MEDDIC sales methodology: meaning, questions and template
What the six letters of MEDDIC mean, the questions that confirm each one on a call, how it differs from MEDDICC and MEDDPICC, and a free template.
What is MEDDIC?
MEDDIC is a sales qualification methodology with six parts: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain and Champion. Each one is a question about the deal that you should be able to answer before you forecast it. If you can't, that letter is where the deal is at risk.
It was developed inside PTC, the engineering software company, in the mid-1990s. Dick Dunkel, who ran the first implementation, is usually named as its creator, working with Jack Napoli under the company's sales leader John McMahon. The six letters were the themes the team found when it compared the deals PTC won with the ones it lost. MEDDIC stayed an internal practice for about a decade, until Napoli and others began teaching it outside PTC in 2006.
The point of the checklist is to stop a seller mistaking a friendly conversation for a qualified opportunity. A buyer can like the product and still have no budget holder behind them and no cost attached to doing nothing. MEDDIC asks about each of those before the forecast does.
What does MEDDIC stand for?
Each letter is something to find out, and the questions under it are ways of asking. The examples are for a seller of route-planning software talking to a regional haulage firm.
Metrics
Metrics are the gains the buyer expects, in numbers they would defend to their own finance director. "Fewer late deliveries" is a hope. "Late deliveries down from 6% to 2%, which is £180,000 a year in penalties" is a metric. A buyer who can state the number has usually started building the internal case; one who can't will need your help to build it before anyone signs.
- What would success look like a year in, in numbers?
- What does the problem cost you today?
Economic buyer
The economic buyer is the person who can release the money, including money that isn't in this year's budget. Often that is not the person you've been talking to. A head of planning can want the software; the operations director decides whether it gets paid for. You need to know who that is, what they care about and, ideally, to have met them.
- Who signs off a purchase this size?
- Have they been told about this project? What do they think of it?
- What would they need to see to approve it?
Decision criteria
Decision criteria are the standards the buyer will judge the options against: what the product must do, what it must integrate with, what it may cost and how it will be supported. Buyers rarely have these written down early on, so part of the job is helping them form the list, and knowing which items on it favour you and which favour someone else.
- What does the solution have to do, without exception?
- Which of those matters most?
- How will you compare the options?
Decision process
The decision process is the sequence of steps between today and a signed order, and who is involved at each one. It also covers whether there is a date that forces the decision. A buyer who can't describe the process hasn't bought something like this before, which is itself a risk to the timeline.
- What happens after you've seen the options?
- Who is involved at each step, and how long does each take?
- Is anything forcing the timing, such as a contract ending or a budget deadline?
Identify pain
Pain is the problem the buyer is paying to remove, in their own words. The question is not whether a problem exists but whether it hurts enough to act on, who it hurts and what happens if nothing changes. Some teams rename this letter "Implicate pain", meaning the seller should help the buyer see the full cost rather than simply note the complaint.
- What is the biggest problem with how this works today?
- Who feels it most, and how often?
- What happens if it is still like this in a year?
Champion
A champion is someone inside the buyer's organisation who wants you to win and has the influence to help. Both halves matter. A contact who likes you but can't get you a meeting with the operations director is a coach, not a champion, however helpful they are. Test a champion by what they do, not what they say.
- Who inside the business is pushing for this?
- What do they gain if it goes ahead?
- What have they done for the deal so far?
What is the difference between MEDDIC, MEDDICC and MEDDPICC?
They are three lengths of the same checklist. MEDDICC adds a second C for Competition: who else the buyer is considering, including doing nothing or building something themselves. MEDDPICC adds a P for Paper process as well: the legal, security and procurement steps between a verbal yes and a signature, which can take longer than the sale that preceded them.
MEDDIC is enough when procurement is light and you know the field. Move to the longer versions once you've lost a deal to a rival you didn't know was in it, or watched one stall for three months in legal review after the buyer said yes. Our MEDDPICC guide covers all eight letters.
How do you use MEDDIC in the sales process?
MEDDIC runs across the whole deal, not one call. On a first discovery call you can usually fill in pain and the start of metrics, because that is what the buyer wants to talk about. The economic buyer and the decision process tend to come later, once the buyer trusts you enough to describe how their company spends money. Before each significant meeting, read the sheet and plan the call around the letters that are still blank.
Write answers in the buyer's words. "We rebuild every route by hand each morning, and it takes two planners until nine" is usable in a proposal and in a deal review. "Pain: manual planning" is not. SPIN questions, implication questions especially, are a good way to get the buyer to say the metric themselves.
Sales managers use the same six letters to review a pipeline. A deal that still has nothing under Economic buyer or Decision process after two months is not late-stage, whatever the CRM stage says, and the review should end with the next step that fills the gap rather than a new close date. Keep the letters as the language of the review, so that a rep and a manager mean the same thing by "qualified".
MEDDIC deal notes
Late deliveries 6%, want under 2%. Two planners per depot until 9am on routes.
Telematics, drivers’ app ranked?
Routes rebuilt by hand every morning. Penalties on late deliveries; lost a supermarket contract last year.
RK? what has he done for it?
MEDDIC example
Here is a MEDDIC sheet after two calls with the haulage firm. The pain and metrics came from the first call; the economic buyer and the process from the second, once the head of planning had introduced the operations director.
Carrow Haulage, 14 depots
Tue 3 Nov 2026, second call
Late deliveries 6% to under 2%, worth about £180k a year in penalties. Two planners per depot spend until 9am on routes; want that under an hour.
Operations director (PA). Met on this call. Cares about penalties and driver retention. Signs up to £150k; above that goes to the board in January.
Must work with their telematics and the drivers' app. Live re-routing on the day. Support in UK hours. Price per vehicle, not per user.
Pilot at two depots in December, PA reviews results, board paper in January if over the limit. Current planning contract ends 31 March.
Routes rebuilt by hand every morning. Late deliveries cost penalties and lost a supermarket contract last year. In PA's words: 'we plan the day after it has started.'
Head of planning at the largest depot (RK). Has run the pilot numbers and booked the call with PA. Gains a planning team that isn't firefighting.
Two letters are still soft. The criteria aren't ranked, and nobody has asked what happens if the pilot is good but the board paper slips past January. Both go on the agenda for the pilot review.
MEDDIC template
The sheet below has a row for each letter with the questions to answer, then gaps and risks, and next steps. Copy it as text into your own document, or download the Word version from our MEDDPICC guide, which is the same sheet with Paper process and Competition added.
[company]
[name, role] · [name, role]
[name]
[date]
- What do they want to achieve, in numbers?
- What is the problem costing them this year?
- Who has the final say and the budget?
- Have we met them? What do they care about?
- What do they need to see to say yes?
- What must the solution do or have?
- Which criteria matter most, and why?
- What steps lead to a yes, and in what order?
- Who is involved at each step?
- Is there a compelling event or hard date?
- What is the biggest problem, in their words?
- Who feels it, and how widely?
- What happens if nothing changes?
- Who is selling this for us internally?
- What do they gain if it goes ahead?
- What have they done for us so far?
- Which elements are confirmed, and by whom?
- What objections have they raised?
- What are the biggest risks to the deal?
- Who does what, by when?
- Who should join the next call?
Sorinai can fill this template, or your own, from the call itself. It answers each field as the conversation reaches it and keeps a checklist of the questions that haven't come up yet. See how template filling works. The BANT and sales call notes templates are on the templates page.
MEDDIC FAQ
Who created MEDDIC?
It was developed at PTC in the mid-1990s. Dick Dunkel, who ran the first implementation there, is most often named as the creator, with Jack Napoli and the sales leader John McMahon credited alongside him. Accounts differ on how many people were involved, and PTC never set out to publish it. Napoli's training company began teaching MEDDIC to other firms in 2006.
Is MEDDIC a sales methodology or a qualification framework?
Both terms are used. Strictly it is a qualification framework: it tells you what to find out, not how to run a call or structure a pitch. In practice teams adopt it as their methodology, because once every deal is reviewed against the six letters, the letters shape how reps sell. It pairs well with a questioning method such as SPIN, which is about how to ask.
Should you use MEDDIC or BANT?
BANT asks four quick questions to decide whether a lead is worth a salesperson's time. MEDDIC asks six deeper ones about a deal you've already decided to work. Use BANT at the top of the funnel and MEDDIC once a real opportunity is open. On a small, fast sale, BANT alone is enough.
Does MEDDIC work for small deals?
It works, but it costs more effort than the deal is worth. Six fields to fill and review across several calls makes sense when the order is large and several people must agree. For a one-call sale to a single buyer, run through the letters in your head and write down pain and the next step.