The book I recently, “Quit” by
, has me thinking about how to apply quitting to how we sell software.I spent years as a pre-sales engineer in one of the highest performing sales regions of a previous company. But before this, I knew nothing of bing a sales engineer. I was a heads-down, burnt-out data/platform engineer. When I was approached to do pre-sales, I took it knowing I needed a change. When I look back, I really wish I had a quick introduction to the technical selling methodologies. The “quitting” ideas that Annie Duke talked about in her book actually are the essence of the purpose of these methodologies that no experienced salesperson would actually tell you.
Annie talks about how humans psychologically are biased to “gut things out” and to do whatever it takes to win. Especially in sales, you would think that the LFG attitude was required to win. But when you start putting structure around the approach to selling, you’ll find out quickly that the LFG attitude is a weapon used sparingly for moments where a win is in sight. Before that, you need to find ways to quit.
Finding Ways To Quit a Deal
I once said to a CEO, “We should always be finding ways to disqualify an opportunity.” He was confused by this statement for a second and then realized why it was true. He realized that we shouldn’t be wasting time on prospects that will not close in 3 months.
Having a plan to quit is exactly what Duke conveys in her book. Duke talks about the consequences of not knowing when to quit. These consequences are apparent in boxing or mountain climbing, it’s important to know when to turn back. Your life depends on it. These are some of the examples Duke uses to explain her approach to quitting that resonates with the reader. It’s because they are life threatening decisions.
Sales aren’t life threatening. But the approach is the same. How do we know if an opportunity will close in 3 months? We need a sales methodology that can quickly determine when to “quit” on an opportunity so that we can move on to the next one. It allows the business to have predictable revenue. These exist today like the very popular BANT and MEDDICC qualification questions.
BANT
BANT is the methodology that needs to be qualified before engaging with a pre-sales engineer. Account reps should know what the budget is, if the person they are speaking to has the authority to make a purchase if the prospect has a true need for your product, and lastly, if there is a timeline in which the prospect needs your product. Without any one of these, the deal will have a lower probability of closing so why waste time? If one of these qualifiers is not fulfilled then the deal should not go to the next stage. But if it does, then someone (either the pre-sales engineer or the account rep) is going to allocate some time to find the answers to these qualifiers which will extend the deal cycle, causing revenue to get pushed out to a later quarter, and the business to be less predictable.
MEDDICC
MEDDICC is a sales methodology that really is used by the account executive. But it is just as important for you as the pre-sales engineer to know well. This will allow you to build strategic plans for each deal.
There are variants to this acronym like MEDDPICC where P could stand for Process or Paper Processes. This methodology brings structure and predictability to the selling processes. Account executives follow this method to qualify to the next steps of the sales cycle.
As you might have guessed, quitting in sales in this post means quitting a deal if it’s not qualified no matter how much the deal is worth. In sales, you want to make sure that you’re putting most of your effort on the deals that are highly qualified because they have the highest probability to close.
CLUSSTTERS
Both BANT and MEDDICC are qualifying methodologies for the account executive. In my time as a sales engineer, we derived a pre-sales version of this called CLUSSTTERS.
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