In the past few years, companies large and small have called on me to get help with their non-performing sales team. The described symptoms are different from one company to another. Some need more revenue. Others complain about unreliable forecasts, with deals slipping constantly from one quarter to another before being lost or even abandoned a few quarters later. Some CEOs notice unproductive sales teams with an unusually high number of non-quota-carrying people needed in the sales force, hitting the bottom line hard. All these symptoms are related to the same illness: inability to qualify. Since most sales teams put in place organizations including SDR (Sales Development Representatives) or BDR (Business Development Representatives) who qualify leads for Account Managers, there is a wrong unstated assumption, widely spread, that once a lead is qualified, the inside sales or field sales will have to work on them until they are won or lost. Ongoing qualification is often the issue. Qualification is not a binary step of the sales process. Qualification is a mindset and a habit to apply throughout the sales process, from the first call to closing. This book covers both the Why and the How of sales qualification. I was an early sales leader at PTC where the MEDDIC methodology took shape. I am also the founder of MEDDIC Academy, the first platform to bring the qualification methodology online. This book describes the M.E.D.D.I.C. and the MEDDPICC® sales methodology in depth. This is not a book of theories, research, or academic concepts but pure execution techniques with practical recipes. At a high level, MEDDIC is a checklist that helps sales professionals reveal the gaps in an opportunity and execute correctly to fill those gaps and close the deal or drop it early. This book is an excellent complement to the training and workshops we deliver online and in-person globally.

What do the world's most successful enterprise sales teams have in common? They rely on MEDDICC to make their sales process predictable and efficient. MEDDIC with one C was initially created by Dick Dunkel in 1996 when he was at PTC. Since then MEDDIC has evolved to be better known as MEDDICC or MEDDPICC and has proliferated across the world being the go-to choice for elite enterprise sales organizations. If you ever find yourself feeling any of the following symptoms with your deal, you could benefit from MEDDICC: Your buyer doesn't see the value of your solution? (aka they think you are expensive) You are unable to find, articulate and quantify Pain You don't have a Champion or at the very least a Coach helping you navigate and sell You find yourself unable to gain access to people with power and influence You don't know how the customer makes decisions You don't know who is involved in the decision-making process You find yourself surprised by things that come up in the sales process The decision criteria seem to move throughout the process, and you're constantly playing catch up Your Competition is landing strikes against you that you neither see coming nor are able to defend You lose track of where you stand in your deals Whether you are an individual contributor or a sales leader embracing MEDDICC will help you to beat those symptoms and take back control of your deal. Historically, learning MEDDICC has relied upon hands-on training, but now you can learn MEDDICC from an expert who uses it every day. The Book deconstructs MEDDICC into easy to understand and implement steps. Breaking down every letter of the acronym into actionable insights complemented by commentary on how MEDDICC can help sales organizations to revolutionize their sales execution and efficiency. In the words of the original creator of MEDDIC, Dick Dunkel: Whether you are an individual contributor or sales leader, my advice is that you should start to implement MEDDICCinto what you do straight away. Embrace MEDDICC, and you and your team will more clearly understand the WHY to yourprocess, and you'll begin to execute your customer interactions with more purpose and achieve better results.And like so many others before, you will begin to reap the rewards of having a well-qualified pipeline of opportunitieswith clearer paths to success. - Dick Dunkel, MEDDIC Creator.

An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.

This perceptive, lively study explores U.S. women's sport through historical "points of change": particular products or trends that dramatically influenced both women's participation in sport and cultural responses to women athletes. Beginning with the seemingly innocent ponytail, the subject of the Introduction, scholar Jaime Schultz challenges the reader to look at the historical and sociological significance of now-common items such as sports bras and tampons and ideas such as sex testing and competitive cheerleading. Tennis wear, tampons, and sports bras all facilitated women’s participation in physical culture, while physical educators, the aesthetic fitness movement, and Title IX encouraged women to challenge (or confront) policy, financial, and cultural obstacles. While some of these points of change increased women's physical freedom and sporting participation, they also posed challenges. Tampons encouraged menstrual shame, sex testing (a tool never used with male athletes) perpetuated narrowly-defined cultural norms of femininity, and the late-twentieth-century aesthetic fitness movement fed into an unrealistic beauty ideal. Ultimately, Schultz finds that U.S. women's sport has progressed significantly but ambivalently. Although participation in sports is no longer uncommon for girls and women, Schultz argues that these "points of change" have contributed to a complex matrix of gender differentiation that marks the female athletic body as different than--as less than--the male body, despite the advantages it may confer.

Fresh from the Second City troupe in Toronto, Gilda Radner created such memorable characters as Emily Litella and Roseanne Roseannadanna as a member of the original cast of Saturday Night Live. The wife of Gene Wilder, Gilda was plagued by persistent health problems and two miscarriages, and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986. Brave, funny, and painfully honest, the twentieth-anniversary edition of It's Always Something is the story of Gilda's journey while living with cancer and her determination to continue laughing. "Cancer," she said, "is about the most unfunny thing in the world." But Gilda's gutsy and unique sense of humor never left her as she describes two years of cancer treatment -- surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatment, as well as the high and low points of her own career. Told as only Gilda could tell it, and newly revised to include a resource guide for those living with cancer, It's Always Something is the inspiring story of a courageous, funny woman determined to enjoy life no matter the circumstances.

An innovative study of gender, emotion, and power, It’s Always Personal is an essential companion for everyone navigating the challenges of the contemporary workplace. How often have we heard “It’s nothing against you, it’s not personal—it’s just business”? But in fact, at work it’s never just business—it’s always personal. In this groundbreaking book, journalist and former corporate executive Anne Kreamer shows us how to get rational about our emotions, and provides the necessary new tools to flourish in an emotionally charged workplace. Combining the latest information on the intricacies of the human brain, candid stories from employees, and the surprising results of two national surveys, It’s Always Personal offers • a step-by-step guide for identifying your emotional type: Spouter, Accepter, Believer, or Solver • Emotion Management Toolkits that outline strategies to cope with specific emotionally challenging situations • vital facts that will help you understand—and handle—the six main emotional flashpoints: anger, fear, anxiety, empathy, joy, and crying • an exploration of how men and women deal with emotions differently “A stimulating read bolstered by snippets of some of the best recent work on emotional intelligence and the science of happiness.”—The Wall Street Journal “So what should be the rules and boundaries for showing how you feel while you work? That’s a question asked and answered in Anne Kreamer’s fascinating book . . . [a] look at an issue that rarely gets discussed.”—The Washington Post “Finally, someone is willing to unpack the morass of anger, anxiety, sadness, and joy that drives the workday. . . . [Kreamer] has hit the ‘It’s about time!’ button.”—Elle “[A] lively, well-researched exploration of emotions on the job.”—Oprah.com “Explores how to be true to your ‘emotional flashpoints—anger, fear, anxiety, empathy, happiness and crying’—without sabotaging your career.”—The New York Times Book Review

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.