Technical wins, win deals.

Founders and early-stage sellers need to be masters at technical wins and translating those to a justifiable business case.

Every deal has two parts: Technical + Business. Technical wins win deals, not just your business case.

Founders are often advised on doing formal discovery in the early days of running a startup. YES, you must be able to solve a pain, YES, there must be some immediacy or urgency for someone to buy. However, it’s shortsighted if you think *just* because someone says they have pain / challenges, or all the fields in your CRM are completed about a prospect that they’re going to convert. If you’re an early stage Founder being advised to aggressively MEDDPICC your customers, you’ve been influenced too much by executives or investors who learned what was required in the later stages.

FIRST, AND ALWAYS first, you must get the TECHNICAL WIN. With no TECHNICAL WIN, there is no technical Champion. With no technical Champion, there’s no deal. You’ll also need someone on the business side (sometimes the same person) championing the business win (ie. the outcomes of their evaluation).

MEDDPICC fanatics will say, “you need a business case and quantifiable outcomes for the Champion to present to their boss, the Economic Buyer.” Yes, that’s absolutely correct. We ensure that founders are well-prepared before they present pricing to prospects. However, even with the world’s best business case, you can still lose the deal if you haven’t secured the technical win. Most think they “just need the buyer,” but is your product compelling enough that the Champion is going to be on the verge of tears if their boss says no to the product they *need* to be successful? If not, there are real risks in your deal even when you’ve filled all the other deal-related info you think is required to get a deal done. In scenarios where you *just need that last feature*, get your champion on board with all of your progress and make your Founder-promise the last step in the sales cycle.

TL;DR what MEDDPICC can miss, is the ability for a product to be such a massive change in how a company operates, that the product *can* win deals without having a fully fledged business case *when you have the technical win*.

Technical wins earn trust, business cases get the deal signed. Both must be the case to win and sell in this market. A CFO, who will likely need to give their approval, will want to know, “Is there a clear problem and outcome?” and “This is expensive. Will people actually use it? Why can’t we continue with Vendor X?” Sometimes, your product is absolutely amazing and the customer won’t be able to quantify the outcomes until 6-12 months after you purchase. In those scenarios, get them to rave about how and why you’re much better, why it’s more cost-effective than their alternatives, and build a life-long customer.

Technical wins, win deals. Founders and early-stage sellers need to be masters at technical wins and translating those to a justifiable business case.