MEDDIC / MEDDPICC
When you need this method
You sell to buying committees with long cycles, and deals stall without anyone being able to say why. The forecast keeps coming in too optimistic because deals are judged by gut feel rather than verifiable criteria. Often there is simply no champion, or the economic buyer is unknown and that only surfaces at quarter close.
Approach
- 1Check every deal against the eight criteria: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identified Pain, Champion, Competition.
- 2Make gaps explicit: what is evidenced, what is merely assumed? A missing champion or an unknown economic buyer is a warning sign, not a detail.
- 3Deliberately disqualify deals with critical gaps, or attach concrete next steps that close the gap.
- 4Build the forecast only from deals that verifiably meet the criteria and anchor the checklist as the shared language in deal reviews.
Typical application
A typical case: an enterprise-focused B2B SaaS vendor holds plenty of conversations, but closings slip quarter after quarter. In deal reviews the checklist reveals a pattern: most stalled deals have enthusiastic users but no champion with access to the economic buyer, and the paper process (procurement, legal, security review) was never discussed. The team starts addressing these points early in the cycle and consistently disqualifies deals without a champion. The forecast gets smaller and considerably more reliable.
Limits and counter-indications
For transactional deals with a single decision-maker and short cycles, the checklist is overkill. It replaces neither discovery quality nor a sound offer. It only tests whether a deal is real. Checklists filled in mechanically, without real evidence, create false confidence.
How to measure impact
Forecast accuracy (committed versus actual closings per quarter) and the win rate of qualified deals. As a supplement: the share of pipeline deals with a confirmed champion and a known economic buyer.
Related methods
Sources
- 1.Toman, Adamson, Gomez: The New Sales Imperative, Harvard Business Review, März/April 2017 (opens in a new tab) · Harvard Business Review · 2017 · academic and scholarly literatureStützt den Anlass der Methode: B2B-Käufe sind durch eine wachsende Zahl beteiligter Entscheider und schwer beherrschbare Informationsmengen so komplex geworden, dass Verkäufer den Kaufprozess des Kunden aktiv mitführen müssen.
- 2.MEDDPICC Sales Methodology and Process, MEDDICC (opens in a new tab) · MEDDICC · undatiert · practitioner sourceTrägt die Methode und ihre Herkunft: Auflösung der acht Buchstaben sowie die Entstehung bei PTC im Jahr 1996 durch Dick Dunkel und die spätere Erweiterung um Paper Process und Competition.
Origin: Napoli
Last reviewed: 2026-07-25 by Dr. Oliver Gausmann