Shout out for MEDDPICC or MEDDIC or MEDDICC

Since Andy Whyte published the original MEDDICC book, and probably well before that, MEDDICC in all its acronym varieties has become very popular. I should of course say that other qualification frameworks exist – and they do and they are fine. But I really like MEDDPICC for two reasons. By the way, I’m not going to define the letters – plenty of other blogs have done that, and I strongly recommend you read the book not just a brief summary. Very readable, a chapter a night for a couple weeks. Whatever part of the commercial organisation you’re in, and even in operations or finance or product or engineering, it is well worth understanding.

The first reason I like MEDDPICC is that it gives a really complete guide to the things you need to keep an eye on, and therefore a common language for holding AEs to account and for AEs to hold their customers to account. The book does a great job in considering where you need to be against each letter at different stages of your deal – in the early discovery stage, in the core evaluation process and when you’re getting towards negotiation.

The second reason is that in start-up world, where you are engaging with customers who don’t know they have a problem and don’t know that you have a solution, I find it works really well. It forces us to think about the pain (I should say Implicating the pain in order to catch the acronym letter!) that the customer will be feeling. It makes sure we consider the way they will measure the success of a project with us (Metrics). It helps us help them work out how to evaluate new technology (Decision Criteria and Decision Process, not to mention Economic Buyer).

When working with an AE to plan a customer engagement, or reviewing something afterwards, MEDDPICC is a great framework. What are we trying to achieve in this call? What progress against which letters? If you have a well-defined sales process (you should) then each stage should have clear exit criteria which can be built around MEDDPICC. This gives you further guidance when engaging with prospects.

When you review deals in your pipeline reviews and your deal reviews (see previous blogs!), you should be reviewing them against the MEDDPICC criteria, for the relevant stage of the deal. I constantly find it helps me remember key things which I might otherwise have forgotten to ask or work on.

The more you use the language, the more it becomes embedded in your organisation. Your team engages more effectively, your deals move faster and you have greater clarity on your pipeline and forecast.