MEDDIC: six questions to answer before you forecast a deal
What MEDDIC stands for, where it came from, how MEDDPICC extends it, and a one-page qualification sheet you can fill in mostly before the first call.
MEDDIC is a sales qualification checklist named for six things you need to know about a deal: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain and Champion. A deal counts as qualified under MEDDIC when you can answer all six with evidence from the buyer's side, not with optimism from yours. Most teams fill the checklist in slowly, one sales call at a time. You can fill in most of it before the first call by talking to people who have bought or sold into that kind of company, and then use the calls to confirm.
A one-page sheet you can copy is in section 4.
1. MEDDIC came out of PTC's sales team in the 1990s
The usual story credits two people. Umbrex says MEDDIC was developed by Jack Napoli and Dick Dunkel in the mid-1990s while they worked at PTC, a software company also known by its full name, Parametric Technology Corp. HubSpot calls it the original framework developed at PTC in the 1990s without naming anyone.
MEDDIC Academy, run by Darius Lahoutifard, who was on PTC's international sales leadership team, tells it as a group effort. It credits a dozen sales managers in the early 1990s as the true creators, and says PTC training managers in Boston later turned their field habits into a course and named it MEDDIC. The same page says PTC had more than forty quarters of continuous growth during the 1990s.
The versions agree on the part that matters: MEDDIC was written down from what a fast-growing sales team was already doing on its deals. (Acronyms usually arrive after the habit, and after a whiteboard.)
2. Each letter is a question you should answer in one sentence
If an answer needs a paragraph, you probably do not know it yet. Here is what each letter asks, using HubSpot's definitions as the base:
- Metrics: what measurable value does the buyer expect, in their numbers? "Lower the no-show rate we report to the board every month" counts. "Save time" does not.
- Economic buyer: who has the final authority to spend the budget? A name and a title, not "leadership."
- Decision criteria: what technical, vendor and financial requirements will they judge you on?
- Decision process: what steps and approvals happen between "we like this" and "we chose you," in what order, and who owns each one?
- Identify pain: what specific problem, risk or missed opportunity makes this worth fixing this year?
- Champion: who inside the company wants you to win and will argue for you when you are not in the room?
The champion is the line people fill in too generously. Someone who takes your calls and says nice things is a friendly contact. A champion spends their own credibility on your deal, for example by setting up the meeting with the economic buyer.
3. MEDDPICC adds the paperwork and the competition
Two letters get added for longer, more complex deals. MEDDIC Academy describes the lineage: MEDDICC adds Competition, and MEDDPICC adds the Paper process on top of that. The site also says Lahoutifard owns the MEDDPICC trademark.
- Paper process: the legal, security and procurement steps required to finalize the contract. Security reviews, legal redlines, vendor onboarding forms.
- Competition: any alternative the buyer is considering, including doing nothing.
Use MEDDPICC when your buyer has a procurement team or a security review. If the person who likes your product can also pay for it on a company card, six letters are plenty, and the shorter BANT checklist may be enough.
Treat "doing nothing" as your main competitor. The buyer has lived with the problem until now, and a spreadsheet nobody owns is very hard to beat on price.
4. Copy this one-page qualification sheet
Make one sheet per deal. Fill in the answer column with a sentence, and say where each answer came from, because a guess from research and a fact from the economic buyer should not look the same.
| Field | Question | Answer | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metrics | Which number will the buyer use to judge this, and by how much must it move? | ||
| Economic buyer | Who signs, by name and title? Have we spoken to them? | ||
| Decision criteria | What will they compare vendors on, ranked? | ||
| Decision process | What are the steps from shortlist to signature, with owners and dates? | ||
| Paper process | Which legal, security and procurement steps apply, and how long do they take? | ||
| Identify pain | What breaks if nothing changes, and who feels it first? | ||
| Champion | Who is arguing for us internally, and what have they done to prove it? | ||
| Competition | What else are they considering, including doing nothing? |
Score each row 0 if you do not know, 1 if you have a researched guess, and 2 if someone at the buyer confirmed it. The maximum is 16. The total matters less than three rows: leave a deal out of your forecast until economic buyer, pain and champion each score 2.
5. Fill most of the sheet before the first call
Most MEDDIC fields describe how a kind of company buys, not a secret about one company. A large hospital system, a small agency and a regional bank each have a decision process, paper process and economic buyer that look much the same as their peers'. People who have bought for, or sold into, companies like your prospect already know those answers.
Here is a made-up example. Dana Ortiz sells scheduling software to dental groups with 10 to 40 locations. Her first prospect is a 22-location group whose operations lead keeps a shared spreadsheet called CHAIR_UTIL_v6. Before the first call, Dana talks to two people: a former operations director at a similar dental group, and an account executive who used to sell practice software to the same kind of buyer.
In this example, those two conversations let her fill in five rows with researched guesses:
- Economic buyer: purchases above a set amount usually go to the chief financial officer, not the operations lead.
- Decision process: the operations lead runs a trial at two locations, then presents results at a monthly leadership meeting.
- Paper process: groups owned by private equity often send a security questionnaire and want their own contract terms.
- Metrics: these groups track chair utilization and hygiene recall rates, so a pitch built on "saving front desk time" will land softly.
- Competition: most groups use the scheduling tool bundled with their practice management software, plus that spreadsheet.
Pain and champion stay at 0. Those belong to this company and these people, and only the buyer can tell her. Decision criteria get a 1 at best, because the general list is easy to guess and the ranking is not.
The tradeoff is that research describes the typical company, and your prospect may be the odd one. That is fine, because the next step tests every guess.
6. Use the first call to confirm, not to interrogate
Turn each researched row into a statement the buyer can correct. "What's your decision process?" asks them to describe their company from scratch. "At groups your size, a purchase like this usually goes to the CFO after a two-location trial. Is that how it works here?" asks for a yes, or for a correction. Most people find it easier to fix a wrong guess than to explain their company from nothing.
This has two benefits. The call covers more ground, and the buyer hears that you understand how companies like theirs work, which gives a future champion a reason to vouch for you. The guide to discovery calls covers how to structure the call around that, and the list of sales discovery questions has wording for the pain and champion rows you could not research.
Ask about the decision process and paper process early. They are the rows that quietly add months, and a buyer will happily describe their procurement team's habits once you show you already know the outline. The post on the B2B buying process explains who usually shows up at each stage.
7. Drop or pause deals with an empty champion row
Use one rule: if after two calls nobody at the buyer has done anything for you, such as introducing a colleague, sharing an internal document or setting up a meeting with the economic buyer, mark the deal as unqualified and move it out of your forecast. Keep talking to them if you like. Just stop counting it.
The tradeoff is that you will occasionally pause a deal that would have closed. That costs less than spending a quarter on a deal where nobody inside the company was arguing for you.
Start with the rows you can research this week
Copy the sheet, pick your biggest open deal, and fill in decision process, paper process and economic buyer from conversations with people who know that kind of company before your next call. If you need to reach specific people you do not know, such as chief revenue officers, VPs of sales or heads of revenue operations, Instant Expert can invite them to a short call or a written or voice answer, and you pay only if someone books or answers.