Sales Qualification Tools
vs.
Sales Methodologies

Opportunity Assessment Framework or Sales Methodology: How to Choose?

The good news is you don't have to. Sales methodologies like the ValueSelling Framework® and sales qualification tools like MEDDIC happily coexist—they serve different but complementary roles in the sales process. Plus, many sales methodologies like ValueSelling offer robust sales qualification tools of their own to enable teams to avoid time wasted on no-decision opportunities and improve forecast accuracy while building the desired selling behaviors. Let's examine the differences and areas of overlap further.

What Is an Opportunity Assessment Tool?

Sales qualification tools provide a set of criteria for evaluating sales opportunity health and qualifying leads—they help sellers determine if an opportunity is worth pursuing. One popular example is MEDDIC, which stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion. It was designed by PTC leadership in 1996 to help reps maximize selling time by reducing energy spent on deals that will never close.

What Is a Sales Methodology?

A sales methodology is a structured approach that revenue professionals use to engage potential buyers and guide them through the buying process. It encompasses a set of principles, practices and strategies that help sellers effectively manage interactions with prospects, build relationships across client organizations and move complex deals to close.

Sales methodologies provide a framework for how sales professionals partner with potential buyers and approach each stage of the buying process. They provide a systematic, repeatable playbook for building the behaviors that sales teams will use for every customer-facing interaction, from prospecting to marking deals closed-won to renewal sales.

Understanding Sales Methodologies

To best understand sales methodologies, let's use an analogy to American football. Your sales process is like the yard markers on an American football field. They’re clearly defined milestones that define progress toward your goal.

In contrast, your sales methodology is the playbook that tells you how to advance your opportunity to the end zone. It’s the engagement framework that gives you the common language and tools that drive predictable results. And your blocking, tackling, and throwing drills are the sales skills that are required to consistently leverage the methodology and work with the sales process.

When these three elements are aligned, it’s easier for teams to guide buyers through the process, predict results and replicate success. The right framework helps salespeople transform their focus from pushing products to selling the full value of their solutions and creating customers for life.

The Benefits of a Sales Methodology for B2B Sales

A robust sales methodology for B2B sales addresses the unique challenges of selling to other businesses, such as longer sales cycles, multiple decision-makers and the need for customized solutions. In B2B sales, methodologies enable sales teams to understand the specific needs of business clients, build strong relationships and demonstrate the value of their solutions in a compelling way.

Sales methodologies are equally powerful for other roles that contribute to revenue growth. If your entire revenue engine is trained to view opportunities through the same lens as your sales teams, they can provide additional insight into the sales process and ensure a consistent customer experience as buyers move through your organization, from marketing to SDR to AE to CSM.

When all customer-facing teams embrace the common communication framework that is your sales methodology, this facilitates feedback loops across the organization to improve knowledge-sharing and enable teams to align on driving customer value and retention. Implementing the right sales methodology will significantly improve sales performance, streamline processes and enhance customer relationships.