MAPs are the perfect discovery device

Most practitioners say bring out your MAP after you have a green light on the contract, and use it to push through the paper process (the “P” in MEDDPIC).

The best practice we’ve seen from our customers is introducing it earlier, when you believe you’ve got a story, but you’re still working on building credibility and working through discovery.

1.  MAP as a credibility tool

Pull up your MAP template and say “it sounds like we have a story here, let me show you how this has worked with similar companies in similar situations”.

By showing a well thought out plan to their success, you show you’ve got your act together, that you’ve got experience, and that any potential roadblocks have already been identified and nullified.

This makes you the safe choice, certainly safer than a competitor who’s just saying “trust me, it’ll work, just sign here” and ideally safer than taking no action action at all.

2. MAP as a discovery tool

Use your MAP as a guide to discovery.

If you don’t have a compelling event already, put up a straw man in your MAP and use it to prompt a discussion on whether they have a different event that’s more compelling.  The next quarter’s Board meeting is a reliable event that company priorities tend to rally around.

Review the high level milestones and ask if they have questions. Buyers often don’t know their own buying process, so in addition to building credibility here, you’re also helping them understand what resources they’re going to need to wrangle internally. They may also give you additional information about priorities or objections: “We got hacked last year, so we’d need an extra detailed security audit”, to which you reply. “No problem, we’ll just insert a Level 5 Security audit milestone early in the process. I’ll bring in Jerome, he’s our best.”

Drill into specific Milestones and and ask about people. Say “as we work to finding a solution to your problem, we know milestone X has some complex financial analysis. We’re going to pull in Sarah from our analyst services team, on your side we’d normally look for a controller or similar, who would that be for you guys? [or even better “would that be Susan Jones from your CFO’s office”]. This approach gets much better collaboration than just stabbing a finger at them and demanding they tell you who’s on the buying team because you need to add their name to your CRM.

Don’t be afraid of showing they need to do work. They need to do it whether you tell them about it or not, and they’re much more likely to actually do it if you’re transparent from the start, and if they’re not willing to do the work, it’s much better to know earlier.

Teams that use DealPoint close more deals, have a super accurate forecast and enjoy all the benefits of mutual trust & transparency between buying team and selling team.

So what do you want your next quarter to look like? Let’s talk.