What is MEDDPICC?

MEDDPICC is a sales qualification framework for complex B2B deals that checks eight things: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identify Pain, Champion and Competition, to tell whether a deal is real and winnable.

At a glance

• It grew out of MEDDIC, created in 1996 at PTC by Dick Dunkel with Jack Napoli, under sales leader John McMahon.
• MEDDPICC adds two letters to MEDDIC: P for Paper Process and a second C for Competition.
• It’s used mostly on mid-market and enterprise deals with several stakeholders and a formal buying process.
• Each letter is a question the rep answers with evidence from the buyer, not a guess typed into a CRM field.
• Gaps in the answers tell the rep what to find out next, which makes it useful in deal reviews and forecasting.

What each letter means

• Metrics: the measurable result the buyer expects, in their numbers.
• Economic Buyer: the person who can approve the spend and sign.
• Decision Criteria: what the buyer will judge vendors on, such as security, integrations or price model.
• Decision Process: the steps from shortlist to decision, and who owns each one.
• Paper Process: procurement, security review, legal and signature, between “yes” and a signed contract.
• Identify Pain: the business problem that makes acting now worth it.
• Champion: someone inside the account with influence who wants you to win and will sell for you when you’re not there.
• Competition: who else is in the deal, including building it in-house or doing nothing.

Example (illustrative): an AE has a strong champion and a clear pain but no meeting with the economic buyer and no idea how procurement works. MEDDPICC says the deal isn’t ready to commit, and gives the next two calls a purpose.

MEDDIC and where MEDDPICC came from

According to MEDDICC’s history of the framework, PTC’s sales team had grown to roughly 300 reps and attrition was a problem. Dunkel and Napoli studied why PTC won deals, why it lost them and why deals slipped, and traced the outcomes to six areas: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion. That’s MEDDIC.

Later versions added Competition (MEDDICC) and then Paper Process (MEDDPICC). Many teams still say “MEDDIC” for any of the three.

Common MEDDPICC mistakes

• Filling in fields to pass a stage gate. A champion who was never tested isn’t a champion. Ask what they’ve done for the deal.
• Confusing a friendly contact with a champion. Someone who likes you but has no influence won’t move the deal.
• Finding the paper process last. A security review or legal cycle found in the final week pushes the close date into next quarter.
• Using it on every deal. On small, fast deals, a lighter check such as BANT is usually enough.

How MEDDPICC shows up in a revenue system

MEDDPICC lives in the CRM as required fields on the opportunity, and in the weekly deal review. It only works if the meetings feeding it are with the right accounts, which is the top-of-funnel work our sales pods run.

Terms that sit next to MEDDPICC

Most MEDDPICC answers come from the discovery call and from multi-threading across the account. Better answers improve forecast accuracy and win rate, and the paper process often decides the length of the sales cycle.