. Given the right type and amount of coaching, eventually a person can achieve the fourth of the four quadrants, or “unconsciously competent”, a place where they no longer have to think about the skill to execute it. 

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When a sales team is a team of 3-5, a sales leader (assuming they have the requisite deep knowledge) can provide that level of coaching. But when two, three, four or more teams are part of the equation, each with their own front-line leader, raising the level of knowledge and consistency of skill in a salesperson becomes increasingly difficult. As a CRO, leading leaders, your leaders need to have the same level of knowledge and skill in coaching as you do.

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And it hit me… what if AI could ingest the parameters of MEDDICC, in depth as well as a company’s sales process. And in real-time, identify aspects of the meeting that were key triggers to make note of, act on, or would drive meaningful next steps to advance the deal?

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Pre-pandemic, selling was very different. Most meetings were in person, and a salesperson and leader could conduct a meeting, take cues from each other, read body language, and work in conjunction to guide the salesperson in assessing the meeting through MEDDICC. The “kick under the table.” We live in a very different world today, and I have constantly found myself frustrated as I made a note of a key point in a call, knew there was an opportunity to jump on, sent a frantic Slack message to the salesperson, only to have the moment pass because the sales person didn’t see it, or couldn’t take attention away from the meeting screen.

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Also, pre-pandemic, meetings were in person and there would be “lobby huddles” and “parking lot huddles” before and after the meeting. The salesperson, manager, and SE could plan for what needed to be achieved in the upcoming meeting (who to test as a champion, how to assert financial decision criteria, etc.) and what was achieved afterward. I think very few teams do this anymore with every hour on the hour Zoom calls on the calendar. This is a HUGE miss in terms of sales people being coached in “near” real time.

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So what if Salesroom, with its proprietary platform, allowing for the consumption of both structured and unstructured data by AI, capable of being fed parameters to present information to the sales person at the most relevant times could be an “always-on, real-time” sales coach? Maybe my career dream of making “every salesperson my best salesperson” could be realized.

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The Crafting Process: Building and Refining the MEDDICC Report

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MEDDICC is a dynamic, non-linear framework for evaluating progression through a sales campaign—meaning it’s not a checklist you progress through in parallel to a sales process. Identification and ongoing maturity of depth in all the elements of the acronym may appear at any time during the sales process, and the most difficult portion of implementing MEDDICC is cueing in on components, sometimes fragments, of any or all of them in any engagement during a sales cycle.

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For example, in an initial discovery meeting, a given employee of the prospect may pay special attention to the discussion, outline in detail current pain points, and volunteer to be the “point person” for the salesperson to work with moving forward. Must be the champion, right? Well, no, not necessarily. But these are cues or indicators of a potential champion. And those cues need to be recognized by the salesperson for what they are—indicators of potential. From there, a plan to begin to test that individual on merit as a true Champion needs to be developed as an ongoing thread in the sales process. We need to know whether the person meets the three key components of a Champion (Power and Influence, Sells for you when you aren’t there, and has a Persona Win).

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Similarly, there might be a trade-off of technical features offered by the vendor and required by the prospect. These are the seeds of determining Decision Criteria (Technical). They should be documented and understood thoroughly by the salesperson, and a second thread should be started to influence that Criteria in favor of the vendor. How much overlap exists between vendor and prospect? Which are “wants” vs “needs”? How many align with particular vendor strengths? More importantly, are there any specific features that the prospect deems important that are actually strengths of the competition? What should the vendor do to influence the prospect’s perception of what’s important? Who should the salesperson engage with (potential Champion?

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Or, a conversation occurs with an SI that both the vendor and prospect are aligned with. The salesperson currently assumes that a given person is the Economic Buyer in the sales campaign, but in that conversation, the SI mentions that the perceived EB failed to push a different initiative through earlier in the year. In fact, his/her manager was the one who not only overruled and killed the project but also took the budget originally assigned to the perceived EB and gave it to a different group for a different initiative. That person was the TRUE EB.

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Tying Champions and Economic Buyers together, they aren’t identified and confirmed in perpetuity…circumstances change. For example, if the budget required increases, it may go beyond the “current” EB’s ability to decide—so there’s a new EB—who has the discretion of the larger amount. Or the Champion may fail to deliver on a key ask from the salesperson. Champions, especially, rise and fall as atmospheric pressure is measured by a barometer—and making note of the nuanced changes is critical to avoid being unpleasantly surprised at some point.

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Usually, this process involves one to two people (salesperson and manager), but at any given time, others might be involved (VP Sales, CRO, VP CS, etc). But the crux of successful application of MEDDICC is:

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• Identification of MEDDICC-related elements throughout the sales process.
• Processing that information related to what is already known.
• Planning for next steps to pursue that knowledge, or to develop additional threads of pursuit to uncover what isn’t known.

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Traditionally, this process is a “before and after” meeting exercise or is examined on a periodic basis between the salesperson and manager. But this is like studying for a test (pre-meeting work), taking the test, and then being “graded” by the manager (post-work).

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What if the meeting itself wasn’t a test but part of ongoing real-time learning? Wow.

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Real-Time Advantage: The Practical Impact of Salesroom’s MEDDICC Report

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The MEDDICC Report aggregated by Salesroom could be the most powerful feature I’ve seen in SaaS sales over my career. Having both structured and unstructured data being processed by AI, in real-time, against preset parameters to both prompt the salesperson during a meeting, then accurately summarize progress made relative to the MEDDICC elements, and then make suggestions on next steps to further advance progress would be incredible.

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At one time, there would be a lot of “kicking under the table” as a manager cued into signals in a meeting and made the effort to alert the salesperson to ask a certain follow-up question. Or the manager would jump in to override/interrupt, causing break in flow, potential lowering of credibility.

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Or in today’s video conference and messaging world, the manager might send a Slack message that would likely go unseen or be ignored, wasting the opportunity presented in that moment to capitalize. The moment passes, the conversation with the customer pivots away. The result? Discussion post-meeting to help the salesperson understand what was happening in that moment, coaching on how to better identify and address it, and another action item for follow-up in future meetings. This translates into the extension of a sales cycle, a shift in Decision Criteria away from the vendor, failure to test a Champion, missed opportunity to dial in on the real EB. In practical terms, the number of “misses” is virtually infinite.  And every one is a lost chance to advance a deal and more importantly give the sales person a chance to practice in real time, effectively affirming their own knowledge.  

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The main impacts are:

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• Learning is best done in real-time while doing. Not cramming for a test and then looking at the results after.
• Time kills all deals. Sales cycles are either shortened or extended based on a salesperson’s ability to pounce on key moments vs needing to go through further cycles to try to regroup or catch up.

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Examples could be the salesperson being prompted in real time by Salesroom to follow up on a question, identify and make note of signals indicating a champion, or even something as simple as reminding the salesperson to close a demo meeting properly  (influencing the decision process by setting workstreams for Financial/Technical/Vendor evaluation).

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The utopian outcome: the salesperson learns while doing, and ultimately each salesperson in the company becomes better at their craft, in real time, at scale.

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Why Salesroom Stands Out: The Unique Benefits of Real-Time AI

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Because Salesroom operates on a proprietary video platform, it provides the opportunity to process both structured AND unstructured information against parameters. Salesroom provides AI with the right parameters to parse against that dual data set in real time.

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Salesroom is NOT focusing on the old way of doing things—classroom learning, pre- and post-meeting debriefs to review “test results,” and periodic inspections. Instead, Salesroom is leading education and skills development into the future by providing real-time continuous learning to optimize execution.

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If every salesperson had the sales skills (if not the leadership skills) of every sales leader, and if every sales leader could efficiently support, review, and provide overlay cover both consistently and at scale, growth would be an obvious result.

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The challenge has always been the lack of time, bandwidth, and tools to effectively transfer the sales leader’s knowledge and skills to sales teams—beyond traditional classroom lectures on methodologies and “test/quiz” approaches to reinforce learning (customer meetings, weekly one-on-ones, etc.).

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Again, it’s a well-known fact: learning by doing with real-time coaching is a far superior method to become unconsciously competent at a skill.

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Turning Every Rep into a Top Performer

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With real-time AI that processes both structured and unstructured data, Salesroom is empowering every sales rep to excel, turning them into top performers, no matter where they start. This approach transforms traditional methods into dynamic, on-the-spot learning that helps your team grow faster and more effectively.

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A big thank you to Dustin for sharing his invaluable expertise and demonstrating the power of this game-changing feature. At Salesroom, we’re proud that our tools are crafted by sales experts for sales professionals, and we’re so glad we were able to give you a closer look at that process. 

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Ready to see how it can elevate your team’s performance? Discover more about Salesroom and book a demo to experience the MEDDICC Report feature in action and start transforming your sales approach today.