Three budget questions instead of “Do you have budget?”
There is no B in MEDDPICC. The money is decided by who approves it, the number that justifies it and the route it takes to a signature, and each gets its own question.
Updated
How do I ask about budget without asking “what’s your budget?”
Ask how the last purchase this size got approved. “Do you have budget?” gets a yes that tells you nothing. How the last one was approved, justified and signed tells you who can release the money, and what they need to see first.
Which questions do I ask instead?
Ask what the approver saw last time, what the number is today and where it comes from, and how long the last paperwork took. Ask them in discovery, before anyone has a reason to say yes.
Why there’s no B, and which letter holds which part of the money: where budget sits in MEDDPICC.
Economic Buyer
What the approver saw last time
named
“When your team approved something this size last time, what did the approver actually see — a business case, a one-pager, someone in a room?”
Tells you the artifact this deal has to produce, and whether you are writing it this week.
What a good answer sounds like
Something you can name and a person you can name: a business case, a one-pager, a meeting with the CFO. If your contact can’t say, they probably weren’t close to the last one, and you need someone who was.
Metrics
The number that pays for it
quantified
“What is that number today, roughly, what does it need to be, and where do those figures come from?”
Gets a baseline, a target and their source in one answer. An estimate is fine here, as long as you know whose it is.
What a good answer sounds like
Two figures and where each came from. If the source is your champion’s own read, it’s an estimate, and expect finance to ask where it came from before anyone signs.
Paper Process
How long the last paperwork took
dated
“Once the decision is made — how long did the paperwork take the last time you bought something this size?”
Gets a real duration from a real precedent, rather than an optimistic guess about this one.
What a good answer sounds like
A length of time from a real purchase, and the review that took longest. “Not long” is a guess about this one, not a memory of the last.
SalesWolf doesn’t know what they can spend.
It doesn’t price or quote either. On the deal it shows how far the economic buyer, the metrics and the paper process have actually got.
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