MEDDPICC Template and Scoring Guide
The eight MEDDPICC elements, a 0 to 3 rubric that says what proof each one actually needs, and score bands that tell you whether to forecast the deal. Worked example below, plus a prompt that scores your own deal from your call notes.
No email, no signup. Word opens in Google Docs, the spreadsheet opens in Sheets, and the whole template is on this page as text either way.
The template
The eight elements
Fill the fourth column with what you actually know, then score it against the rubric below. The entry and the score are separate on purpose: a confident sentence with a 1 next to it is the most useful row on the page.
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Element | The question it answers | What counts as proof | Your entry | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metrics | What measurable outcome do they expect, and who reported the baseline? | A number the buyer said out loud, with the current value and the target. Not your ROI model. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Economic buyer | Who can approve this spend without asking anyone else? | A name, a title, and evidence you have either met them or have a dated plan to. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Decision criteria | What has to be true for them to choose you? | Their criteria in their words, ideally written down somewhere you can point at. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Decision process | What are the steps between today and a signature? | Named stages with owners. “Security review, then procurement” is two of them, not the whole list. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Paper process | What has to happen after they say yes? | Legal, security, procurement, and vendor onboarding, with the usual duration of each at this company. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Identify pain | What is broken, and what does it cost them to leave it broken? | A consequence with a number or a date attached. “They would like to improve X” is not pain. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Champion | Who sells this internally when you are not in the room? | Someone with power who has taken a personal risk for this deal. Being friendly is not being a champion. | — | 0 to 3 |
| Competition | What else are they considering, including doing nothing? | Named alternatives and where each one is stronger than you. Doing nothing counts and usually leads. | — | 0 to 3 |
The scoring rubric
Four levels, and the distinction that matters is between 1 and 2. Most deals that slip were scored on what the rep believed rather than on what the buyer said.
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Score | Level | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Unknown | Nobody on the deal team can answer the question. This is the honest default, and most deals have three or four of these. |
| 1 | Assumed | The rep believes it, but the source is inference. Common on economic buyer and competition, and it is how deals get forecast wrong. |
| 2 | Confirmed | The buyer said it, on a call, and it is written down verbatim. One source. |
| 3 | Evidenced | Confirmed by a second person in the account, or backed by a document the customer produced. This is the only level that survives a deal review. |
Reading the total, out of 24
The total is a conversation starter, not a verdict. The two lowest rows are the actual output of this exercise.
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Total | What it means | What to do this week |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 9 | This is a conversation, not a deal. Do not forecast it. | Book a second discovery call. You are missing pain, a number, or both. |
| 10 to 15 | Real, unproven. The usual home of deals that slip a quarter. | Take the two lowest elements and turn each into one meeting with one named person. |
| 16 to 20 | Forecastable, with named risk. You know what could kill it. | Get the paper process in writing and confirm the economic buyer has met you. |
| 21 to 24 | Commit. Every element is evidenced, not assumed. | Work the close plan backwards from their signature date, not forwards from today. |
The three rules that make the score mean something
Without these, MEDDPICC becomes a field nobody fills in truthfully.
- Score down when you are unsure. A 1 you can defend beats a 2 you cannot. The score exists to find gaps, and a generous score hides exactly the gap it was meant to surface.
- Date every entry. A confirmed economic buyer from four months ago is an assumed economic buyer today. People change roles faster than deals close.
- Never score your own deal alone. Ten minutes with a manager or a peer moves two or three rows every time, and it is always the rows you were most confident about.
Filled in: one deal, scored 13 out of 24
Every company, person, and number below is invented. It is here to show the level of specificity the template is asking for.
Wexford Logistics, after the first discovery call
Total 13 out of 24. A real deal that is not yet forecastable, which is the most common and most misread score there is.
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Element | What we actually know | Score | Why not higher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metrics | Mean time to detection is about nine hours, measured informally. Target is under 30 minutes. She said both numbers on the call. | 2 | One source, and the nine hours is her estimate rather than a reported figure. A dashboard or a post-mortem would make it a 3. |
| Economic buyer | CFO signs anything over $50k. We have not met him and have no route to him yet. | 1 | We know the name of the role, not the person's view. Nobody has confirmed he considers this his problem. |
| Decision criteria | Verbatim: must cover raw tables, not just modelled ones, and must not require her team to write more tests. | 2 | Clear and quoted, but only from her. The Head of Analytics has criteria of his own that we have not heard. |
| Decision process | Technical session, then a security review, then procurement. Based on how they bought their BI suite in 2024. | 1 | This is the last purchase's process, assumed to repeat. Nobody has confirmed it applies here. |
| Paper process | Procurement requires a SOC 2 report up front. Security review was the long pole last time, about eleven weeks end to end. | 2 | Confirmed from her account of the previous purchase, which is a good source but not this deal's paperwork. |
| Identify pain | Stale number in a board dashboard, in front of the CFO. Two analyst days per incident, roughly two incidents a month. Board pack goes out on the 5th. | 3 | Quoted, quantified, dated, and with a named consequence. This is the strongest row on the card. |
| Champion | VP Data Platform. Motivated, and has been told to fix it. Has not yet spent any internal capital on us. | 1 | She has an interest, not a stake. Inviting the Head of Analytics herself would be the first real signal. |
| Competition | Their BI vendor's bundled module, and hiring two engineers to write more dbt tests. | 1 | We know the names. We have not heard where she thinks each one is stronger, and doing nothing has not been tested at all. |
What the 13 actually tells you
The total puts this in the 10 to 15 band: real, unproven, and the kind of deal that slips.
Four rows sit at 1, and three of them share a cause: everything we know comes from one person. Champion, economic buyer, and competition are all assumed because we have only ever spoken to the VP Data Platform. That makes the next move obvious and specific, which is the point of scoring a deal rather than describing it. Get the Head of Analytics onto Thursday’s technical session, and ask her directly what it would take to put fifteen minutes with the CFO on the calendar. Those two meetings move three rows. Nothing else on this card is worth doing first, and a rep who spent this week building a mutual action plan instead would be documenting a deal they cannot yet forecast.
Score your own deal
Paste your call notes and get all eight elements scored against the same rubric, with the missing evidence named and the exact question that would raise each score. It is written to be sceptical, so expect it to mark down things you were sure about.
Your details
Opens claude.ai or chatgpt.com in a new tab with your prompt ready.
You are a deal desk lead running a qualification review. Score the deal described below against MEDDPICC using the rubric in this prompt, then tell me what to do next. Be sceptical: your job is to find the gaps, not to make the deal look good. **Deal:** ___ **What I know so far:** ___ **My company website:** ___ **Score all eight elements: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, Competition.** **Use this rubric, and apply it strictly:** - 0, Unknown: nobody can answer the question. - 1, Assumed: the rep believes it, but the source is inference rather than something the buyer said. - 2, Confirmed: the buyer said it on a call and it is written down. - 3, Evidenced: confirmed by a second person in the account, or backed by a document the customer produced. **For each element, output four things:** 1. What we actually know, in the buyer's words where I gave you a quote. 2. The score, 0 to 3. 3. Why it is not one point higher. Be specific about what evidence is missing. 4. The single question that would raise the score, phrased exactly as I should ask it. **Then produce:** - The total out of 24, and which band it falls in: 0 to 9 is a conversation not a deal, 10 to 15 is real but unproven, 16 to 20 is forecastable with named risk, 21 to 24 is commit. - The two lowest-scoring elements, and for each one a concrete next action naming a person and a meeting rather than an activity. - Anything in my notes that I have stated as fact but which is actually an assumption. Call these out by name. - The one thing most likely to kill this deal that I have not mentioned at all. **Rules:** - Score down when the evidence is thin. A defensible 1 is more useful to me than a generous 2. - Do not invent detail I did not give you. If an element is unknown, score it 0 and say so. - Keep every entry to two sentences.
How to use this MEDDPICC template
MEDDPICC is a checklist of eight things that have to be true before a deal closes. It is not a sales process and it does not tell you what to do on a call. What it does is turn a rep’s confidence into eight separate claims, each of which can be checked, which is why it survives in complex enterprise deals where optimism is otherwise the only forecasting method available.
Score the evidence, not the deal
The most common failure is scoring how good the deal feels. Each row asks a narrower question: what is the source for this, and would it survive someone asking. The line between a 1 and a 2 is the whole value of the exercise. A 1 means a rep inferred it; a 2 means a buyer said it. Deals that slip are usually full of 1s that were recorded as 2s, and nobody finds out until the quarter closes.
The two lowest rows are the output
The total out of 24 is useful for one thing: deciding whether to forecast the deal at all. Everything actionable is in the two lowest-scoring elements. Take each one and convert it into a meeting with a named person, not an activity. “Work the economic buyer” is not a next step. “Ask my champion on Thursday what it would take to get fifteen minutes with the CFO” is.
Champion is the row people flatter themselves on
A champion has power and has taken a personal risk for your deal. Someone who takes your calls, likes the product, and answers your emails is a coach, and coaches do not sell for you in the meeting you are not invited to. If you cannot name the risk your champion has taken, score it a 1 and go and create an opportunity for them to take one.
Score it with someone else, and score it again
Self-scoring drifts upward. Ten minutes with a manager or a peer moves two or three rows on almost every deal, and it moves the rows you were most certain about. Re-score after every meaningful call, and date each entry: a confirmed economic buyer from four months ago is an assumed one today, because people change roles faster than enterprise deals close.
Most of these rows are filled in during a call
The economic buyer, the decision criteria, the paper process: all of it gets said on calls, and most of it gets written down afterwards from memory, if at all. Backdrop listens during the call and pushes the question that fills the weakest element while the prospect is still on the line, so the score comes from what was actually said rather than what the rep remembered at 6pm.
See how Backdrop worksFrequently Asked Questions
What does MEDDPICC stand for?
- Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, and Competition. Each is a question a deal has to answer before it can be forecast, covering the value, the money, the steps, the pain, the internal seller, and the alternatives.
How do you score a MEDDPICC template?
- Score each of the eight elements from 0 to 3: 0 unknown, 1 assumed by the rep, 2 confirmed by the buyer on a call, 3 evidenced by a second person or a document. Twenty-four is the maximum. Score down whenever you are unsure, because a generous score hides the gap you were looking for.
What is the difference between MEDDIC and MEDDPICC?
- MEDDPICC adds two elements to MEDDIC: paper process, which covers legal, security, and procurement after the yes, and competition, which includes the option of doing nothing. Both were added because deals kept dying after the decision, or losing to an alternative nobody had named.
What MEDDPICC score means a deal is forecastable?
- Sixteen out of 24 and above, with no element at 0. Below 10 you have a conversation rather than a deal. Between 10 and 15 the deal is real but unproven, which is where most slipped quarters come from, and the fix is always the two lowest-scoring rows.
Where should a MEDDPICC template live?
- Wherever the deal review actually happens. A CRM field nobody reads is worse than a shared document that gets opened weekly, because the value is in the conversation about the two weakest elements, not in the record. Whatever you choose, date each entry so stale evidence is visible.