Andy Whyte Unlocks the Power of MEDDICC

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:23:17
Ben Hillman
Imagine that you're in a deep, dense forest. You have a compass and a map to guide you. But each step that you take is careful, if deliberate. Well, you have these tools and others that illuminate the path forward. It is your intuition that burns strongest. You've done this before. It may not be the same forest, but you're familiar with navigating the unknown to reach your destination.

00:00:24:13 - 00:00:50:07
Ben Hillman
But what happens when your intuition fades? You'll need a framework to help you get out. Like the expert explorer in the forest, Andy White, understands the importance of having the right tools and techniques that guide him through the complex world of sales. And he does it all with the help of the MEDDICC sales framework, a powerful compass that enables sales professionals to identify the right opportunities and engage with customers effectively.

00:00:50:09 - 00:01:16:22
Ben Hillman
This framework is the very foundation upon which Andy has built his impressive sales career of nearly 20 years, even leading a business of the same name as the sun's rays filter through the canopy above, casting a warm and inviting glow on the forest floor. Our journey into the world of MedTech is about to begin. From Paddle, it's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator.

00:01:17:07 - 00:01:41:02
Ben Hillman
On today's episode, Andy White dives deep on MedTech. We talk about what MedTech really is the three pillars of professional buyers illuminating the vocabulary difference between sales and marketing, the attributes of a productive sales and marketing partnership, and how medtech works in hybrid environments. After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for an in-depth field guide focused on how you can implement medtech in your business.

00:01:41:08 - 00:02:00:07
Ben Hillman
Then, while you're leaving your five star review of the podcast, tell us what advice Andy gave that resonated with you most. First up, any talks about what MedTech really is.

00:02:02:09 - 00:02:05:20
Andrew Davies
My name is Andrew DAVIES. I'm the CMO of Paddle and Andy. Why didn't you just help?

00:02:05:22 - 00:02:22:07
Andy Whyte
Sure. Hi. Thank you. First of all, most of the opportunity. This is great. Those that won't be able to see. I'm sat on a panel stage that looks incredible with you. Your branding looks sensational. So hi, I'm Andy White's founder, CEO of a company called MEDDICC. MEDDICC. For those who don't know as a sales methodology, I think we'll probably talk a little bit about that.

00:02:22:07 - 00:02:45:05
Andy Whyte
But it's been around a fair while, but it's typically the sales methodology used by the world's most elite sales teams. So it's been around about 25 years. And what we do, we're very much know a media company that helps organizations to become enabled or MEDDICC, so help them to onboard their teams make it a common language. And we also assess company as well.

00:02:45:06 - 00:03:01:01
Andy Whyte
So we have a SaaS product launch by the end of this month. And yeah, so we kind of do that enablement operation. And also we, you know, we try and bring those in the sales industry there that kind of focus on being elite basically together into a community.

00:03:01:03 - 00:03:13:01
Andrew Davies
You've said you are a media company, you said you're going to be a SaaS company and dig into both of those in a minute. Tell me the team of made this very confusing. My name is under your name and we're both speaking with British accents. There's a lot of problems going through this and following this on the audio.

00:03:13:03 - 00:03:21:08
Andrew Davies
Let's go back to the very beginning. So we were just talking before this. This goes all the way back to the 1990s pizza that don't go on in terms about the origin stories of MEDDICC.

00:03:21:11 - 00:03:39:13
Andy Whyte
Yeah, it's a really important origin story as well because one of the great things about MEDDICC is it's literally reverse engineered from how customers buy or importantly how customers don't buy. So you got to go back to 1995. You have an organization called Etsy, which are still famous today for being one of the most elite sales organization and.

00:03:39:17 - 00:03:51:16
Andrew Davies
The best sales rep I ever hired. He made sure in his career he worked for Etsy before he came into early stage startups, so he got that sales training. Yeah. Even nowadays that's known as a place to manufacture great reps.

00:03:51:16 - 00:04:16:18
Andy Whyte
Yes. Yes, exactly right. And it was it was this place where they had an innovative technology was is taking design basically from being on draft SEO, drawing out designs manually on a digital. And what you had there was probably the like strongest amount of talent in one place there ever has been. And what that meant was that from their talent sort of creates talent and therefore it proliferated this sort of PTC mafia almost.

00:04:16:18 - 00:04:33:13
Andy Whyte
So in PTC though, because they have this reputation for having this incredibly elite salespeople. Of course, everybody wants to hire a PTC salesperson. So they started to have this issue of attrition, which means that the new salespeople coming in, one quote, is performing as well as the old ones. So one of the things they did was they took Dog or Dick Dunkel.

00:04:33:14 - 00:04:49:20
Andy Whyte
He was a salesperson out of the field, and they said today, like go. And basically speaks of a sales teams, find out what's going on out there and let's try and like enable this. He was probably one of the first examples of enablement back in the $0.90 an upper level. Everyone and one of the things he did was he ran an exercise called Why Do We Win?

00:04:49:20 - 00:05:02:07
Andy Whyte
Why Do We lose and why do deals slip? And you just imagine a whiteboard with three columns on it. And he asked his sales team, you know, Boston sales team, why do we win? And they're all, you know, giving the reasons why they win, Why did they lose models? And what he realized as he traveled around the world and there's over a thousand salespeople.

00:05:02:07 - 00:05:18:05
Andy Whyte
There was six commonalities in the reasons why he won, why he lost an ideal sets and buy deals, slip those. I don't know. I mean that I say this deal was going to close on this day. It doesn't close. It is going to close, but it slips maybe into the next quarter or something like that. So these six commonalities tick because he's very creative.

00:05:18:06 - 00:05:35:04
Andy Whyte
He made it an acronym which therefore spell MEDDICC, which is metrics, which is the quantifiable value that your business provides economic by this is like the top of authority. This is the time the person has the veto power. Then you have two D's. The first one is decision criteria, which is, you know, speaks for itself. How is the customer basing their decision decision process?

00:05:35:04 - 00:06:00:17
Andy Whyte
How do they make the decision? Then the iced advice, identify pain and then you have a C champion. And what happened? They saw a lot of success from this and then it proliferated. And we had some other great success stories along the way like Blade Logic and John McMahon, probably one of the greatest sales leaders of all time, who was is our leader in Blade Lodge so lean and then took over BMC and is now you know like I say the goats are probably sales leadership is become like a common language in some of the finest sales teams that are out there.

00:06:00:17 - 00:06:05:02
Andy Whyte
So that's kind of the backstory. I know there's a couple of letters added in at some points and other things like was.

00:06:05:02 - 00:06:15:21
Andrew Davies
It the thing? So you named your company MEDDICC and that has become MEDDICC and med to pay it can all these other extent. Yes. So people have added in those extra kind of letters at different points. Yes. How many versions of this? All the.

00:06:15:22 - 00:06:29:03
Andy Whyte
Oh, wow, that's a great one. Yeah. There's a lot not well I say a lot. There's there is MEDDICC with one C MEDDICC with two cases which is more. My company is called. I'd love to be able to tell you that I'm like, you know, the guy that loves MEDDICC with to CS that was the dotcom that was available when I started.

00:06:29:03 - 00:06:46:20
Andy Whyte
I was just writing a book where I wasn't going to start a business. I was just trying to have a website that was relevant. I've always actually practiced MedPAC. That's my reference. So yes, you've guessed it. There's a P in there and which stands for paper process first. So the idea here is if you imagine back in those nineties, everything was on premise much more straightforward.

00:06:46:20 - 00:07:03:12
Andy Whyte
There was no data processing cloud agreements. So we see commonly now if a deal slips, it's because the legal process they process is taking on a so the paper process allows salespeople to put more attention and time your effort into making sure they understand where they are. So that's the one. And then sometimes people add another C on for compelling events.

00:07:03:12 - 00:07:16:01
Andy Whyte
I actually once worked on normalization where we had a very particular risk in the South site, and if it existed, we basically wouldn't be able to to have a deal. And so we always we called out an hour. Fortunately we put the are the end, not after the P which would be.

00:07:16:01 - 00:07:16:13
Andrew Davies
Result go.

00:07:16:13 - 00:07:19:05
Andy Whyte
The I don't know what this is a big audience but I won't mention.

00:07:19:05 - 00:07:34:08
Andrew Davies
I know where it is and more letters coming potentially. And I'm a CMO, right. My eyes are glazing over when we go to deep sales methodologies for everyone in the audience listening to this, this is how you grow massive, predictable revenue through an outbound sales organization. I got to be honest, Sales kick off every year when it goes deep into sales methodologies.

00:07:34:08 - 00:07:48:20
Andrew Davies
I'm out getting a coffee, but we're going to talk in a bit about how marketing and sales teams need to work together around a strong methodology. But yes, so let's quickly dive into your business for a little bit first. So you said a media company. Yes, training company. There's a bit of a community, there's a SaaS business coming.

00:07:48:20 - 00:07:54:02
Andrew Davies
So just give me the quick lay of the land about how you're helping people establish this methodology as something that scales that business.

00:07:54:02 - 00:08:12:14
Andy Whyte
Yeah, sure. Great question. So I think one of the things that I started to realize was that despite looking around at the INS or the elites of our industry, you know, the snowflakes, the data docs say to robots, these these real great companies, they're all using metric. But no one was really talking about it very much. It was kind of like and my theory was always those people that know it.

00:08:12:14 - 00:08:30:15
Andy Whyte
So well are that crushing it so much, they have time to stop to talk about it. Right. And I had had all the success as a sales leader, using it as part of my playbook, and I wanted to basically level up as a to become a CEO someday. And that was my goal. And I thought that, you know, one thing I could do is sort of showcase my knowledge and activity and success I'd had.

00:08:30:20 - 00:08:48:06
Andy Whyte
We've met, so I wrote a book about it, which then led to kind of what was initially supposed to be this idea that it would just be like a big business card. Brides get better jobs. But what I realized was as I book came out and start to get some publicity, people were coming to me and saying, Hey, look like no question about it, we love MEDDICCare is No.

00:08:48:06 - 00:09:09:14
Andy Whyte
One questions MEDDICCal ones like it doesn't work for my industry or my size of do everyone gets it. The challenge they have is because it's effectively open source. That's if you advertise, you know, an 84 panel tomorrow and you put on there, we were like you'd say, no, MEDDICC then, and I really want my job. I'm going to Google it and I'll probably find a HubSpot article and will say 5 minutes at the top and I'll read out, I know what the letters stand for and that's not knowing.

00:09:09:14 - 00:09:27:17
Andy Whyte
MEDDICC So one of the challenges was around operationalizing it, like how do we really get teams credibly enabled on it? The other challenge was how do we bring it into all the other things we do, into the sales process, into the other go to market teams. And these were big challenges that still exist today out there. Even some of the companies are having some success with MedTech.

00:09:27:17 - 00:09:42:18
Andy Whyte
So I started to think about this and the software side of things was always the North Star. I always wanted to build a software company because that's where I come from. I myself like I sell software. I'm not a product guy. So that was always the goal. And I thought, Well, how can I help us to get towards that goal, build customers, build advocacy?

00:09:42:18 - 00:09:56:13
Andy Whyte
And I thought, Well, I keep getting asked to do training. I didn't want to go and do in-person training. That's consulting for me. And that's, you know, that's build once so once kind of thing. And so we built an online program that's been really successful. People have a lot of success from it. And that's kind of that's the media part.

00:09:56:16 - 00:10:12:07
Andy Whyte
And that's we were always, you know, we had we had a free four person marketing team before we had any product people or any technical people. So we'd build that sort of those things. First in mind, just because that's so much about what we do. And then, you know, the software products have been developing in the background and year almost ready.

00:10:12:07 - 00:10:17:03
Andy Whyte
So I'm really excited about that.

00:10:17:03 - 00:10:24:21
Ben Hillman
Next, Andy talks about the three pillars of professional buyers.

00:10:24:21 - 00:10:39:01
Andrew Davies
Well, we'll make sure the book is the show notes. We'll make sure if the product is all we get to promote that as well. Let's just talk a little bit about I know you talked to this many times, the sales and marketing divides in many outbound sales organizations. There's there's, you know, never the twain shall meet between your marketing organization, your sales organization.

00:10:39:03 - 00:10:42:14
Andrew Davies
How does marketing engage with MEDDICC how to how we see our worked well.

00:10:42:14 - 00:11:06:02
Andy Whyte
Yeah the way that I like to break MEDDICC down so those that wouldn't necessarily be in sales or those that don't have the time to sort of really get it quickly is this free healers of professional selling? For me, there's value and there's stakeholders and there's process. And if you think about how marketing can impacts each one of those obviously value, it's critically important that marketing underpin value ever be with case studies, whether it be with visualization of value, all the things you know you do very well.

00:11:06:02 - 00:11:21:12
Andy Whyte
So that's an obvious one. We can dig deeper into these. The second one is stakeholders. So in MEDDICC you have the champion, you have the economic buyer, the best marketing teams I've worked with. We're so in sync on this. We have champion events. We have events specifically designed to build champions. And I know you guys are brilliance of this.

00:11:21:18 - 00:11:40:06
Andy Whyte
We have event specifically for economic buyers. We have content specifically for those personas. So we start to really think about not just who, but what is the value for those specific people. And then the other one that always gets overlooked, and this is a bit of a bugbear of mine, but this process process is this kind of thing that sort of seems like everyone thinks has to happen.

00:11:40:10 - 00:12:01:16
Andy Whyte
But of course it has to happen. You can actually accelerates a lot if you really focus on it. And so marketing can help with that because if you look at the sales process and you look at where the where are they, where the hurdles, where the bottlenecks, you find that probably legal, they're probably procurement, they're probably security. Now, marketing are really, really good at helping answer big questions at scale.

00:12:01:16 - 00:12:20:17
Andy Whyte
So if you can find those problems via something like MEDDICC, where you spot these issues and then get marketing, say, Hey, we're going to do in fact you, this guy, hey, we're paddling. This is really complicated payments. We're going to do an IQ of the top ten questions that get asked by security teams that might just accelerate that to one week, two weeks, three weeks of back and forth value.

00:12:20:19 - 00:12:30:11
Andrew Davies
Your stakeholders and processes that scale marketing can impact all three of those. So give us some practical examples about how you see that actually come to life. You know, any one of those to start.

00:12:30:11 - 00:12:54:02
Andy Whyte
With, let's go and value because this is definitely the most exciting one. So there's two key parts here. The first I would talk about is metrics. Metrics. Nobody ever questions metrics. Yeah, the idea of quantifying the value your solution provides to customers unquestionable. The challenge that exists is first and foremost, customers don't necessarily know their numbers. They don't know about what problems you solve, and sometimes they're a bit hesitant to share information because you haven't won the credibility to do that yet.

00:12:54:02 - 00:13:18:06
Andy Whyte
You haven't proven to this customer that you are a viable solution provider, but you kind of have, if you've done it before, right? So some of the great stuff that I know that April was talking about on your previous podcast and other people about using stories from existing customers, using proof points from existing customers to be able to teach the customer the art of the possible, but not just via you telling them about features benefits by you telling them about, Hey, I did my research ahead of this meeting.

00:13:18:06 - 00:13:35:20
Andy Whyte
And one of the things that I noticed was you are quite similar to this company that we work with. Before we worked with them, they had these problems. Do any of those problems resonate with you? Yes, they do. Yeah. Good. What you probably seeing then were those problems is that they're causing these pains and it's costing you this much or it seems is inefficient for these reasons.

00:13:36:02 - 00:13:56:21
Andy Whyte
Yes. Yes. Okay. Let me tell you about how we solved it for that organization. Let me tell you about how much value they got from solving that. Then it's really about how we do it differently, better, or in a differentiated manner from everybody else. Now, that sounds great. Not necessarily easy. So the way that we do that in a working of a marketing sentence is we break this down into two and three parts.

00:13:56:21 - 00:14:24:14
Andy Whyte
So the first is we call that an M1 metrics one. This is where you're using proof points, where existing customer based finds relevant use cases, aligns a real references to go and have that conversation. So I can points if I'm if I'm meeting Nike, I can point to ideas and talk about the value. Add that the salesperson's goal then is to migrate the M1 to an MBTA where we stop, talk about Nike and we start on my Adidas numbers and then the M2 becomes then free when I win the customer and I pass over to Post-sales and then they have some KPIs to work with the capital.

00:14:24:14 - 00:14:45:11
Andy Whyte
So there's more to this. But bringing this bottomless works of marketing, marketing are brilliant at compiling areas of value that brilliant at getting use cases to gather references together. What they miss is the mechanism to give it to the sales team, to injects into the conversation where if it's an elevator pitch, whoever is that you slide deck, whether it's on a podcast or something like that.

00:14:45:16 - 00:15:06:17
Andy Whyte
And so what this does is it gives a framework for marketing, gives capture, capture, prospect. And the best bit about all this is that M1 to M2 to M3. Once the M3 is achieved, once we've got the customer alive, goes back into top of fun, was an M1. You've got to go to market flywheel. They're a value you can provide.

00:15:06:17 - 00:15:14:12
Ben Hillman
And now Andy talks about illuminating the vocabulary difference between sales and marketing.

00:15:14:12 - 00:15:31:04
Andrew Davies
One of the difficulties between, you know, sales and marketing teams working together is is often a vocabulary difference. And, you know, my preference is always marked into learn sales vocabulary because it's often easier that way rather than, you know, me talking to you about leads, I mean, talking about open rates. I need to learn about opportunities and stakeholders and champions.

00:15:31:04 - 00:15:43:23
Andrew Davies
Yeah, because if I'm talking your language, we're both gravitating around the thing that's really moving the needle for the business. Three simple metrics I am to M3 that we can lock into and provide a menu for us to walk through in order to support your organization more effectively.

00:15:44:01 - 00:16:02:19
Andy Whyte
Yes, exactly right. So that that's one part. And the last part that I kind of touched on a little bit is where you use the decision criteria, which is in other parts of I think now most people, when they think about decision criteria, what they're thinking about is I'm a salesperson and that's a me with a customer. And they because there's an active opportunity and I want to try and understand what is the criteria in which this customer's basing that decision on.

00:16:02:19 - 00:16:17:01
Andy Whyte
So what is it like? What are the things they're looking for? What are the things are important? Maybe I might rank them in order of importance. The problem is, I think we all know this is customers are not experts buying your solution. They just they shouldn't be. If they are, then there's something wrong. You're selling to the wrong person, right?

00:16:17:07 - 00:16:40:18
Andy Whyte
They've got a day job. They've got other things to think about. So if we walk in and we expect to try and align ourselves to what they're looking for, at best we're going to do a bad job because they they're not experts. At worst, we're aligning ourselves to our competition's strengths because they've gone ahead of us and influenced it towards our strengths in the context of how this works of marketing, If you can start to really identify, flip it about being reactive decision criteria, be proactive.

00:16:40:18 - 00:16:55:03
Andy Whyte
If I'm going to go to meet a customer, I'm going to be thinking in this meeting, hypothetically, if I walked into that meeting, that customer said to me, What are the three things that we don't know? What are the three things We absolutely should be looking at? How ready am I to go with those three things? Will I just real move out?

00:16:55:03 - 00:17:17:23
Andy Whyte
Glad you ask one thing. Two things, three things. Probably not were the standard selling that I see out there because there's so many different parts to it. But if we were to get marketing to engage in sales where actually we really, really are going to define what things are technical differentiators, commercial differentiators, relationship based translators, and then be able to have all of these things attached to use cases attached to ones as well.

00:17:17:23 - 00:17:25:00
Andy Whyte
Besides get this full view, it's like a common language that goes from marketing to sales and then of course to post sales as well.

00:17:25:01 - 00:17:29:04
Andrew Davies
So we've got through metrics. Any quick examples on stakeholders or process before we move on?

00:17:29:05 - 00:17:42:07
Andy Whyte
I think I touched on a couple with the sales process, just the idea of really defining I'll give you a great anecdote. One of the exhibitors here, great company, I love them to death. I won't say you they all because it might embarrass a little bit. You know, is how you gave me my beer earlier. That's how much they love me, right?

00:17:42:08 - 00:18:02:04
Andy Whyte
They all brilliance at persona marketing or so you would think. You go on their website. They've got everyone mapped out, all their customers. They had a scenario where they implemented metric and they were reviewing that Q4. What they noticed was that 85% of their one deals the persona of that champion was one persona, one type of person, one job role.

00:18:02:10 - 00:18:22:07
Andy Whyte
But this terrifying thing was not only did they not have any persona marketing for that person, right? This is a company has loads of persona and terrifying thing was that they were proactively discouraging their sales team from engaging with this persona. But this persona was that champion and 85% of deals in that biggest quarter flipping mass on his head.

00:18:22:10 - 00:18:51:08
Andy Whyte
Now they know that they're going to create the persona champion. They can create collateral content support events to go for that person and really helps that go to market across all parts of the go to market for them. So I think that's that's the example and I think that's actually in the process. One. But just having I recently spent more than we've spent on any software combines on one platform and one of the things that really, really swung the deal in this vendor's favor was the step of, I think, content marketing or product marketing.

00:18:51:08 - 00:19:01:10
Andy Whyte
I think it was offered up an hour of his time to advise me and our marketing team about something they had done that they'd heard in our conversations that we want to do. And that's is powerful sometimes.

00:19:01:10 - 00:19:17:00
Andrew Davies
And I would love your thoughts on that. Sometimes I think this is exposed as that level of rigor is exposed in the account by often when I go into an organization which I've done a lot, many times to look at that demand gen kind of infrastructure, I yes, ask for do they need to target accounts, how many personas that they got live or active within those target accounts.

00:19:17:00 - 00:19:31:11
Andrew Davies
They're looking at those metrics in the top of the funnel downwards before we get to opportunity. And often the bit before opportunity is how many sales reps have actually done the mapping of their accounts and understand who those people are, Who are these disparate decision makers? Who is a tactical buy, Who's the economic buy, who's the user buyer, who's going to be that champion?

00:19:31:18 - 00:19:47:22
Andrew Davies
Because when you start talking about level of detail and you've got a significant coverage of your in quarter pipe has got that account map, that's where marketing can now engage and build an event or champions or build a persona guide for that person. You're not yet represented and it becomes a common language and a structure to fill out.

00:19:47:22 - 00:19:52:03
Andrew Davies
You know, it's a structure, you know, the Lego bricks actually build those in stages of execution.

00:19:52:03 - 00:20:09:10
Andy Whyte
Yes, exactly. Why? And I think sometimes that stakeholder example is a burning example. But it also goes further into other things, including decision by. So to give you another wonderful anecdote, which I think is just going to appeal to so many people, in my last sales leadership role, we had a product so as a marketing technology product and we sold it to one of the biggest e-commerce companies in Europe.

00:20:09:10 - 00:20:27:10
Andy Whyte
And what we found out in month one that was the implementation was there was a use case and nobody had seen coming. In fact, it was our champion that identified this use case back to us. And they said, You realize how much this is saving us. It was an advertising use case. This is saving us in two weeks what your entire product cost us.

00:20:27:10 - 00:20:53:09
Andy Whyte
And it was not a small deal. It's it is a significant amount of money in that normal environment in a in a technology company that's like good to know onto the next thing. In this instance, because we used MedTech, that became a defining part of the decision criteria every single e-commerce company went to see. We went into that conversation as that is a highlights that we absolutely were prepared to be able to talk to the customer about and we knew that that would appeal to them.

00:20:53:13 - 00:21:09:23
Andy Whyte
No one else could do it. It was a unique differentiator. But if you take away the framework there, it just becomes sort of like, Oh, can you send me those slides? And what we calling this thing now, in this case, this company, they were able to like coin a phrase, going to use case and really put some value behind it.

00:21:11:20 - 00:21:20:18
Ben Hillman
Next, Andy and Andrew talk about the attributes of a productive sales and marketing partnership.

00:21:20:18 - 00:21:29:13
Andrew Davies
If we just kind of zoom out a little bit and you think about all the companies you've worked with, what has been the most productive sales and marketing partnership and what were the attributes of that?

00:21:29:18 - 00:22:01:23
Andy Whyte
Yeah, so I once worked with a lady called Anna Ali, who was VP marketing at a company called Pop at Great Market IT and their ecommerce platform. Yeah, they are. Yes. Yes. Honor's idea came from the, the school of thought that particularly around closing deals marketing upon a to sales. So we would have a scenario where we would work hand-in-hand to identify go back to your stakeholder map, stakeholder map we'd identify who is it we're trying to engage with, how can we engage with them?

00:22:01:23 - 00:22:16:05
Andy Whyte
And sometimes we would reverse engineer that. We'd be like, Oh, this person's really into fashion. Okay, well, what can we do though? Perhaps let's look a box at the London Fashion Awards, which we did. And then, you know, these these things are like super long tail, but they actually do come off some time. So that would be one.

00:22:16:05 - 00:22:25:11
Andy Whyte
And it was just the best partnership. I think I've except for obviously now have the world's best head of marketing. I have to give shoutouts yes. But as a sales leader, that was that was the best experience I had.

00:22:25:12 - 00:22:32:16
Andrew Davies
Okay. So a real empathy from the marketing leader about, you know, the pressure you were under, how she back you up, how she could open new doors for you.

00:22:32:16 - 00:22:55:02
Andy Whyte
Yeah. And, you know, she would come into the reviews and sometimes some of the sharpest perspectives came from her because not only had she had a great background pedigree in sales from working in sales so long, but it's a fresh pair of eyes and also, here's a tip. Like if you're a sales person, listen to this. Go and find the department in your business that buys technology like yours and sit with them there.

00:22:55:02 - 00:23:00:12
Andy Whyte
I've learned more about sales since buying software than the rest of my career combined.

00:23:00:16 - 00:23:18:08
Andrew Davies
I think as a company scales those that collaboration has to become something you program and train. It's got to be something you fund within the organization, right? That time it takes time. It takes meetings regularly. It takes a process of communication. I think often it gets lost in a scale up process and you'll have it between some of your best reps, your best marketers.

00:23:18:13 - 00:23:23:11
Andrew Davies
So any ways that you make sure your calendar is a program that feedback to marketing and sales.

00:23:23:11 - 00:23:47:18
Andy Whyte
Yes. So there's a there's a few things that are really important here. The first is it's all in the culture and trying to build that team that everyone's pulling in the same direction together. We just need to like eradicate this idea that, you know, marketing has their goals and sales has their goals. And I think if we if you really get everyone from the top to the bottom, focus on the same goal, which is in our industry, let's be honest, it's growth and that allows it kind of lowers any kind of barriers for any reasons why people wouldn't be aligned.

00:23:47:18 - 00:24:01:07
Andy Whyte
But I really, really think that this is one of the things that I've met P&G works so well, is that if you bring, let's say, in a dual review environment together, let's just go back to that do review as an example. One of the things that I knew was great to be able to do in those situations was she would come in as you give great advice.

00:24:01:07 - 00:24:13:21
Andy Whyte
But the other thing she was able to do was to be able to react to things. So she would say, okay, well, we've got that wine tasting event, let's get that fast and long and say, Well, why do they not understand that we're differentiated them like, well, we can't get it across them. It's like, let's create some content for that.

00:24:13:21 - 00:24:29:21
Andy Whyte
Let's let's do a webinar for that. And so I think it's really just about making everyone realize. I think this time in my career was probably the time, particularly around this 2018 year, the entire company was aligned behind the goal like I've never seen before. It was a very, very, a very proud thing for, I think, everyone involved in it.

00:24:30:01 - 00:24:32:16
Andy Whyte
But it was just that everyone pulling in the same direction.

00:24:32:16 - 00:24:53:09
Andrew Davies
So there's two things here from a marketing leader standpoint, I think a really actionable the first thing is that you've got to create space in your marketing function to react to what sales need in quarter. So holding back 30% of resource time budget in order to be able to do that. The second thing is though, one of the ways I've found it really effective to kind of build a process for this is building a menu of options of how we can react to sales needs.

00:24:53:09 - 00:25:10:02
Andrew Davies
Yeah. So whether it is a pop up wine tasting or a custom matches from the CMO or a CEO or a local steak dinner or whatever it might be, showing sales, the math of how much that costs, how much lead time you need, how many of those you can do on a weekly basis and actually offering that menu so the sales can pick and choose when something's on an account they really want to move the needle on.

00:25:10:04 - 00:25:12:04
Andrew Davies
They need to make a bigger ask. Yes on the.

00:25:12:04 - 00:25:16:02
Andy Whyte
Menu. I love that. That's a great idea. I'd love to have had that as a as a salesperson.

00:25:16:02 - 00:25:28:18
Andrew Davies
That's zero serious decisions now quite by for us, too. They had a really good practice around this about ourselves enabled the process and how marketing could deliver that sales acceleration. I think it was really, really interesting.

00:25:28:18 - 00:25:35:10
Ben Hillman
And now how MEDDICC works in hybrid environments.

00:25:35:10 - 00:25:52:16
Andrew Davies
Let's pivot slowly at this conference here you are. Obviously everything we're talking about now is outbound is predictable, revenue is how do we go and win those whales. It's ABM ABCs if we're not going to use the marketing methodology. Does this work with part of that growth too? You must be working with some companies. They've got a bit of a split motion, a hybrid motion, You know, does this work in an environment?

00:25:52:16 - 00:25:53:11
Andrew Davies
So how do you see it?

00:25:53:11 - 00:26:10:04
Andy Whyte
Tailored Yeah, I was laughing because I saw it so easy everyday and I don't think I can quite sure. But it was basically like someone said, you know, it's brand marketing, It's like it's just a demo. And I don't believe I don't believe that, but it was kind of fun. They were making fun of it. I just think that's we've been talking about this for years and sales about how our prospects are deeper in the funnel than we know.

00:26:10:04 - 00:26:27:07
Andy Whyte
And that's, hey, they're doing more research and stuff like that. Well, we're in a they're bringing that our contacts to sales. They're going deeper in the funnel. Why do we focus on making sure that when they're using the products, when they go, that they're evaluating it, that we're elevating all the things we would do if you sat there with them?

00:26:27:07 - 00:26:50:15
Andy Whyte
Oh, by the way, ABC uses this feature you've just tap and it's increased their ABC by 5%. Well, you may, you know, and just sort of adding that sales context that we would do if we were doing the demo. One of the things I heard someone talk about, we saw I've never done this in my career, but someone was talking about one of the things they like to do is get the customer to give them like a reverse demo where I like, they get them to show them their current solution and like talk about why that's bad.

00:26:50:16 - 00:27:13:17
Andy Whyte
And I think sometimes, like if we put ourselves in that situation of what would we do if we were there with the salesperson, if we were there with a customer when they were evaluating these solutions, what things would we say? And I think bringing that together with marketing, it's really about making sure that those points, almost like those those hints and tips there's no nuggets of gold as use cases are sort of dropped in in the sort of go to market teams.

00:27:13:17 - 00:27:26:14
Andy Whyte
So the when the sales team comes in, they can kind of pick them up and explain the differentiators. But I think product like growth is brilliant. I think we all can talk about this as we've all been. Consumers have all been frustrated when we want to use technology in business. Some of the minor wars, we can't use it.

00:27:26:14 - 00:27:41:08
Andy Whyte
I think it's only going to be I think it's like all these innovations. Those are really good will prevail and those that are not doing a great job, that aren't really thinking about the customer and the value that we're trying to solve for the customer and the pain they're facing and how we can provide true value, they'll be left behind.

00:27:41:08 - 00:27:57:08
Andrew Davies
One of the shifts that we're seeing and marketers, we love an acronym as much as sales do with better. Our acronyms are better. I'm sure it's about Smart. We're seeing Michael's move to peak fuels, So instead of marketing qualified leads moved to product qualified leads, and in a product led world, that becomes really interesting, right? Because you're just getting more data.

00:27:57:12 - 00:28:13:03
Andrew Davies
So if you're selling one to a large account, we've already got 10 to 50 people active in a freemium or a reverse trial or a trial of our product. This becomes really interesting because we can give you that data and surfacing you that data helps you build a much more effective account map. So it should give you more data to happen for a sale, the less.

00:28:13:07 - 00:28:34:11
Andy Whyte
Yeah, I love that. You know, the idea of me as a salesperson getting like not just a lead come through and I do my usual due diligence looking where they've been and who where they've come from on your LinkedIn or stuff like that, be able to see where they came from in them, what they interacted with in the product, powerful, particularly, you know, with solutions that have more broad use cases, you're going to be able to tell a lot about the person's intentions and that probably their best suppose pain with that.

00:28:34:11 - 00:28:58:05
Andy Whyte
And again, going into preparing for that first conversation, if i'm selling a broad h.r. Solution and i can see that the bus has been taking the trial or using trial and they've been all about performance. They're all about, you know, individual training or whatever, you know, whatever the tannins is inside of the solution. Then I just going to turn up to that first conversation being super relevant, and if I can back it up with, hey, this is probably interesting to you and have a company like that, like you that we've worked with before, here's what they saw.

00:28:58:05 - 00:29:13:11
Andy Whyte
It's just going to accelerate you to that position of Trusted Advisor, which is what we ways work for. We did a panel recently where we spoke to champions so people that lots of technology. Yeah. And we sort of ask them and one of the questions we asked was, you know, we call you a champion and we explained why.

00:29:13:11 - 00:29:20:01
Andy Whyte
What do you call us like in that scenario where you are our champion trusted advisor? That's what they call us and that's what they want a trusted advisor Do one.

00:29:20:01 - 00:29:39:22
Andrew Davies
More topic and then we'll probably close and ask the questions because everyone's been, you know, stopping drinking Guinness in order to be in this audience and must be true sales methodology geeks. I'm sure there's a lot of questions said one of the key pivots in building a sales organization. The first kind of chasm you've got across is going from founder led sales to Hari, your first sales leader or going into your first quarter carrying Wrap Founders Fund is really hard.

00:29:39:22 - 00:29:55:21
Andrew Davies
I found this really hard. You know, my first business, I was one of the two founders. We closed our first few hundred grand of revenue and then suddenly hiring a sales team. I mean, it's a very expensive way to, you know, get nowhere over the next couple of quarters as people are getting trained up and you're trying to get all the stuff out of your head and into an organization.

00:29:55:22 - 00:30:06:04
Andrew Davies
How early do people start using bedhead? Yeah. Is this something that founders can use? We call this room is filled with Pre-seed seed series. They founders. At what point should they consider this or is it really just a big company problem?

00:30:06:04 - 00:30:21:14
Andy Whyte
I think there's a lot you can get from solving that problem. You talk them out there with Metric because what makes founder LED sales so effective where generally found LED sales? Not always, but they generally say, Hey, I don't know how to sell, but you know, we've done a ROI and then they pass over. Some of that does not sell as like that little fall off.

00:30:21:14 - 00:30:46:13
Andy Whyte
What is making them successful is a few things domain expertise because they created a company there. Of course they're going to know a lot about it. Backed up with passion, obviously. But then when you combine those two together because that probably solving the problem that they had themselves. So if we go back to that and one situation where we're saying, hey, we worked with this company, they have this problem and this is how we solve it, that is effectively our founders doing that, The only difference is and not talking about a problem they solve with that company.

00:30:46:13 - 00:31:04:09
Andy Whyte
That's not a problem they used to have, and they hated it so much that such we make formed a company to solve it. And so we think about that and think about what we're trying to do, what you're trying to talk about that which is scaling into having a sales team and getting that like that beautiful, genuine passion selling across and trying to scale it.

00:31:04:10 - 00:31:20:15
Andy Whyte
You just need to productize the before the after and that delta between the two, which is the pain they would have felt, you know, and which that fool becomes a metric. And then that can allow you to empower new starters to say, look, you know, you may not be an expert in this field. I don't expect you to be because you're an expert in sales.

00:31:20:15 - 00:31:35:18
Andy Whyte
But his like, here's the problems that our customers face. Here's how much these problems cost. This is what it means to them. This is the pain that gets implicated. The good news is when they use a solution like ours, this is how much it solves that pain. This is that utopia site that you can look forward to. And here's the value for solving it.

00:31:35:18 - 00:31:52:20
Andrew Davies
I love that. And just to reaffirm for our founders and the audience, people are listening to this. Going from founder led sales to a sales leader. It's codifying a huge amount of information that that person is holding naturally in that brain. Very intuitive type of answers. And I think frameworks like MEDDICC are a really powerful way of unlocking that transition.

00:31:52:20 - 00:32:11:10
Andrew Davies
Most founders I know, they are framework junkies, mental model junkies. I'm thinking about MEDDICC as one of those mental models, something you've got to build a muscle around as a founder so that you can communicate your first sales leader and your first marketing leader by common language, I think is a really good way of bridging that gap. And if you don't have a vocabulary, that framework, I think that's often what the chasm is.

00:32:11:10 - 00:32:26:14
Andrew Davies
We're going to finish off there and we've got one question here. Fantastic. Two on the mike or doing a shout out, the question was what is the D and MEDDICC's downfall? Which is great. First question I was expecting myself to offer to all start with that. So we're asking, let's turn this around on D How do you train your founder on this?

00:32:26:15 - 00:32:46:19
Andy Whyte
Yeah, so I think if you think about those things, I'd mentioned some of the high level pillars of, say, selling value stakeholders and process. I think everyone's different, but the way I always learn things is I like things to be given to me in an example or analogy. So if there's something that you guys are evaluating for your business buying and then start to like flip it, what things do they care about?

00:32:46:19 - 00:33:12:04
Andy Whyte
What what things? If it's if they're seeing things differently when they're talking about selling from how they're thinking about buying them, that's disconnected. It's almost like when you bought it. Like if there's something you've bought, which I'm sure we have, or it's like CRM or stuff or something like that, that if you can find one where the founder was aware, the vendor themselves did a really good job of positioning themselves and therefore one and then have a discussion and try and reverse engineer what the things that they did.

00:33:12:04 - 00:33:37:01
Andy Whyte
And I guarantee you, I mean, you can either witness a bit because we know these things will exist, but they'll be a real situation where they connected. They built trust and credibility because they understood your business, they understood the pain that existed that they were there to try and solve. They could then demonstrate value in solving that by proof points of other existing customers, and then they'll be the other parts of it as well that they would have engaged with the right stakeholder ears and brought in your peers and that sort of thing.

00:33:37:01 - 00:33:56:06
Andy Whyte
And then they would have managed the process to not. And this is one thing we get so wrong in sales. We talk about closed plans, we talk about getting that deal signed. Customers don't care about that. They really, really don't. They've got a number of checkpoints, procurement sign off, budget sign off, legal sign off. These are all checks in the box getting the signature on the paper.

00:33:56:08 - 00:34:14:15
Andy Whyte
That's another check in the box. What they really care about is go live. And so if you engage on the basis of, hey, this is let's go back to go live back from Africa on a piece of your question, but just as a bit of a rant that I always go often, But the point being is probably in that good experience, the founder would have felt confident because they manage the process very well.

00:34:14:15 - 00:34:21:14
Andy Whyte
And I think if you can have that conversation, you'll start to make them realize actually, yeah, okay, selling is basically just assisting buyers to have a great experience.

00:34:21:18 - 00:34:41:05
Andrew Davies
Of sales is just assisting buyers. Call any other questions here met met sales methodology Fantastic. Well thank you I really appreciate the time today. Right. We'll be making sure we record this and put it out. Will be editing it, putting it out in a month or so this time. Thank you everyone for coming along. Enjoy your evenings, enjoy the rest of SaaS stock.

00:34:41:05 - 00:35:01:19
Ben Hillman
A huge shout out to Andy White for doing this podcast. Now you have what it takes to explore the sales landscape with MedTech. Today we talked about what MEDDICC really is the three pillars of professional buyers illuminating the vocabulary difference between sales and marketing, the attributes of a productive sales and marketing partnership, and how medtech works in hybrid environments.

00:35:02:00 - 00:35:17:19
Ben Hillman
Make sure that you give Protect the Hustle a five star review and tell us what lesson Andy taught you from today's episode. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Paddle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SaaS.