Coaching MEDDPICC on a live deal means taking one open opportunity, checking each of the eight letters against what the buyer has said or done, and preparing the rep's next conversation around the letter that is blocking the deal. A frontline manager does it with one rep at a time, in 20 to 30 minutes per deal. It ends with one question the rep will ask the buyer this week.
This piece is about the deal review, where the letters stop being CRM fields and start deciding the next call. If MEDDPICC is new to your team, start with What is MEDDPICC?, and see the sales methodology guide for where it sits next to a selling methodology.
What coaching MEDDPICC on a live deal involves
The review is a call. The rep talks the deal through out loud, and the manager listens for the gap between what the buyer said and what the rep assumes. When a rep explains a deal out loud, the gaps in what they know tend to surface, and filled-in fields hide them. That is why the CRM opens last.
- 01The rep tells the dealNo CRM; you ask only "how do you know?"
- 02Mark each letterBuyer-confirmed, rep-inferred or unknown
- 03Choose the blocking letterThe one that stops the next stage
- 04Brief the next conversationOne question, who, and what counts
- 05Rep says it onceOut loud, as on the call
- 06Debrief the buyer's wordsMove the letter only on the buyer's answer
It follows the brief, observe, debrief shape of any coaching session: the brief ends with the one question, and the debrief starts with the buyer's words.
The evidence standard for each letter
Write the standard down before the first review. Even trained assessors disagreed with each other on 18% of call scores in our research on AI call scoring. A letter marked without a written standard is a mood.
| Letter | Buyer-confirmed means | Test question in the review |
|---|---|---|
| Metrics | The buyer's own number, with a baseline and a target | "What number did they give you, and in whose words?" |
| Economic Buyer | The rep has met the person who approves the spend, or heard their priorities first-hand | "Have you spoken to them? What do they care about?" |
| Decision Criteria | A list the buyer agreed, ideally in writing | "What will they compare options on, and did they tell you?" |
| Decision Process | Each step to a decision with an owner and a date | "What happens next on their side, who does it, and when?" |
| Paper Process | Legal, security and procurement steps, with owners and the time they took last time | "After they decide, who else has to approve, and how long did it take last time?" |
| Implicate the Pain | The problem, its cost and the date it has to be fixed by, stated by the buyer | "What happens to them if this is not fixed by the date they gave?" |
| Champion | Something the champion has done for the deal that cost them time or standing | "What has your champion done for this deal that they did not have to?" |
| Competition | Every alternative, including doing nothing and building it themselves | "What do they do if they do not buy anything?" |
Anything the rep believes but the buyer has not said is rep-inferred. Anything nobody has asked about is unknown. The full letter definitions are on our MEDDPICC page.
Eight steps through one deal
1. Pick the deal
Choose an open deal that is in this quarter's forecast or above your size threshold. Good looks like: the rep chose it, or agreed it was the one keeping them up at night.
2. Let the rep tell the deal
Say: "Walk me through this deal as if I were their CFO and had never heard of us." Do not open the CRM. Note every statement that sounds like the buyer and every one that sounds like the rep. Good looks like: five minutes of the rep talking, with you asking only "how do you know?"
3. Mark each letter
Go through the eight letters with the test questions from the table. Mark each as buyer-confirmed, rep-inferred or unknown. Good looks like: the rep quoting the buyer for every confirmed letter, and being comfortable saying "I'm guessing" for the rest.
4. Choose the one letter that blocks the deal
Do not coach eight gaps. Ask which missing letter would stop this deal reaching the next stage. Early in the cycle that is usually Metrics or Implicate the Pain; late in the cycle it is usually the Economic Buyer or the Paper Process. Good looks like: one letter, agreed by both of you, with a reason.
5. Write the brief for the next buyer conversation
Agree one question, who it goes to and what answer would count as evidence. Say: "What will you ask, who will you ask, and what would they have to say for us to mark it confirmed?" Good looks like: a question in the rep's own words that the buyer can answer with a number, a name or a date.
6. Have the rep say it once
Ask the rep to say the opening of the question out loud, as they will on the call. One run is enough to hear whether it sounds like a question the buyer will answer or a qualification checklist being read out. Good looks like: the rep adjusting the wording themselves.
7. Debrief after the buyer call
Within a day of the call, ask: "What did they say, word for word?" Move the letter only if the answer came from the buyer. Update the forecast category if the deal changed. Good looks like: a quote, a letter moved or not moved, and the next question already forming.
8. Look across the team once a week
After a few weeks of reviews, list which letters stay rep-inferred across all your reps. If Paper Process is unknown on most deals, the gap is a team skill, and it belongs in a team session. Good looks like: one pattern named and one team-wide fix agreed.
A $75,000 "commit" that was not (illustrative)
This example is illustrative. A rep brings a $75,000 deal with a healthcare software buyer, marked "commit" for the quarter.
Step 2: the rep says the IT director "loves it" and the budget "is there." Both are the rep's summary.
Step 3: the marking.
| Letter | State | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Metrics | Rep-inferred | The rep calculated time saved; the buyer gave no number |
| Economic Buyer | Unknown | "Budget is there" came from the IT director |
| Decision Criteria | Buyer-confirmed | Shared in an email after the demo |
| Decision Process | Rep-inferred | "End of the month" with no named steps |
| Paper Process | Unknown | Nobody asked |
| Implicate the Pain | Rep-inferred | "Their current system is slow" |
| Champion | Buyer-confirmed | The IT director brought two clinical leads to the demo |
| Competition | Unknown | Not discussed |
Step 4: with a month-end date, the blocking letter is Paper Process. Economic Buyer is unknown too, but the length of the review is the hard constraint on a month-end close, so it comes first. A healthcare buyer is likely to run a security and privacy review, and nobody knows how long it takes.
Step 5: the brief. The rep will ask the IT director: "When you brought in your last clinical system, what reviews did it go through after the decision, and how long did they take?" Good evidence is a list of reviews and a duration.
Step 7: the debrief. The director says a vendor security assessment took seven weeks last time, and the privacy officer signs off. Paper Process moves to buyer-confirmed. The deal moves from commit to best case, the close date moves out, and the next brief targets the Economic Buyer, because a seven-week review on an unapproved budget is a deal waiting to stall.
Where it goes wrong
The CRM opens first. The manager reads the fields aloud and the rep agrees with them. Nothing new comes out, because the fields were written by the rep.
Every letter gets coached. The rep leaves with eight things to fix and fixes none. One letter per deal per week moves more deals.
Inferred counts as confirmed. "They said budget was fine" from a champion is a rep-inferred Economic Buyer. If the standard slips here, the forecast inherits it.
Frequency without skill. In a study of 1,246 pharmaceutical sales reps, managers' coaching skill predicted goal attainment, and frequent coaching from less skilled managers was linked to worse results (Dahling et al. 2016, traced in our Game Winning Kickoffs field study). More reviews run badly make things worse.
The debrief never happens. The next review is a different deal, the letter never moves, and the rep learns the review is a ritual.
Where MEDDPICC training stops and coaching starts
MEDDPICC sales training teaches the eight letters, the vocabulary and the questions. It usually runs as a workshop, and reps leave able to define each letter. Coaching is what happens to those letters on the deals open this week, and it is where most teams fall short.
The two need the same standard. If the workshop teaches Champion as "someone who likes us" and the manager marks it as "someone who has done something for the deal", reps learn to ignore one of them. So write the evidence table above before the training, and use it in both places.
The handoff can be simple:
- In the training, each rep marks one of their own open deals on the table.
- In the first week back, the manager reviews that same deal with the eight steps above.
- From then on, every review uses the training's vocabulary, word for word.
The training gives reps the letters. The weekly review on live deals is what keeps them using the letters on calls.
Coaching MEDDPICC for every rep
The procedure works for one deal. A manager with eight reps and sixty open deals cannot brief and debrief each one before every buyer call, so reviews shrink to the top five deals and the rest are forecast on confidence.
Our AI sales experts run this review on every deal. Caty, the expert for MEDDPICC and MEDDIC deals, marks each letter on the buyer's evidence and finds the one that blocks the deal. The rep brings the deal on a call, by voice, and leaves with the brief; after the buyer call they come back and Caty moves letters on the buyer's words. Typing works when the rep cannot talk. Managers see which letters stay inferred across the team through Bryce, who coaches the managers. How to roll out a sales methodology on live deals covers the launch, and MEDDPICC vs MEDDIC covers which version to run.
Talk to us and hear one of your commit deals marked letter by letter.
FAQ
How do you coach MEDDPICC?
Coach MEDDPICC one live deal at a time. Have the rep talk the deal through, mark each letter as buyer-confirmed, rep-inferred or unknown, pick the one letter that blocks the deal, and agree one question for the next buyer call. Debrief the answer within a day and move the letter only on the buyer's words.
How long should a MEDDPICC deal review take?
Plan 20 to 30 minutes for a MEDDPICC review of one deal. That is about five minutes for the rep to tell the deal, ten to mark the letters, and the rest to agree the brief for the next call. The debrief after the buyer call takes five to ten minutes. Longer reviews usually mean too many letters are being coached at once.
Which MEDDPICC letter matters most?
No single letter matters most on every deal; the one that matters is the letter blocking the deal's next stage. Early in the cycle that is usually Metrics or Implicate the Pain. Late in the cycle it is usually the Economic Buyer or the Paper Process, which is where committed deals tend to slip.
What is a good MEDDPICC question for the Economic Buyer?
A good one asks the champion who signed off something similar before and what that person needed to see. For example: "When something like this was approved before, who signed it off, and what did they need to see?" It names a person, shows what they care about, and avoids putting the champion on the defensive. The letter is confirmed when the rep has met that person or heard their priorities first-hand, not relayed through the champion.
How do you know if a MEDDPICC letter is confirmed?
A letter is confirmed when the buyer has said or done something that proves it: given a number, named a person, sent a list or taken an action. If the evidence is the rep's summary or belief, it is rep-inferred. Writing this standard down before reviews start keeps two managers marking the same deal the same way.
Can AI score MEDDPICC on sales calls?
AI can score calls against MEDDPICC, but only if the scorecard says what each level looks like. In our call scoring research, trained experts disagreed with each other on 18% of scores, and giving the scoring model the reasons trained assessors gave for their marks raised its fit with human scores from 0.62 to 0.72. A score measures the call; coaching happens around it.