Field Note

Why I don't start with BANT or MEDDIC

I've used both, and plenty of versions of both. They're useful when you're working a deal. The trouble is the moment before that.

Over the years, most questionable deals I've seen broke in one of five places. Nobody at the customer had said out loud that they wanted it. The money didn't have a name. We hadn't met anyone who could make it happen. Nobody knew how they'd actually buy it. And nothing was forcing it this year.

BANT gets you close, but its need is usually something the seller diagnosed, and its timeline is a date in the CRM rather than a reason anything happens. It also skips the biggest federal question: how does a purchase order actually appear? Contract vehicle, contracting office, acquisition lead time. That's the timeline.

MEDDIC, or MEDDPICC depending on who taught it to you, is more sophisticated, and that's exactly why it solves a different problem. A seller can spend forty-five minutes deciding whether somebody counts as an economic buyer. Five plain questions are a cross-examination, not a worksheet. They run before that debate is worth having.

MEDDIC helps you work the deal. The five questions help you decide whether you've earned the right to call it one.

Try it

Deal Check is the five questions, with the arithmetic done and the question your manager will ask.

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Mark Flournoy

Hi, I'm Mark.

I've spent a lot of years helping customers buy complicated technology. For six of them I led partner sales teams at AWS. Before that F5, Red Hat, and a couple of storage companies you've probably forgotten. Before all of that, 20 years as a Marine.

Along the way I've been the seller defending the deal, the partner trying to help, the manager asking annoying questions, and the guy one level up explaining why the forecast moved again.

QuotaBird is where I put the things I've found useful. Most of the tools are free. Most take a few minutes. None of them require you to adopt a new sales religion. Use whatever helps.

A few things I see a lot

Rarely just one of them. Usually a couple at the same time, quietly making each other worse.

The forecast call has become the job. Your manager wants a status on everything by noon, the CRM wants a next step on every line, and the customer is the last person you talk to each day.

The pipeline looks better than it really is. Plenty of opportunities in the CRM, but once you ask about budget, timing and who actually wants the thing, the number gets smaller fast.

The partner likes you, but nothing is happening. Plenty of meetings, maybe a joint deck. Nobody can point to the accounts where the two companies are actually trying to win something together.

The team is busy, but there isn't much rhythm. The forecast call happens. The one-on-ones happen. Nobody is sure what the team should do differently this week to make next quarter better.

The number from above doesn't match what you see below. Leadership has a growth number. Your team has a pipeline. You're the one who has to explain why they disagree without sounding like you've already given up.

A team can be behind plan for a lot of reasons. One seller needs help getting in front of customers. Another is doing fine and wants you to stay out of the way. Someone else thinks the year is already gone. Sometimes the rep is fine and the territory, the comp plan or the pipeline they inherited isn't. The useful part is figuring out which one you're dealing with before you fix the wrong one. That's what the tools here do, one deal, one rep, one territory at a time. It's also most of what I do.

Need another set of eyes?

Sometimes a calculator isn't enough. If you're stuck on a deal, an account, a partner, a territory, a QBR or a federal problem, I'm happy to look at it with you. Here's exactly how it works:

  1. Pick a time. Name, email and one line about what's going on. No deck required.
  2. I read your line before we talk, so we start in the middle instead of at the beginning.
  3. Twenty minutes, free. Then you decide whether there's anything more. No pitch, and no sales follow-ups.

If I don't think I can help, I'll tell you.

Chat with Mark DM on LinkedIn

If it's something that takes more than a conversation, we can figure that out too. I also build fedhoo, a federal market research tool.