MEDDIC is Outdated. The Four C Framework is What’s Next. Podcast with Jake Dunlap

Sell Like A Leader – Episode 29

In this episode, we dive into: 

– Outdated sales methodologies: The Challenger Sales, Predictable Revenue, MEDDIC, and BANT.

– The four C’s framework: Commitment to technology and AI proficiency, current go-to-market strategy, customized sales journeys, consistent performance optimization, and generative AI deployment.

– Rapid-fire Q&A

About Jake Dunlap

Jake is the founder and CEO of Skaled Consulting, a globally recognized sales consulting firm that has outperformed industry giants in sales consulting. He brings 12 years of experience helping CEOs, CROs, and CMOs transform their businesses with AI-driven revenue strategies.

Jake is also the USA Today bestselling author of The Innovative Seller.

Podcast Key Takeaways

• Traditional sales methodologies like MEDDIC and BANT are outdated. With the advent of AI, these methods are no longer sufficient because they don’t account for the modern, informed buyer.
• Sales leaders must become proficient in generative AI. Instead of outsourcing this knowledge, they should dedicate time to understanding these tools to better lead their teams and identify new opportunities for growth.
• A focus on activity-based metrics is an old and ineffective strategy. Instead, sales teams should be measured on “meaningful conversations” and outcomes that drive revenue.
• The sales process can no longer be a one-size-fits-all “conveyor belt.” Companies must adapt to the buyer’s needs, offering self-service options and providing asynchronous content.

Connects

Connect with Jake Dunlap: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/

Connect with David Kreiger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkreiger

Subscribe to the podcast and follow our Podcast LinkedIn page so you don’t miss any episodes!

Transcript

David Kreiger: Welcome back to another episode of the Sell Like a Leader podcast. The podcast for revenue leaders who are on a mission to cultivate a high-performing sales team within their organization.

I'm your host, David Kreiger, President of SalesRoads, America's most trusted sales outsourcing and appointment setting company, and today we have a special treat.

We've got a great revenue leader, Jake Dunlap. I've had the privilege of getting to work on some programs, and he just has an amazing team who helps their clients really reinvent their sales processes, and especially over the past several years with an eye to AI. And so Jake is the Founder and CEO of Scaled Consulting.

They are a globally recognized sales consulting firm that has outproduced and outperformed industry giants in sales consulting. And again, I can attest to that firsthand. [00:01:00] And recently, he published a book that if you haven't checked out, you've gotta check out The Innovative Seller, which is a USA Today bestselling book.

 Welcome, Jake. Great to have you on the show.

Jake Dunlap: Love that intro, man. Thank you. I'm really excited about the conversation and love talking about, , you know, the future of go-to-market and where we're headed. So it should be a fun one.

David Kreiger: Yeah, I'm excited. And so to that point, the sales landscape has rapidly changed over the past few years with the advent of AI, and I think Jake, you've been on the forefront of this for selling teams. 

And I think one of the interesting things, and where I'd like to start that you've identified, is even though sales has changed considerably, sales teams are still relying on old methodologies from The Challenger Sale to MEDDIC to BANT. 

But in your book, you introduced something called the Four Cs, and I'd love for you [00:02:00] to walk the listeners through what that is, why you think some of the old methodologies aren't working, so we can get your perspective.

Jake Dunlap: Yeah, and I'm not even like anti a lot of these methodologies. I just think that the application has to evolve. 

You know, that's really what it comes down to, David, is that the way that we applied things back in 1996 are different than, you know, 2025, right, as you could imagine. So really as I was writing the book, what I really started to think about—and I'll tell you it's interesting—Wiley kind of contracted me to write a different book. It was gonna be called The Everyday Guide to Exceptional Sales. 

And so I really wanted to write this book that would be kind of this, like, you know, go-to resource.

So it's like anything that comes up, this is what it would be. And candidly, I spent way too much time writing that book. And then as I got into it, I'm like, what am I doing? I don't wanna write that. I don't wanna write like another sales guidebook.

 So it ended up being a win-win. But what I really started thinking was: look, where is [00:03:00] B2B sales headed? What is evolving, what's changing? And therefore, if you want to be competitive as a seller or a leader, what are the things that you need to be able to do?

And it's funny, I've never been a big acronym guy, but as I worked through the process, we came up with the concept of the Four Cs. I was like, what are the attributes that I think it takes to be successful? And just from what we're seeing—you know, we work with hundreds of clients every single year—for our clients to be successful.

 And so that's where I came up with the Four Cs. The first, it starts with commitment to technology and AI proficiency. And I truly believe this to me is one of the biggest issues I see: revenue leaders have outsourced their knowledge of what is possible to a RevOps team that's already overwhelmed.

 And so these leaders aren't able to even think about, you know, Outreach, Salesloft—these types of tools came out in 2015. Ten years old, that's it. So if you were a sales leader before that, you learned a whole new play, etc. And now there's 2,000, 3,000-plus sales technologies. One tool that you knew [00:04:00] could do this now does 75 things.

And so I just don't see how you can be a successful sales leader in 2025 and beyond if you do not understand the art of the possible with both sales technology and generative AI, which is obviously why I took the firm heavy there. We're doing four to five new deployments a month of helping companies to deploy in a structured manner.

GenAI deployments—because I think that's where everyone's really struggling. We've got our reps, they're using it, what do we do? And we kind of have this jumpstart where we're like, we're gonna pick one department. We scope three assistants and one automation. 

We scope the use cases for these other departments, and we really think about AI proficiency as really treating this like a product roadmap, where every organization, each department—AI should be a department-by-department, role-by-role deployment, and really helping companies to get there.

And it's funny 'cause the book came out about a year ago, and I wrote that part when GenAI was just coming to the forefront. It would've been probably November or December before we went to press, but it was just so painfully [00:05:00] obvious to me then just how disruptive GenAI was gonna be.

 And I think most sales and revenue leaders in general are still behind even comprehending, David, the art of the possible with these tools. And so they need to start small to go big. That’s the strategy we've been talking about to become committed to proficiency in revenue tech and AI.

David Kreiger: And so that sales leaders can embody that first C, are there certain things that you really recommend? I mean, for me at SalesRoads, the thing that I've been trying to preach is, listen, a lot of times we don't even know exactly what the tools are gonna do, what's gonna work, what's not gonna work. 

So we just need to lean in. We've gotta use it. I mean, we've had clients that are basically like, No, we aren't using AI. It's not secure. And I just feel like.. I get that there are privacy concerns, but if you don't lean in, you don't just start understanding and flexing that muscle to understand how it works, where it works, where it doesn't work, you're not gonna [00:06:00]—you're gonna be left behind. 

And so is there anything in particular that you try to embody or imbue into these sales leaders so that they can embody that first C?

Jake Dunlap: Yeah, I look, I talk about another principle, and this is a life principle that I don't think is a revolutionary concept. I call it 80-15-5. 

You know, 80% of your time should be spent on things that are gonna impact your business in the next, you know, call it three months or so. If you're a sales leader, maybe it could be, depending on how big your company is, it could be a little bit more, a little bit less.

15% of your time should be things that are gonna impact your business, call it six to 12 months from now, and about 5% of your time should be dedicated to things that are gonna have a big impact on your professional career and your business maybe 9, 12, 24 months from now. 

And so the number one piece of advice that I give is you have to block an hour or two a week. And look, it's interesting, I know what the job is, I know the demands, I know what that means. 

But I also can tell you we are like—you know, as I think [00:07:00] about when I first got into this, it's been two years now—where I had this conversation with a buddy of mine, Kevin Dorsey. We were having beers and pizza, and it's like, dude, if it could do that, it could do this, and it could do that.

And I was like, oh my God, he's right. And I literally emailed my team and said, guys, I need to fire myself as CEO for a week and I need to go just mess with this. And then I was like, this is it. I think one of the most important kind of mindset shifts to maybe help you to understand yes, spending two to three hours a week is worth it, is this is a foundational shift in how we solve problems as humans.

This isn't a new technology. This is the same way—look, most of the people listening to this were not in the workforce when we went from no internet to internet. I wasn't in the workforce, but somebody had to train John, hey, we're gonna send an email, we're gonna go online and search for things. We're not gonna go to the phone book, we're not gonna go to the library or an encyclopedia. 

That was a huge monumental shift [00:08:00] in how we solve problems. We stopped going to the library and looking at books, and they were all curated for us in search, etc. And this is that next evolution of how we solve problems.

So as a leader, if you've been in the game for 10, 15, 20, 20-plus years, we are rewiring the way that we think to solve problems. So before it was like my SDRs or my sales reps, they go to Google, they go to LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh no, we're not doing any of that. 

Instead, I've got these assistants, they do that for me, and it's a better quality and it's deeper, richer insights, and it can identify where I'm missing in the deal.

And it's just getting us to V1 faster. You know, I tell everyone if you're copying and pasting AI that you—you are guaranteed to put yourself out of a job. All AI is doing, the same way that Google got us to answers faster, GenAI is just getting us there even faster, and then the human brain turns on for the last 20%.

But now if I have 50 minutes to work on something, I get to V1 in 10, and by the time the 50 minutes is up, I get to V3 that I maybe have never had bandwidth for. So I think bringing this full [00:09:00] circle—that is why leaders have to embrace this. 

You have to rewire your brain to solve problems foundationally different than what made you successful even 10 years ago.

And I think, David, that's a very tough pill to swallow, you know, once you get to a certain point of your career. I don't think you can unsee that at this point.

David Kreiger: Yeah. And I think you do have to live it, because it is so new. It is so different. For you to create some of these strategies, you have to see how it's working. Again, I agree with you. I think that people can now spend more time on the thinking part of things.

However, what I struggle with myself and for the team is making sure that they don't go into monkey mode. Because you can do things fast, you can copy and paste. And so unless you're living it as a leader, you sometimes don't see some of those temptations and think through: how do I make sure that we aren't just going into monkey mode and we are actually using this to create better work?

And I think that kind of transitions us into the second C, which I'd love to get your perspective on—the current go-to-market strategy and [00:10:00] what that means in this context and how you advise your clients around that.

Jake Dunlap: Yeah. So yeah. The second C is again, having a current go-to-market strategy. And I think we as humans, we tend to lock into pattern recognition. If something works, we kind of struggle to then unlearn things that worked. 

Think about it—when you play video games, right? You tend to lock into—if you play 2K or Fortnite, you've got your different plays that you run, and you kind of run them. The best of the best players are very agile.

But I think that’s what you see happening with outbound: we're locked into plays that worked, you know, seven years ago, six years ago. And just a little history lesson for everyone. Here's kind of my history lesson: there's a book that everyone follows around go-to-market called Predictable Revenue. Okay? Predictable Revenue. 

I think this is important—if you all haven't read it, your boss has read it, I promise you. Or your VC or your PE has read it. Predictable Revenue was built around how [00:11:00] outbound worked in the early 2000s. Not kidding. And guess what, David? It was pretty simple. The internet was brand new.

LinkedIn as a site for networking did not exist. It did not literally exist. It was a job site until like 2011. And so imagine, what were those guys doing, David? What did they do 24/7? They picked up the phone. And so we built this kind of revenue model that said, oh, activities equal meetings equal pipeline.

And that was true when every activity was equal because they were all high-quality activities. It was a high-quality phone call. I wasn't using some mass email or whatever. I wrote a message to get a meeting with you, David. I made a call to get a meeting. So all activities were homogenous.

You fast forward to today—that's not the case. I'm doing a LinkedIn, a bulk email versus a customized email. Those are not the same data set. And so we're still continuing to run our teams based off of a book that was written about a strategy that we're not actually even running. [00:12:00] If every activity was a customized one-to-one activity, well then, activities equal meetings equal deals, right? Or opportunities.

And so I think for a lot of companies, that's why I talk about this—we have to start to anchor our go-to-market around the first outcome, which we call a meaningful conversation. And that just simply means Jake connected with someone that said, I'm gonna put you in touch with someone. Or maybe the assistant said, Hey, I'll help to book a meeting with Janice, or whatever it is.

And so we have to realize the goal isn't account coverage. The goal is generating a meeting with that one person. And somehow, and I think the other kind of history lesson part of this is—even all the way up to 2015, there was really no way for salespeople to do bulk emails. It didn't exist. 

So again, every email and every call from when that book was written to call it 2015, 2016, every activity was high quality. I had to send a one-to-one to you.

And then what happened is there was a run between about 2016 and 2018-ish [00:13:00] 2019 where email-only sequences kind of worked. And then what happened is we started to raise a whole group of people who forgot how to call. Then 2020 hit. 

Then you've got these new hires all starting remote, and they never got to sit there in the pit, you know, of like, oh man, that was good, Jake, I like that saying, etc. And so now you fast forward to today.

And today we are trying to run a 2016–2017 play when email-only kind of worked with people that don't know how to make phone calls because we didn't train them that way. And the leaders, candidly, they've not grown up in 2020, 2021—they didn't learn how to call. And you know, there's a lot of data that shows the omnichannel impact.

And so my point is, I actually think it's easier than ever for outbound. Yeah, I think it's easier than ever. One of our sister companies we spun out last year, RevOptics, we had a client—literally came in in January this year—between Q4 and Q1, team of 20 SDRs had 100 more opportunities in one quarter. 

And it was like, guess what we're gonna do, guys? We're not just gonna customize the first email, which, by the [00:14:00] way, the first email is literally—I have seen it in one sequence out of probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of sequences—where the first touchpoint is the highest converting touchpoint. But yet that's the touchpoint everyone does.

Now we're kind of moving past that. We do like a quasi relevancy base and it's like all you have to do is pattern disrupt—send a video, send a LinkedIn voice note, I don't really care what you do. Send a handwritten note coupled with just keep adding value. 

It's literally that easy. Like if your current go-to-market strategy is focused on generating outcomes and not generating account coverage, you're gonna be wildly more successful than somebody who's account-coverage-only focused.

So that's a little bit of a rant there on that one, but sometimes I swear to you I feel like I'm living in bizarro world. Like we'll be talking to a client, I'm like, okay, Jake, but what happens when activity goes down? I go—we're talking about outcomes. But I get it, there's pressure from your board and your board is running the playbook I told you. 

So I look, I [00:15:00] get it. I've been in that seat and I've worked with thousands of CROs over my career now. I get it, it's easier said than done a little bit. But at the end of the day, if you're driving outcomes, that's what people care about, you know?

David Kreiger: Yeah. I mean, activity is such a short-term metric and, and it's in a virtual world and all those things. It's, it's an easier metric at least on a day-to-day to at least. See that people are working, but at the end of the day, the thing that is gonna keep you in the CRO seat is the outcomes. And so it is, you know, definitely shortsighted.

And when you're too shortsighted, then you know, you don't have a, have a long-term future.

Jake Dunlap: And this is where leadership comes in, David. Look, people have been making fake dials since forever. Right. Like I remember, as is 2007, maybe I was running a team and, uh, this dude, he actually ended up becoming a pretty successful sales guy. 

I stay in touch with him. All of a sudden I went up to one of my new hires and they had this list of phone numbers.

I'm like, what is this? They're like, and one of our reps had come up because we had the most [00:16:00] ridiculous minimums. It was a hundred dials in two and a half hours of talk time a day. It was a lot like in red. It was too much. 

And he had a list of fake phone numbers, right. There's another kid I remember I caught him, um, like the, it flagged to me, Hey, this number's been called like 30 times in the last like two months.

And it was a fax machine. So it's like I call the number, it's like, and I'm like, dude, come on Chris, man. Like, so look, this idea of fake activities is, has been happening since before the auto stuff. Right? 

But, but again, I think there's a happy medium because I'm all for, there's, you know, if people can't manage to an outcome, then you need to kind of look at some of the leading indicators and coach there.

Right? But again, I want them doing high quality activities. I don't want them to just do punch the button. You know, activities, and I've said this before too, if you are an SDR or a sales rep, and I want you to listen to this if you're a leader too, and I want you to tell me how this is not logical. 

If you're an SDR or a sales rep and your manager or your company is telling you to kind of hit send on these templates and just do [00:17:00] this.

You're putting yourself out of a job. You're putting yourself out of a job because you're just a, guess what? AI can just do that. We're already doing tests like a HubSpot just releases Breeze AI agent, and it's like just hit to hit a template. 

That's like pretty good. It's pretty good. Like, you know, we haven't seen any of these outbound ones that are like really doing it at scale, but you know, I think it's like we just have to really encourage our people to, to turn their brain on that 10 to 20%, know their personas, know the value, we provide those personas so they can be that trusted advisor that somebody wants to meet with versus, you know, just getting out as much of activity as possible.

David Kreiger: Yeah, and I think there's two, two aspects to that, which, uh, one, maybe AI will get to a point where it can replace it, but I personally, I don't think it's, there is that creative spark and doing the real good pattern interrupt or, or whatnot and really making something creative and different than something that, that AI.

Humans still, uh, I think can outperform in that way eventually, I think AI and [00:18:00] maybe with a, some of the right prompts, it can be there, there now. But then the second part is the trusted advisor, right? I mean, if we don't position ourselves as salespeople as that trusted advisor at, you know, creating that type of relationship.

Um, that's something that is, is harder for AI to replicate. Now there are certain personalities that are creating relationships with AIs right now, but it's different and, and it always is gonna at least. I personally think will be fundamentally, uh, different. Where, where salespeople can play and build their network.

As an AI, you know, who can't build a network, can't build trust over 10 years, over 15 years, over a year of working with somebody. Um, and so. With that, your third C customized sales journey. You touched on it a little bit, but maybe you could break it down a little bit.

For sales leaders, if they're looking at their current go-to market strategy, they say, You know what, Jake is, right? I'm still using the Predictable Revenue playbook. You know, how do you think through with them, or how do [00:19:00] they think about customizing that sales journey with the tools that are available now?

Jake Dunlap: Yeah. So customized sales journey. This is a really important part of the book. Um, and probably one of the, I don't know, I think one of the. Yeah. Most important for people to read and really internalize what this actually means for B2B sales in particular. I'll make the analogy first of B2C sales.

Okay. If you think about how we buy things as consumers today, every, you know, x number of months, it gets more tailored to us. Perfect recommendations. Click to buy for this person. More information survey for this person. We are being trained as buyers that like if something's not hyper relevant, I've got no time for it.

Right. And the analogy I always use is I go, how? How many times in the last two weeks have you looked up an item in Amazon? It wasn't available to get shipped to you later today or tomorrow. So you picked a different product that gets there today or tomorrow, or something that would literally get [00:20:00] there like three days later.

Like, just think about that behavior that is a very new, that is a, like less than five year, maybe 6-year-old behavior that just continues to perpetuate in our brains. A speed to information. The ability to consume content. You know, we all consume tons and tons of video content. B2B companies are atrocious at providing consumable content.

To people, even though more and more people, you know, want to learn about things asynchronously. And so, you know, customized sales journey, really, there's a couple of concepts in there. The first I'll, I'll talk about is this concept called VEC, which we talk about in the book, VEC, uh, which says that, look, today, customers are coming to you.

There's a vetted group of buyers. I think that that's probably anywhere between 10 to 20% of buyers now that say, Hey. David, look, I already use your competitor, bro. I used you guys three years ago. I've already done ChatGPT research. Like, can we go like, why are we having this conversation, man? Like, do I really have to sit here?

The inbound SDR is one of the [00:21:00] worst roles that exists candidly in current go-to-market. That's like, Hey Jake, I wanna understand some information. It's like, dude. I already know. I already know more than you. Why are we waiting another week? Like I think companies are artificially slowing down their sales cycle left and right because they're not appreciating the vetted.

And then the next is educated, which someone who may, might not have all those attributes, but maybe they, again, they either use a competitor. They're a warm referral from a current client. 

Each company we kind of encourage if they check, three of five of these boxes and we treat 'em as vetted, and that means the first call we're showing up with a solutions engineer.

We do this, we do this, and I'll kind of get to more of those details. Educated. We show up basically where we would at step two, cold, you know, is the C, so VEC, cold and right. McKinsey did a study, I talked about it in the book, McKinsey said, look, about now and next year, about 20 to 30% of people will be ready to self-service at anything under 50,000.

And I think for most people they're like, but I need to talk to somebody. I'm like, no, I don't. I already, it's like, again, think if it's a known [00:22:00] space, like I'm not educating you on why this space is important. I've worked with somebody in your competitive set. Guys, I'm already there.

I'm at step four. I don't need you to convince me or sell me on the education around why the space is important. I'm already there. And so I think what we do a really bad job of it is understanding that, say that you cannot treat every buyer like a conveyor belt. 

And I think what happens today is everybody starts at the beginning, whether you're vetted, whether you're educated, whether you're cold, or even if you're like, God, I'd love to self-service.
You know, that would be amazing. 

And so, you know, one of the, the easiest things you can do to get real tactical here, we call it that magic email. And, and I am telling you, within a week you got, you will be blown away. Is at least 48 hours before your call. 

First call, uh, you have your rep send out and you can automate this, obviously a rep send out an email that says, Hey David, I'm really looking forward to our conversation coming up on Friday morning when I talk to VPs of blank.

They're either one, like already familiar with the space, might've used us or competitor in the past, and I wanna make [00:23:00] sure I can show up prepared, um, with the right people from our team or two. They're kind of still exploratory, still trying to kind of understand details and, you know, we'll need to go a little bit deeper into kind of the why.

Let me know where you fit on this continuum, and I'll make sure that we’re prepared for that conversation on Friday. That's all you gotta do, you do that. I'm telling you, your reps, within a week, I promise you a rep is gonna flag to the manager and he's gonna go, or she's gonna go, oh my gosh, Jake said that he was this, this, and this.

I think you need to get on the first call. And so we have to be able to adjust to where, you know it used to be, 'cause again, let's rewind behavior in 2010, just 15 years ago, my ability to find out anything about a B2B company was like zero. 

It's like there weren't all these groups. So fast forward, it's like, you know, HubSpot started talking about this in like 2010, 11, 12, that buyers are more educated. It was kind of BS then. But if you kind of continue as we get access to more and more and more, and now we have ChatGPT where I, where I'm telling you [00:24:00] what people are doing now is they're saying, 

Hey, I'm looking for somebody in the sales engagement space. I've already used them. I want these three options. Gimme a wild card option of a company that's raised at least 50 million and boom, I'm coming in hot. And so we still have not adjusted our journey to appreciate that people are coming in more educated. 

And that is what I think, David, the scariest part is I think that what could end up being like the death knell for B2B sales as a discipline that instead of outside of the ultra, ultra enterprise or ultra-relationship-based sale. I think if we can't adapt to this, buyers are not gonna wanna talk to anybody in B2B sales. 

They're gonna say, Look, let me self-guide, let me, and if you think about modern sales today, I really don't wanna talk to the salesperson. I just wanna talk to the customer success person I'm gonna work with.

Because at the end of the day, I'm gonna get handed off and all I care about is am I using the product? And so if you know, what value is the salesperson gonna add, if they're spending time trying to qualify me, and I already know more than [00:25:00] they do. 

You know, and so that is the scariest trend for me over the next two to five years, that if companies do not adapt to have a more customized journey, more and more buyers are gonna go work with your competition, um, and opt out of your sales process.

And this is what I learned, too. Gotta hop on a call. Oh, hey Jacob. Oh yeah, great question. Can you hop on a call? I'm like, just send me a video of like the two-minute demo I can send to my team for the love of God, right? Like, and to me it's both like, it's not that there isn't the right time to hop on a call, you know, it's like there's friction in the process or something.

But very few companies do a very good job of asynchronous education. You know, I think the last stat was 24% of your time is actually spent with the customer. And so this customized journey is where are they at in their process, and am I giving them asynchronous ways to, you know, absorb content, to learn content, to learn about us.

Do I have a demo that's tailored to a CFO versus a VP of Operations versus a VP of Marketing that I can send really quickly as a leave-behind three separate emails? And the answer for about [00:26:00] 98% of companies is no. 

And I think that's what scares me most about the customized journey is we just refuse to believe that people are educated and that people are actually smart enough to learn asynchronously without your sales rep hopping on a phone.

And those I think, are the biggest trends on why this matters more than ever.

David Kreiger: Yeah, and I think the idea that you have is a good workaround. 'Cause I think a lot of times, especially on the inbound side, it's that, you know, they need discovery 'cause they don't have the information. So either just ask the question like you do, which is a great simple workaround, or even like inbound forms, or however you're collecting your.

Jake Dunlap: Yeah, sure. Of course.

David Kreiger: It's stuck before generative AI. Like, there's no reason why inbound forms can't be generative to some extent. They don't have to be just click a button. Here's my, you know, as part of the form, I can ask a few questions, right? 

And generate, and get some of that information so you can start customizing the journey right out of the gate, uh, from, from an inbound perspective. And I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we've all been on with a salesperson who's wasting our time, and there's no patience for that [00:27:00] right now.

Jake Dunlap: And that's, you know, the craziest part, David, about, just something about that last part. Go ask your average sales leader the last time they bought anything, go ask them, and I guarantee you at least 75% I'll go ahead and say, one out of four is fine. We'll say, Oh my God, it was brutal. And then I go, and I've, I've posted about this on LinkedIn.

I, I'm like, when is the last time you audited your process? It's the same. You're doing the same thing. Like, what do you mean it's brutal? You're literally doing the exact same process. 

So. I just feel like this is, I feel like this edit anything in the book is, is probably one of the more easy concepts to grasp because we know how we like to buy as consumers and if we can take that mindset of meeting people where they are, letting people learn asynchronously at the right times and human interventions at the right time as well too.

We're gonna win. And you're gonna build a more future-proof team. And one thing I will say, and then, you know, we can move on, is look, [00:28:00] and this is where I think MEDDPICC and some of these methodologies have an opportunity but are also dangerous because one of the biggest behavior shifts that I see right now is we're starting to treat MEDDPICC like a sales methodology versus a deal review framework.

Right. It was never meant to be, Hey, Jake, to run a good discovery call, did you get these three data points? Because guess what, a real bad rep can go get those data points, right? You know? And again, a little history lesson, guys — MEDDIC, which was the precursor to MEDDPICC, was invented in 1996. Do you know what buying was like, guys, in 1996?

Like, there's a guy like in a mahogany office and he would just like buy stuff. Like the buying committee was like two people, the owner or the C-whatever, but they just buy stuff. 

Like the buying committees were probably, I, I don't even know how to guess, one-fifth the size that they are today. The competition and amount of companies doing something similar to you was probably either non-existent or one thirtieth of what it is today. [00:29:00]

You know, we had more free time. There wasn't social media. There was like, think about that. Like MEDDIC was developed around a buyer process from 1996. Now, do I think you can adapt it to today? Absolutely. But you can't make it your methodology. And that's with a lot of our clients. I'm like, look, we actually don't have to necessarily get rid of MEDDPICC.

We have a framework called INTENT that we think is more accurate. The N is for Next Steps. We found that today, and I put this in the book, it's like a last-minute addition because I was like, why are deals actually struggling today with all these people involved and where? Where did I feel like some of them fell down?

So Next Steps. Right now momentum is the killer. If you are not driving next steps, the deals won't get done. This mythical champion's not gonna do it. They got too many things. T is for Teams — this concept of one decision maker or one economic buyer's insane, right? And the decision maker today could be somebody two levels [00:30:00] below the SVP, who's a squeaky wheel in the room.

So you gotta understand the team’s education level. I talked about education as a part of it. I — Numerical Priority over pains. If you are not a top three numerical priority for that department over the next two quarters, your deal's not getting done. So moving away from this concept of pain. I can tell you I get eight leaders together.

They all listen to the call. Four say, yep, there's a pain. Two say, eh, and two are like, nah. Numerical priority is like non-refutable. Is this a top three numerical priority for your department, um, as a part of it. 

And then T is the last T — Time to Impact. And that means when does the customer need to see results by, right?

And I think MEDDPICC has a version of that called compelling event, but it's like next steps. If I know the next steps and I'm driving the net, I know the teams that are involved. 

There's usually a buyer team and an end user team, sometimes a vetting team. Right. I understand the education level. I'm meeting people where they're at and educating 'em asynchronously.

Right. I understand I'm solving a top three numerical priority. Right. And I understand when the customer needs to [00:31:00] actually see the benefit of what we do, but I'm in the deal. Like, I know, I'm like there. 


And so that's kind of how we evolved MEDDPICC. Again, I, we have clients where we've evolved it for them, but you still have to think about weaving in the concepts of INTENT there too.

Of like, not just saying, what's the economic buyer saying? What's the economic buyer team of people? So, we've had some really good success, uh, yeah. Adapting it.

David Kreiger: Yeah. That's awesome. I think that makes, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, this, this day and age and amazing, this 1996, that's like 30 years ago.

Jake Dunlap: Uh, right. I, I know, I know. And like I don't want to, you know, poo-poo it too much because like I said, it can still be applicable. You cannot make it a deal framework, because I'll tell you, one of the most dangerous things that we're seeing with our clients is, you know, there's a client of ours, I won't talk about who they are, but, you know, they had a Gong initiative and, and they didn't really have as tight methodology, but what they wanna do, they wanted to make MEDDPICC into Gong.

And which by the way is totally, I'm totally fine with that as a deal evaluation framework. But guess what ends up happening? In [00:32:00] lieu of a tight playbook, your sales leaders start to coach to MEDDPICC as your methodology.

Jake, did you run a good call? Jake, your first call? Oh, look what it, look what Gong said that you did. 1, 2, 3. I did great. I listened to the call. The call's terrible. You know, and so we've got to move off this idea like, look, it's, it's a deal evaluation framework. 

It doesn't equal a good call for a discovery, demo, proposal, contract. Like, there are two different things.

David Kreiger: So, as you know, we c we come to, to then here I do want to get into a few, um, you know, tech stack type types of things because I think a lot of what sales leaders are struggling with for a long time. 

But I think it's on steroids now in the age of AI is there are so many different tools we can get caught up in the promise of them, but I think, you know, we've seen, um, and I think you even posted about it recently, sometimes we can make our teams [00:33:00] less effective.

'Cause we're just throwing so many different things at them. What are your thoughts around both evaluating, what you need or don't need in this, this current age?

 And are there any things that stand out? As a tool that is more ubiquitous, and I know a lot of times it's gotta just be customized to the company.

Jake Dunlap: Sure. Yeah. There a couple of things in there. Um, one. You have to make sure that you're prioritizing the biggest bottlenecks in your revenue org, and you're focused on deploying things there so you know if there's a new tool you hear about and it's not solving one of your top two or three numerical priorities for your revenue team, amazing.

Let's put that on the docket for November, and we'll pick it back up. So you have to stay focused. You have to realize, look, technology and process improvements are meant to drive more revenue. That's it. 

And if it doesn't align to that, and I can't say specifically, Hey, look, our number one challenge is X, our number two, and this is exactly how we're gonna quantify the impact of this [00:34:00] technology or process change, you may wanna reconsider.

Right? And it's not that you don't wanna prioritize it. You might, you know, just wanna think about doing it there. So you're always focused on finding solutions that are to the revenue challenge that we're having right now. That is the number one or number two bottleneck, right? And so that's kind of like my first piece.

The number two piece is one piece of technology implemented at a hundred percent, is better than three pieces implemented at 30. I, I, I equate, this is kind of my book analogy, actually. I don't know if I've ever made this. David, you might, this is an exclusive Jake analogy, but I've made it to my, like others before.

There are these people out there. How many books did you read this year? It's like, oh, I read. I mean, look, I got a bookcase. You got a bookcase? I read 35 books this year. Amazing. Tell me about this book, and what did you actually tactically implement? It's like crickets, right? So I think most of us are these consumers of books and we don't do anything about it.

 [00:35:00] And I, I've, I've put this challenge out there. Most people are better reading one book a year. One book and fully executing everything that book says to do. And I think sales technology or revenue technology is exactly like that. Where I see the biggest lift is to getting there, all the work that has to happen.

And I know it's a lot of work. Trust me, we implement thousands, probably. Yeah, at least thousands of sales technologies every year we're touching or implementing. And it's a lot of work to get there. The deployment of a new technology is step zero. 

And when you start to have a step zero mindset, that deployment and initial training is step zero, and you realize the only goal of deploying a technology is to create power users within my organization.

It foundationally shifts how you think about deploying software. So I don't care what software you pick, you're probably better off picking less and deploying fully, which means it's baked into the company, it's baked into what they're doing, and it's solving the number one bottleneck for your company over the next, you know, two to four quarters.

 If you pick that way, [00:36:00] I think you're gonna be in a good, you're gonna be good. You'll be better than like most people.

David Kreiger: Yeah. I think that methodology is, is fantastic and we've been very limited in what we deploy and we don't, we tried not to tech stack up because I think also what we forget, and I think you touched on it, is there's gonna be a period of time where actually productivity will go down.

People are confused, they're not understanding how to use the technology, all those types of things. And we think, and we're sold on all these magic, you know, solves for your problems. But you have to go into it with your eyes open and with a plan, like you said. And I like the idea that you, you look at it as ground zero or the, you know, the first step that it is gonna be a process.

Not just to implement it, but also to make sure that people are using it in the right way and the organization understands how to use it in the right way to be able to get the results that you're looking for.

Jake Dunlap: That's right. And I think what we tell a lot of leaders is like that, this is where [00:37:00] sales leaders shoot themselves in the foot, is they, you know, you say, well, when do you need to see this buy? Again, going back to time to impact. When do you need to see impact and now how do we reverse engineer the deployment plan to get my team to power usage and adoption by that date?

And I feel like the one tool I will say, and then I know we gotta wrap up, is you need to, you need to start deploying generative AI right now. Right now you need to pick, and again, you don't need to overthink it. You don't need to say, what's my gen AI strategy for my whole… stop. Again, what's my process?

You're gonna pick one group. We're gonna find one way to deploy ChatGPT, Teams, Gemini, Copilot. The beautiful part, and I think people need to hear this, the switching costs to go from a ChatGPT Teams instance to a Gemini instance is like nothing. Like the ability we have to build the exact same assistants at one versus the other.

10, 20 hours of optimization so you're not locking in. And guess what? All their UIs look the exact same. There's like a list of gems over here or [00:38:00] GPTs, and then there's a chat. So like the UI different isn't there. So just picking one solution again, what's the bottleneck I'm having in my team? What are the three ways we can deploy gen AI?

 You need to start to do that now. Like you have, like you have to start to get a more standardized way that your team is using this in a prompt library. That was great 16 months ago, we built out our first prompt library almost 24 months ago, but we're not prompting anymore. We have assistants that prompt the reps, or and then it's like, well, actually, let's just build an automation Salesforce.

You hit rich, it runs through three assistants and pipes it in. So don't get overwhelmed with all the things I'm even saying. We're gonna pick one department, you're gonna pick one department. We're gonna decide two or three standardized use cases and we're gonna deploy. 

And so that is one where I think everyone does need to do something now more than ever.

David Kreiger: Oh, that is awesome. Well, we are going to wrap on that. The one thing I'd like to do, Jake, that we do with all of our guests is do a few rapid fire questions if you're up for it. Run through 'em, uh, with the first thing that pops in your [00:39:00] head. 

What is one thing that people don't give enough value or attention to in leadership?

Jake Dunlap: Your job is not to fix people. Your job is to help people get to the best version of themselves that they can be. But your job is not to fix people.

David Kreiger: Hmm. Love it. What is one skill you advise everyone in sales to master?

Jake Dunlap: Listening.

David Kreiger: Favorite business leadership or sales book?

Jake Dunlap: Man, I mean, obviously I'm gonna say Innovative Seller as a part of this. You know, there was a book I read really early in my career. It was called Discipline Without Punishment. It's probably 20 years old now. And that book helped me to kind of understand the grappling that I think a lot of us have with accountability, coupled with kindness almost. And yeah, it's kind of a textbook, kind of boring book, honestly. 

But Discipline Without Punishment I think is one where if you haven't read that book and you're a leader, it's worth it. I'm sure, again, I haven't read it in a few [00:40:00] years, but it could be worth a read.

David Kreiger: I'll check it out. Uh, that'll be my one book for 2026. 

Jake Dunlap: You can have multiple.

David Kreiger: Uh, favorite quote, mantra, or saying that inspires you as a sales leader.

Jake Dunlap: You are the person you are when nobody's looking.

David Kreiger: And finally, what is the most important goal or project you're working on right now?

Jake Dunlap: For me right now, it's launching Journey AI. So I started a company, that's what I needed to do. After, you know, I've got 35 people in a full payroll, um, you know, Journey AI, what we've done is kind of our assistants that we've built out into one platform. So if you're a go-to-market team, you know, we already have these kind of seven out-of-the-box assistants to help you do research, book meetings, build account plans, etc.

You can set up projects for each account, and then they all know kind of the account that they're working on together. It runs off of ChatGPT-5.0 and Perplexity. And so it's just kind of out-of-the-box go-to-market assistants. So, like I said, we just saw most sales leaders, like, please give me a box to check this AI thing.

 [00:41:00] And so, Journey AI, we literally just launched with Alpha. You can sign up, we'll make sure you have the link. You can sign up for a free trial, check it out, let me know what you think. And we'll be going live into full production, probably in early Q4.

David Kreiger: Well, that's exciting. Jake, this was a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you bringing your perspective, your views on AI, sales leadership. If people wanna connect with you or learn more about what you're working on, what's the best way?

Jake Dunlap: Yeah, come check out what we're doing at Scaled. It's scaled.com. You can check out our different kind of AI services. You might call it revenue operations optimization, where we feel like AI was just a natural part of how you build that. To go check out Journey, it's meetjourney.ai, and check that out if you're interested.

 And then LinkedIn, I post, you know, almost every day, probably at least every day, on LinkedIn. So if you're somebody who geeks out on tactical advice and wants to stay up to speed. And then YouTube, we're putting out a lot of videos around AI in particular on YouTube.

David Kreiger: Alright, Jake, as always, so great to chat with you. For you [00:42:00] guys listening out there, thanks so much for listening to the Sell Like a Leader podcast. 

I'm David Kreiger. Hit me up on LinkedIn with any questions, guests, comments, feedback. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.