From Product Peddlers to Trusted Advisors: Why Accelerated DRIP Is the Only Sustainable Sales Model for CIAM

For most of my career, I have watched talented sales professionals lose deals they had every right to win.

Not because their technology was inferior. Not because their competitors were smarter. Not because the client lacked urgency.

They lost because they never truly understood what the client was trying to protect.

The presentation was polished. The messaging was approved. The demo worked. The pricing was “competitive.” And still, weeks later, the quiet rejection arrived. Another opportunity vanished into the corporate fog with no clear explanation.

Most CIAM deals are not lost in procurement. They are lost in the early conversations, when sellers confuse activity with understanding and motion with progress. They are lost when qualification replaces diagnosis and process replaces judgment.

In The Science of Trusted Advisor Marketing and Sales, I wrote that people buy from those they trust, and that trust is built through understanding psychology, emotion, and business reality before product positioning ever begins. Nowhere is that truer than in customer identity.

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CIAM Is No Longer Infrastructure

For decades, IAM lived quietly in the background. It was directories, credentials, access policies, and compliance reports. Necessary. Invisible. Treated like plumbing behind the walls.

Sales organizations have been forced to sell it that way: as infrastructure, as components, as features.

But CIAM has escaped the basement. Today, it shapes revenue models, fraud exposure, regulatory risk, customer experience, brand reputation, ecosystem partnerships, and AI-driven interaction layers. It determines who is trusted, when, under what conditions, and at what cost. It is no longer technical plumbing. It is commercial architecture. Yet much of the industry still sells it like wiring. That disconnect is why so many deals fail.

When MEDDIC Becomes a Crutch

MEDDIC was created to bring structure to chaos. It gave sales organizations discipline and predictability. It taught people to think about metrics, buyers, budgets, decision processes, and champions. It was never meant to replace judgment.

In my book, I warned that when frameworks are treated as rigid checklists, they strip away the nuance that defines trusted advisors.

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Over time, that is exactly what happened. Qualification became interrogation. Discovery became theater. Diagnosis became a formality. Salespeople were taught to steer conversations toward their catalogs instead of toward client reality. They learned how to “map” pain to features. They learned how to manufacture urgency. They learned how to sell by process instead of by skill.

Along the way, many forgot how to actively listen.

The Square Peg Syndrome

Every MEDDIC-heavy organization eventually develops the same reflex.

They load the truck, platforms, modules, bundles, add-ons. Then they arrive at the client and start unloading. If the client’s problem is round, they bring a square solution and swing harder. If it does not fit, they discount. If it still does not fit, they escalate. If it cracks, they call it “change management.”

Yes, deals close this way. But the damage is cumulative. Margins erode. Adoption stalls. Stakeholders disengage. Renewal risk rises. Credibility decays. You can force a peg into a hole. But you damage the wood. And in CIAM, the wood is trust.

Why CIAM Exposes Process Selling

CIAM is not owned by a single department. It lives across marketing, product, risk, compliance, legal, IT, operations, and data science. No single buyer controls it. No single budget governs it. No single timeline defines it.

MEDDIC wants clean lines.

CIAM lives in tangled roots.

At the same time, the threat landscape evolves relentlessly. Fraud techniques mutate. Regulations shift. AI rewrites interaction models. Customer expectations reset. Static sales models collapse under this pressure. They were designed for stable environments. CIAM is not stable. It is a living battlefield.

Accelerated DRIP as Applied Trusted Advisory Practice

Accelerated DRIP is not a new methodology. It is the operationalization of the principles laid out in The Science of Trusted Advisor Marketing and Sales.

It is psychology in motion. Listening with intent. Value identification in real time. Trust translated into architecture. Diagnosis in DRIP reflects your emphasis on understanding emotional and cognitive drivers before shaping solutions.

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It means uncovering friction, political tension, revenue leakage, regulatory exposure, and reputational risk before talking about platforms. Relation reflects storytelling, field marketing, and active listening as the roadmap to client success. Credibility is earned through fluency in the client’s world, not through logos.

Integration brings together technology, process, policy, and culture into coherent systems. It reflects top-down value framing and bottom-up justification. Proof is where trusted advisory becomes measurable. Outcomes replace promises. Impact replaces aspiration.

Why DRIP Accelerates Sales Instead of Slowing It

There is a persistent myth that consultative selling takes too long. It does not. Rework takes too long. Rescoping takes too long. Salvage takes too long. Listening well is the fastest tool in sales. In the book, I warned against the “used car” mistake of pushing too early and eroding trust.

Accelerated DRIP front-loads understanding. It compresses cycles by eliminating wrong assumptions before they metastasize. MEDDIC may move quickly in the wrong direction. DRIP always moves steadily in the right one.

From Representative to Steward

Product sellers push inventory. Trusted advisors protect outcomes. Becoming a Trusted Advisor demands credibility and long-term commitment.

CIAM is fundamentally a service relationship, even when delivered as software. Buyers are purchasing ongoing judgment, not just functionality. No serious enterprise entrusts its customer relationships to a rotating pitchman. They entrust them to stewards.

The Pattern We See Repeated

In failed CIAM engagements, the pattern is predictable:

Quick demo. Superficial alignment. Early discounting. Internal resistance. Scope creep. Eventual stagnation or collapse.

In successful DRIP engagements, the path is different:

Business mapping precedes architecture. Stakeholder alignment precedes configuration. Budgets are defined based on trusted advisor input. Phased execution precedes expansion. Trust compounds over time.

DRIP in the Age of AI and Non-Human Identity

We are entering an era defined by agentic AI, machine identities, continuous authentication, runtime authorization, and privacy-first ecosystems. CIAM is now the nervous system of digital business. You do not sell nervous systems. You design them. The integration of empathy with expertise is precisely what this moment demands.

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Organizations that rely on product theater may not survive this transition. Those that institutionalize DRIP will lead it. This is where the disrupters can unseat the leaders.

The Strategic Choice Ahead

Every CIAM sales organization now stands at a crossroads. One path is familiar: More demos. More bundles. More discounts. More POC’s. More churn.

The other is demanding: Fewer deals. Better deals. Longer relationships. Enduring reputation. Sales professionals must learn to understand buyers deeply, frame real value, navigate organizational dynamics, and build trust that survives market cycles.

Accelerated DRIP is that roadmap in motion. You can sell only what is on the truck. Or you can solve what is breaking the business using the tools on the truck.

Only one builds an exceptional career. Only one builds an industry. Only one builds trust.