MEDDICC Deal Qualification Scorecard

MEDDICC, a company that sells training in the method, says MEDDIC was created at the software company PTC in 1996¹. Adding Competition made MEDDICC, and adding Paper Process made MEDDPICC.

Give each element four levels, 0 to 3, defined by evidence you can find in the record. Susan Brookhart, an assessment researcher at Duquesne University, says the number of levels should reflect the decisions the scores drive and how many reliable distinctions are possible and helpful². Keep one meaning per number across all eight elements:

• 0: you asked, and it doesn't exist or works against you
• 1: a partial, contradictory or refused answer
• 2: one source established it, and it's in the record
• 3: the evidence the element names is in the record
• Blank: nobody has asked yet, a gap to track, not a 0

For Champion, MEDDICC says a champion must be able to advocate for your solution when you're not there³, so a 3 needs proof of exactly that. A friendly contact is only a 1.

Every score needs three things beside it: the artifact it came from, whose words are in it, and that artifact's date. An artifact is a call transcript, an email or a document the buyer sent; "the rep says so" isn't one. A score missing any of the three counts as zero at every gate.

Evidence also ages at different speeds, so give each element a clock. What a problem costs barely moves in a quarter, but who signs stops being true the day that person leaves.

A gate is the minimum a deal needs to move to the next stage. Count only current, sourced scores toward it. The template's three gates, out of 24 points:

• Leaving Qualify: Identify Pain and Economic Buyer at 2 or better, and a total of 10
• Leaving Validate: Metrics and Decision Criteria at 2 or better too, and a total of 14
• Entering Commit: every element at 2 or better, and a total of 18

Commit asks for 2 everywhere, not 3, because a gate that demands full marks on hard-to-score elements gets argued around. Keep Paper Process in that gate. MEDDICC notes that deals can stall in legal review, security sign-offs, vendor questionnaires or master service agreement negotiations⁴ even after the economic buyer has agreed to buy.

Read the pipeline twice, on everything recorded and on current evidence only. The gap between the two totals is the real forecast conversation. A deal that passes its total but fails one required element usually needs one call. Put the agreed next steps, with owners and dates, in a mutual action plan.

A scorecard only works if two people would score the same deal alike, which is harder than it looks. Brookhart's 2018 review of rubric research lists a 2009 study in which three graders scored 40 papers. Their rubric had eight criteria and four levels, like this scorecard. They gave exactly the same score 37% of the time², though they were within one level of each other 90% of the time.

1. 1

   Pick three closed deals

   Recent ones, one won and two lost. Because they're closed, nobody is scoring their own live deal.

2. 2

   Share one evidence bundle

   Identical transcripts, notes and emails for everyone, names removed, nothing added from memory.

3. 3

   Score alone, then compare

   Everyone scores all eight elements in silence, then posts their scores.

4. 4

   Read the spread

   Highest minus lowest: 0 or 1 is tight, 2 is loose, and 3 means the wording measures the scorer.

5. 5

   Fix the word and rerun

   Replace the word people read two ways with something observable, then rescore the same deals.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's assessment office calls this norming. Scorers rate the same work independently, the coordinator displays everyone's ratings so everyone can see the degree of agreement⁵, and those who differ explain why, citing the rubric.

Agreement isn't enough. If an element scores 3 on almost every deal, it can't tell your deals apart, even when every scorer agrees. Rewrite it to grade something that varies, such as whether the pain has a named owner and a cost.

Work through a deal's weak scores in this order: unsourced, expired, never asked, then genuinely low. Unsourced scores are the cheapest fix, because the rep often knows the answer and never wrote it down.

Don't rank reps by their average score. A rep selling to public bodies with published timetables tends to outscore one working inbound leads, and neither fact is about the rep. Skip targets for 3s too: you'll get 3s, whether or not the evidence exists.

Good scores start with good calls: a discovery call template plans the questions, and a stakeholder and champion map shows who said what about whom. For a faster start, open this template with Edit with AI. River scores your open deals from your call notes and emails, with a source and date on each.