A B2B sales qualification framework evaluating six criteria — Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion — to determine whether an opportunity is real, funded, and winnable.
Also known as:
MEDIC, MEDDIC qualification, MEDDIC framework
MEDDIC is a qualification framework built around six criteria:
Metrics — What quantifiable outcome does the buyer need to achieve? Revenue recovered, cost reduced, time saved. If there is no number, the business case does not exist yet.
Economic Buyer — Who has the authority to release budget? Have you met them? Qualification requires access, not assumption.
Decision Criteria — What standards will the buying team use to evaluate options? Technical fit, commercial terms, risk profile, integration requirements. These need to be understood before the evaluation begins, not after.
Decision Process — What steps does the buyer take to reach a decision? Who is involved at each stage? Knowing the process lets you run parallel tracks rather than reacting to each new requirement.
Identify Pain — What is the business problem driving this purchase? Is the pain acute enough to create urgency, or is it a nice-to-have? Deals stall when pain is real but not prioritised.
Champion — Who inside the buying organisation wants this to happen and has the influence to drive it? The Champion is not the most senior person in the deal — they are the person who will sell internally when you are not in the room.
MEDDIC was developed at PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation) in the 1990s by Dick Dunkel and Jack Napoli as a management inspection tool — a way for sales leaders to assess whether an opportunity was truly qualified or simply occupying pipeline space. It was designed for enterprise software sales where long cycles and high contract values made late-stage surprises expensive.
MEDDPICC extends MEDDIC by adding two criteria: Paper Process — the procurement, legal, and contracting steps required to execute the deal — and Competition — who else is being evaluated, and what is the risk of losing to them. For enterprise deals with long procurement cycles, MEDDPICC is more complete. For earlier-stage or mid-market deals, MEDDIC is often sufficient.
Strong qualification means each dimension is answered with specifics, not approximations. "The Economic Buyer is probably the CFO" is not MEDDIC. "The CFO owns the budget and I have a meeting with her on 12 June to confirm commercial terms" is. The standard is contact and evidence, not informed guesswork.
Most pipeline problems are qualification problems discovered too late. MEDDIC does not prevent losses — it surfaces them earlier, when they are cheaper to diagnose and cheaper to act on.
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