Decision criteria are the standards a buyer uses to judge your solution against the alternatives, including doing nothing. They are the first D in MEDDPICC. MEDDICC.com sorts them into three types: technical (does it fit, integrate and scale), economic (payback, total cost, contract terms) and relationship (roadmap, references, how the vendor showed up during the sale).
Capturing and shaping criteria
Criteria are where the pain and the metrics a rep has found get written down, so they decide what the buyer compares. Our MEDDPICC page gives the order: capture them in the buyer's language, confirm them, then shape them in your favor before they harden. In practice many buyers start with a vague list, and the vendor who helps write it sets the standard everyone else is measured against.
- 01CaptureIn the buyer's language
- 02ConfirmWith each stakeholder who judges
- 03ShapeIn your favor, before they harden
Criteria are also stakeholder-specific. The CTO weighs the technical list and the CFO the economic one, so one contact's list is rarely the whole set. In a deal review the manager asks where the criteria came from and who confirmed them, and the answer usually sounds like one of these:
- Weak: "They care about dashboards, integrations and price. It's all in the RFP."
- Strong: "The ops lead's list is dashboards and integrations. Finance added three-year cost on our last call. Security joined last week and I haven't heard their list yet, so that's the next meeting."
The weak answer is a document. The strong one names a person for each criterion and admits the gap. Criteria say what the buyer will judge. The decision process says who judges and in what order. The sales methodology guide shows how both fit in a qualification framework.
Example
This example is illustrative. A rep is shortlisted on a $70,000 analytics deal. The champion shared the buyer's evaluation sheet in week two: dashboards, integrations, price. The rep scores well on all three and forecasts a win. The deal goes to a competitor. The reason, given later: IT required single sign-on with their identity provider, a criterion added when the security team joined in week six. Nobody asked whether the list had changed. A standing question in each review ("has anyone new joined, and have they added anything?") would have caught it with four weeks to respond.
Related terms
- What is MEDDPICC?
- What is a decision process in sales?
- What are metrics in MEDDPICC?
- MEDDPICC vs MEDDIC
FAQ
What are the three types of decision criteria?
MEDDICC.com names three: technical criteria, such as integration and security; economic criteria, such as payback period and total cost of ownership; and relationship criteria, such as roadmap, references and the support model. Each stakeholder weighs them differently.
What is the difference between decision criteria and decision process?
Decision criteria are what the buyer will judge options on. The decision process is the steps and people involved in reaching the decision. A rep can meet every criterion and still lose time if a step in the process was never mapped.
Can a seller influence decision criteria?
A seller can influence decision criteria, and the earlier the better. Buyers often have no written criteria at first. A rep who connects each criterion to a pain and a metric the buyer has stated helps write a list the buyer believes in and that rewards what the solution does well.