MEDDPICC · the variants
MEDDIC, MEDDICC, MEDDPICC: what the extra letters catch
MEDDIC has six letters: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion. MEDDICC adds a second C, for Competition. MEDDPICC adds a P for Paper Process as well, making eight. The six letters they share mean the same thing in all three.
| Letter | MEDDIC | MEDDICC | MEDDPICC |
|---|---|---|---|
| M · Metrics | yes | yes | yes |
| E · Economic Buyer | yes | yes | yes |
| D · Decision Criteria | yes | yes | yes |
| D · Decision Process | yes | yes | yes |
| P · Paper Process | no | no | yes |
| I · Identify Pain | yes | yes | yes |
| C · Champion | yes | yes | yes |
| C · Competition | no | yes | yes |
Where did MEDDIC come from?
MEDDIC was created in 1996 at PTC by Dick Dunkel, working under John McMahon alongside Jack Napoli, according to meddicc.com. Competition and Paper Process were added later. The sources we found give no date for either, so this page doesn’t give one.
What does the P for Paper Process catch?
In MEDDIC, legal review, security review and procurement sit inside the decision process, and they tend to get asked about last. Paper Process gives them their own letter, so their owners and durations come up in discovery rather than in the final week. It is the letter that protects the close date: a review whose length you know has a last day it can safely start.
What does the second C for Competition catch?
Competition asks what else the buyer is weighing, and that includes doing nothing and building it themselves. Without the letter, a deal can look qualified on every other one and still lose to the way things work today.
Is the I Identify Pain or Implicate Pain?
Both names are in use for the same letter, and meddicc.com uses both: Identify Pain in its history of MEDDIC, Implicate the Pain in its list of MEDDPICC’s letters. The difference is depth: an identified pain is a problem the buyer has named, and an implicated one is tied to who else feels it and what it costs. SalesWolf calls the letter Identify Pain and measures it on three rungs, stated, contextualized and quantified. The top two are the depth “implicate” asks for.
My company runs MEDDIC. Do the other two letters matter to me?
Yes. Your CRM may have six fields, but your deal still has reviews to pass and an alternative it is up against, whether or not anyone asks about them. The two extra letters cover when you can actually sign and what you are really competing with. Leaving them off the form doesn’t take them out of the deal.
What does none of the three have a letter for?
Two things decide many deals and have no letter in any version: the compelling event, the dated reason the buyer has to decide now, and required capabilities, what the product has to do for the buyer to say yes. SalesWolf tracks both alongside the eight letters, and gives neither one a letter.
SalesWolf runs MEDDPICC and no other methodology.
This is the definition. On a deal it has a position, and the position is the argument.
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