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Methodology

Eight criteria. Miss one, no deal

Eight things a real deal has to satisfy. If even one is empty, you don’t have a deal, you have a hope. Caty runs your pipeline through MEDDPICC every week and tells you which slot is actually missing.

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Eight criteria

The MEDDPICC checklist, line by line.

MEDDPICC is a qualification discipline: eight things a deal must contain to be real. Here is what each one means, and what separates a filled slot from a hopeful one.

  1. 01

    Metrics

    The quantified outcome the buyer expects, in their numbers. "Cut onboarding from 6 weeks to 2", not "be more efficient." A metric the buyer wrote down is the difference between a qualified deal and a polite conversation.

  2. 02

    Economic Buyer

    The one person who can sign without asking anyone else. MEDDPICC asks it as a binary: have you met them, when, and what did they actually say? Working through their team is a relay race. Value and urgency degrade at every handoff.

  3. 03

    Decision Criteria

    The technical, commercial, and relational standards the buyer will judge options against, in their language, not yours. Capture them, confirm them, then shape them in your favour before they harden.

  4. 04

    Decision Process

    The exact steps from "interested" to "signed": who approves what, in what order, by when. A close date is not a process. The missing steps are where committed deals slip a quarter.

  5. 05

    Paper Process

    Legal, procurement, security review, infosec, vendor onboarding. The graveyard of forecasted Q4 deals. It is its own letter because it runs on a separate clock from the buying decision. Start it early or watch it eat your close date.

  6. 06

    Identify Pain

    The business pain, named in the buyer's own words, with a cost attached. If they cannot articulate it, neither can you. A deal without compelling pain has no reason to close now instead of next quarter.

  7. 07

    Champion

    Someone inside the org with influence and a personal stake in your win, who sells for you when you are not in the room. Not a coach, not a friend. Test it: ask them to set up the EB meeting or co-author the business case. A champion delivers.

  8. 08

    Competition

    Everyone else in the buyer's consideration set, including "do nothing" and "build it ourselves," which win more deals than any named vendor. The honest version, not the flattering one. You cannot position against a competitor you have not named.

MEDDPICC on a live deal

Qualified, or just optimistic?

The framework is eight letters. The skill is being honest about which letters you have actually earned.

  1. What good looks like

    Eight slots, each filled with evidence you can point to.

    A genuinely qualified MEDDPICC deal is a short, dated case file. Metrics are agreed by the buyer and written down. The Economic Buyer has been met and quoted. Decision Criteria are captured verbatim. The Decision Process is a sequence with owners and dates. Paper Process is already in motion: security questionnaire sent, procurement contact named. Pain is in the buyer's words. The Champion has done something hard for you. Competition is named honestly, including the status quo. When all eight hold, the forecast is a description, not a wish.

  2. Common mistakes

    Where eight-letter deals quietly come apart.

    Discovering Paper Process exists during contract redlines, not before. Treating "do nothing" as no competition when it is the favourite. Confusing a helpful contact for a Champion who will spend political capital. Accepting "I'll run it past my boss" as Economic Buyer access. A Decision Process that is really just a close date. And the subtle one: filling slots with your own assumptions because asking the buyer feels like friction. Every gap is invisible on a good call and decisive at the QBR.

  3. How Caty reinforces it

    A weekly, honest read on all eight criteria.

    Caty runs your pipeline through MEDDPICC every week and is candid about which slots hold evidence versus optimism. She flags the Paper Process you have not started and tells you who to call. She challenges "Champion: VP Ops" by asking what that person has actually done. She turns "Competition: none" into the question that surfaces the status-quo bias hiding in the deal. The scorecard is not the product. The next action that closes the gap before the forecast call is.

The coach

Methodology-flexible. MEDDPICC-fluent.

Caty isn’t bound to one framework. Pick MEDDPICC and she runs your discovery, your deals, and your forecast through all eight criteria, and tells you which slot is empty before it’s too late to fill it.

Meet Caty

Shorter cycle, no procurement bottleneck? Read the MEDDIC page

FAQ

Quick answers.

  1. What is MEDDPICC?
    A B2B sales qualification framework. Eight criteria the deal must satisfy to be considered real: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identify Pain, Champion, Competition. It is a qualification discipline: a way of pressure-testing whether a deal is real, not a question script.
  2. What do the extra two letters add over MEDDIC?
    Paper Process and Competition. They exist because enterprise deals do not usually die in discovery. They die in procurement and security review, or they lose to a competitor or the status quo that the rep never named. Paper Process gets its own letter because it runs on a separate clock from the buying decision. Competition gets one because "do nothing" is the most common deal-killer and the easiest to ignore.
  3. Is MEDDPICC a discovery method or a qualification method?
    Qualification. It does not script your discovery calls the way SPIN or Gap Selling do. It tells you what a deal must contain to be real and surfaces what is missing. The strongest teams pair it with a discovery method: discovery uncovers the information, MEDDPICC checks that you actually have it and have not just assumed it.
  4. How do I tell a Champion from a friend?
    A friend gives you information and good wishes. A Champion has a personal stake in your win and acts on it. The test: ask them to do something that costs effort or political capital: arrange the Economic Buyer meeting, co-author the business case, chase the security review. A Champion delivers; a friend explains why it is hard. If nobody passes that test, the Champion slot is empty and the deal carries hidden risk.
  5. Why treat "do nothing" as competition?
    Because the status quo wins more enterprise deals than any named vendor. It has no sales cycle, no implementation risk, and an incumbent budget. If you only track named competitors, you miss the real fight, which is convincing the buyer that not deciding is itself a costly decision. MEDDPICC forces you to name it so you can sell against it.
  6. How is this different from MEDDIC?
    MEDDIC has six criteria. MEDDPICC adds Paper Process and Competition. Most enterprise teams have moved to MEDDPICC because legal, procurement, and competitive context kill more Q4 deals than discovery does.
  7. Do I need to upload our playbook?
    No. Start with vanilla MEDDPICC and Caty coaches against the standard eight criteria. Upload your team's specific qualification bar later if you want her tuned to your standard for what "qualified" means.
  8. How do I get Caty for my team?
    Speak to us. Caty is delivered through Replicate Labs partners who configure her to your team's qualification bar. We match you to the right partner from the hand-raise form. Want to try the platform first? Keenan is free and can coach against MEDDPICC alongside Gap Selling. Start there.

Run your top deal through MEDDPICC

Working session with a Replicate Labs partner. Bring a top deal and see which of the eight slots are empty before the QBR finds them.

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