Enablement excellence: the importance of embedding

A company that never needs to adjust its sales organisation is as rare as the proverbial hen’s tooth. 

Over the life of a business, outside expertise and sales team training will be needed to help improve the pipeline, increase deal size, and mitigate risk, ensuring enterprises stay sharp and continue to grow. 

For 30 years, some of the most successful tech firms in the world have used the MEDDIC framework to accelerate their growth from startups to scaleups and unicorns. 

If used correctly, the MEDDIC methodology is proven to increase revenues, decrease the sales cycle, and increase the overall productivity of go-to-market organisations. 

Bringing in outside help to deliver training is both costly and takes time. Successful go-to-market teams optimise the investment of that time and money. Unfortunately, many don’t and so fail to embed training properly from the outset.

 The challenge is:

• How do you properly embed MEDDIC, MEDDPICC or any new methodology? 
• How can you ensure the money and time spent on training the team is optimised for results?

If MEDDIC is appropriately implemented, it will drive revenue growth and deliver a significant payback. 

Learning and embedding a new sales methodology spans multiple teams and doesn’t just happen overnight.

If you haven’t used the MEDDIC methodology before as a salesperson, it’s a lot to learn and embed in your day-to-day workflow.

If, as a manager, your entire go-to-market team hasn’t used MEDDIC before, learning and embedding it is a whole different ball game.

One of our absolute must-haves to ensure the success of any training program lies in the following question:

Is the manager in the room?

And by that, we mean really in the room, by being an active participant, doing the exercises, and sharing their experience and knowledge with the team. 

We have delivered training to many organisations, and those where the managers are in the room see significantly faster outcomes within the first three months. 

 Managers must be fully present to ensure the following:

• They understand the sales training and embed it into their day-to-day work.
• They adapt their coaching to reinforce the learning.
• They observe the team’s behaviour and support individual learning needs.

If managers are not in the room, we can guarantee that any training will take longer to embed into the team, or worse, the training will never stick, costing time, money, and opportunities.

How does being in the room affect embedding learning?

This is why it is so important and particularly relevant for MEDDIC training:

• The managers will know what questions to ask their team to keep them on track with the new methods they are using.
• The team members have someone they can go to with questions after we have left.
• The MEDDIC language will be used across the whole organisation, reinforcing the training daily, which is vital to embedding a new sales methodology.
• The onboarding process will have MEDDIC at its heart.

By being that manager in the room, you are instrumental in the learning experience and embedding excellence in your team. 

Being that manager in the room ensures that your team will start to deliver on the training.

You will see your team form a cohesive unit that works together like a well-conducted orchestra and notice that the onboarding of new members is improved and their time to productivity is reduced. 

Ultimately, the management time investment will be your insurance policy to increase revenue and improve your bottom line. 

Change doesn’t happen overnight

The results seen by a go-to-market organisation that has embedded a methodology like MEDDIC across all teams don’t happen overnight.

However, by simply being in the room during training, you are sending a positive and helpful message to the team to get things started:

Leadership is investing in the training, and it’s important.

Once out of the room, managers are accountable for keeping everyone on track and producing the results we know MEDDIC can deliver. That means being available to answer questions and framing your questions to the teams in the appropriate new language.

Continuous development

Naturally, some team members might need further support after an initial boost in performance. They might also need fresh ideas or great examples of success.

As custodians of the learning and development roadmap, it’s our job to keep finding new ways to reinforce the content, stimulate ideas and keep the learning fresh.

So, consider how you break down parts of the learning in your learning and development plan and keep a cadence of fresh sessions running over time.

Mixing media and role plays are great ways to spice up learning.

Take time to save time

So, our advice for all sales managers out there is:

When setting up the training for your team, make sure that you block this time out of your diary and make sure you are in the room. 

You will likely have a long list of things that seem like more productive uses of your time. However, there is no better investment of time than ensuring your team is learning and developing and that you are there to support their journey.

While we are discussing the impact that sales leaders can have on sales training, as MEDDIC applies to the whole go-to-market organisation, all of the points discussed here are equally important when applied to marketing, pre-sales, and customer success. 
 

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