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Dustin is a five time CRO, with companies ranging in size from 20 to 2,000. He's committed to sharing the learnings he's picked up over that time. Both the "dos" and as importantly, the "don'ts".
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Shaolin MEDDICC...
How?
Let's say you've been looking for a new way to get some exercise, and think martial arts could be fun. You google “Kung Fu”, and get dozens of hits for classes, each one touting their “experience”. But how can you know who’s good? I mean, a crappy kung fu trainer is going to give you, well, “crap kung fu”. Martial arts students that are serious look for the “lineage of the sifu or sensei” (teacher). The better the lineage - the “closest” to the original - the better the training. And if you are lucky enough to study someone that studied FROM the source, then soon you’ll be jumping, flipping, kicking and punching in no time. Danny LaRussa was lucky enough to study with Mr. Miyagi, right? That turned out pretty well for him.
PTC, for a long time, has had a history of producing incredible practitioners of MEDDICC. If you get past six months (heck, if you weren’t fired in boot camp) without quitting or getting fired there, good odds you’ve become pretty good. If you went on during your career and continued to learn and study with other ex PTC’ers, good chance you became something more.
A “MEDDICC Master”. This all occurred to me the other day when thinking about how I, having started my own modest school, now looking to teach others the ancient skills, might differentiate my offering. I don’t have a book. I don’t have a bunch of reference clients. I don’t have a great domain name for the website…so what is left?
Occam’s Razor - the simplest answer was the right one. My lineage. I’m lucky enough to have broken into tech at the end of the 90’s. Here’s mine:
Adding it all up, that’s close to a century of direct PTC experience. Every one of them, Masters of MEDDICC. And each had their own flavor or style of application:
I’ve also been fortunate enough to “practice” the art in the 2000s side by side with the likes of Michael Montour, Cliff Dorsey, Aaron Fullen and others, as the “2nd generation”.
They each had their own nuance to practicing the art as well:
Throw these in three in and we have well over a century of MEDDICC Mastery learnings among us to draw from. More recently I’ve also had the pleasure of picking up a few things from Mark Thompson and Kurt Ringley as colleagues and my former two-time colleague and current partner Reuben White. Given I shamelessly plagiarize, I’d like to think I have a bit of all of the above in how I practice and teach (Bruce Lee?? Ok going too far). .
I’ve been fortunate enough to pass on the learnings to a 3rd generation of Masters. Brad Bernstein Head Global Sales, Alban Camaj VP NA Sales, Steve Fitzjohn Founder/CEO and Yohai Ben Israel VP Global Sales. More recently Bennett Johnston, SVP Sales.
Now - You could try to learn Kung Fu, or MEDDICC, from a book or online study course. I’ve read a couple of great books, the obvious one, “Qualified Sales Leader” by John McMahon and “MEDDICC: The ultimate guide to staying one step ahead in the complex sale” by Andy Whyte - I’ve not met him but I’ve read the book, and his “style” looks pretty good.
If you are lucky enough to have learned from people like those above, you are already on the journey - in fact you are likely now a Master yourself. If not, you need to find a true MEDDICC Master. Hopefully after reading this, finding one of those won’t be too difficult. However, to become a true “MEDDICC Master” yourself, you have to study, and practice. By “practice” I mean “wax on, wax off” stuff. Deep practice. And not just for one or two classes, quitting because it’s too hard. You have to practice with discipline, you have to practice when you don’t want to, when it doesn’t feel convenient, when skipping a step or cutting a corner seems attractive. For months…years.
Then you may call yourself a MEDDIC Master. And salespeople and sales teams that gain this Mastery typically excel amongst their peers. Companies that adopt MEDDICC tend to excel amongst their competition.
