# MEDDPICC Template and Scoring Guide

Eight 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.

Free from Backdrop: https://www.getbackdrop.ai/tools/meddpicc-template

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## The eight elements

Fill the "Your entry" 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.

| 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

| 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. The only level that survives a deal review. |

## Reading the total, out of 24

| 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

1. **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.
2. **Date every entry.** A confirmed economic buyer from four months ago is an
   assumed economic buyer today. People change roles faster than deals close.
3. **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.

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# Worked example: 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. Every company, person, and number below
is invented.

| 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. 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.** 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. 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.

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Free sales templates and AI prompts: https://www.getbackdrop.ai/tools