Most enterprise sales organisations are familiar with and use the MEDDIC sales qualification checklist. Why? Because there is credible data to prove that an organisation can achieve upwards of 30% growth rates in saturated markets, whilst for start-ups, it can be 250%+. 

One of the key takeaways for me from any qualification session is to make sure you have clear action points to influence the deal moving forwards. 

The role of digital content, particularly in complex enterprise deals with multiple disparate stakeholders (this is growing, see below), is becoming an increasingly powerful mechanism to influence the known and unknown stakeholders. MEDDIC challenges you to identify the Economic Buyer and Champion(s), and this is often not an easy task, and yet these people are fundamental to your sales success.

That said, your content must provide the following key requirements to have an impact, (according to Edelman PR and LinkedIn research):

• Relevant, Timely and Applicable
• Insights related to target customers industry
• Digestible
• Delivery From a Trusted Source
• Staying Current

A recent PwC study discovered that 94% of senior-level executives believe delivering personalisation is critical or important to reaching customers. So how do you not only get this content delivered by the trusted source but also created by an actual expert in a personalised manner?

The diagram above visualises what we call the Virtuous Circle. This approach looks at using your subject-matter experts to create the content. This means that they should be part of your MEDDIC sessions, to help identify and target the Decision Criteria and Identified Pain.

Content is delivered to the client by the business development or sales function who typically hold the relationship with the client. They also understand what the needs of the client are and can position content that is important to clients/prospects. 

The process also creates a feedback loop that leads to sustainable content creation and authentic nurturing. The business development team can request specific content from the subject matter experts and deliver it to the clients on demand. 

This approach can also be measured and reported through an organisation's marketing technology platform to deliver a monetary return on investment.

I believe that any content marketing needs to a be product of you listening to your target audience. This ties in nicely with MEDDIC since the objective is to qualify the deal and it also helps create a process to make content creation, distribution and constant qualification a part of your organisation and daily sales cadence.