Decision Process: every approval between wanting it and buying it
No mapped sequence means surprises at close — a step you didn't know about stalls the deal.
Updated
What is the decision process in MEDDPICC?
The decision process is the chain of internal approvals between the customer wanting this and the customer approving it. Every step carries a person who runs it and a duration you can estimate, and a step you do not know about is what stalls the deal in the last week. Mapping it is not project management — it is how you find out who else has to be sold.
Who else has to say yes, and in what order?
Everyone between wanting it and approving it, each with a name and a rough date. Ask what path the last similar purchase took, then ask what has changed this year.
Not every “we need” is a step. Some are standards they will judge you on, and those are criteria: decision criteria vs decision process.
How it actually gets missed
Reps map the process once, early, from one person’s description, and never re-check it. Then the budget line moves, or a committee is added, and the deal is still being forecast against a sequence that stopped being true in month two.
How deep, not how many
Decision Process questions, from listed to dated
Decision Process has three rungs, and where a deal sits on them is the difference between a dimension you have answered and one you have qualified. These are the rungs SalesWolf marks on the deal, by the same names and in the same order. What is written under each is the standard to hold a deal to. The product can only mark what is on record, so check its rung against this bar before you rely on it.
listed
You know the steps exist and roughly what order they run in. Usually this came from one person’s memory of the last purchase.
“Walk me through what happens after you decide you want this — who sees it, and in what order?”
Gets the sequence in their words, including the steps that never appear in an RFP.
“Has anything about that path changed this year?”
Catches a reorg or a moved budget line before it invalidates your close date.
owned
An owner on the customer’s side is recorded against every step. Get a person’s name, not a team’s: a step a team owns is a step nobody is doing.
“Who carries each of those steps — a name, not a team?”
A step with no named owner is a step nobody is doing.
“If one of those people needed material from us to make the case, who would it be?”
Finds the owner you can actually help, which is the one step a rep can speed up.
dated
You know roughly when each step happens. Dates are what turn a process map into a forecast you can defend.
“Working back from when you want this live, when does each of those steps need to start?”
Turns the sequence into dates the customer set, which is what a close date can stand on.
“Which of those steps has surprised you before?”
Finds the step that stalls deals here, which is rarely the one that looks hardest.
Done when · You can walk the deal from here to signature — every step, who runs it, and when.
The questions for every letter, on one page.
This page in plain text, with nothing to sign in to. Open it on a phone on the way into the call.
Sample deal · Halden Freight · Decision Process
On a deal, it has a position. On this one, it has reached owned.
Qualification
Gaps aren't failures. They're the next things worth learning.
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