The two extra letters in MEDDPICC look like academic creep. They are not. Paper Process and Competition are the two places enterprise deals slip in the last 30 days, which is exactly when slips hurt the forecast most.
This post covers where MEDDPICC came from, what those extra letters change in practice, and how to choose between the two frameworks based on how your deals actually close.
MEDDIC in one line
MEDDIC stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion. It was created at PTC in the late 1990s by Dick Dunkel and Jack Napoli to qualify complex software deals during PTC's run from 300 million to over a billion in revenue. Our MEDDIC sales process guide walks each letter end to end.
The point of MEDDIC is to force discovery deep enough that the rep can predict the deal outcome before the buyer commits. Each letter is a field the rep has to fill in, with evidence, before the deal is called committed.
MEDDPICC in one line
MEDDPICC adds two letters to MEDDIC: Paper Process and Competition. The order is Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identify Pain, Competition, Champion. Our full MEDDPICC methodology guide covers each letter in depth.
Paper Process is the procurement, legal, and signature steps after the buyer says yes. Competition is who else the buyer is evaluating, including the do nothing option. MEDDPICC is the version most large enterprise sales orgs run today.
How they differ
| Dimension | MEDDIC | MEDDPICC |
|---|---|---|
| Letters | 6 | 8 |
| Origin | PTC, late 1990s | PTC alumni, 2000s |
| Adds | Original framework | Paper Process, Competition |
| Captures procurement | Implicit, in Decision Process | Explicit, separate field |
| Captures competitive context | No | Yes |
| Time to complete | 1 to 2 hours | 2 to 3 hours |
| Best for | Mid market and enterprise software | Enterprise, regulated, procurement heavy |
| Slip risk it catches | Buyer process | Procurement and competitive |
Decision Process and Paper Process are different. Decision Process is how the buying team gets to a yes. Paper Process is what happens after the yes, when legal, security review, and procurement enter the chat. Many deals get a verbal yes in Q3 and slip to Q4 because Paper Process was never mapped.
When to use MEDDIC
MEDDIC is the right choice when:
- The buyer's procurement step is short, often under two weeks.
- Your product is in a defined category with one or two obvious competitors.
- Sales cycles run 60 to 90 days.
- Your reps are still building qualification discipline and adding two more letters would lower adherence.
- ACV is meaningful but not so large that procurement creates its own workstream.
For mid market software deals where the buyer signs an order form and forwards an invoice to AP, MEDDIC captures everything you need. Adding Paper Process and Competition would create more fields than the deal warrants.
When to use MEDDPICC
MEDDPICC is the right call when:
- Procurement, legal, security, or InfoSec reviews regularly add 30 days or more to a deal.
- You sell into regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, public sector).
- Deals routinely involve a formal RFP or competitive evaluation.
- ACV is high enough that vendor consolidation, MSAs, and DPAs are part of every deal.
- Your team is missing the quarter on slips, not on losses.
If the last four deals you lost slipped through paper process or got knocked out late by an incumbent, MEDDPICC is the framework to switch to. The two extra letters are exactly the questions you stopped asking.
A practical example of the extra letters
A real case. A 450k SaaS deal in financial services. MEDDIC fields all green: Champion is the VP of Risk, Economic Buyer is the CFO, Metrics tied to a 2 million annual loss reduction, Decision Process documented with three review meetings.
The deal slipped two quarters. Why? The Paper Process required a third party penetration test, an updated DPA, and an InfoSec review committee that met monthly. None of that was captured. Champion did not know it was coming. The Competition field was also empty: the incumbent vendor had a renewal coming up and offered a 30 percent discount mid evaluation, which the team did not see until week 10.
Both gaps would have been forced into the open by MEDDPICC. Both are now part of every sales close plan the team builds.
Where they overlap
MEDDPICC is a strict superset of MEDDIC. Every field in MEDDIC exists in MEDDPICC, in the same form, with the same definition. There is no migration cost. A team running MEDDIC can adopt MEDDPICC by adding two fields to the opportunity object and two questions to discovery.
The overlap means you can run them side by side during a transition. SMB segment on MEDDIC, enterprise segment on MEDDPICC, same Salesforce object, same coaching language.
The bottom line
If your deals close in under 60 days with one signature and no procurement workstream, run MEDDIC. If your deals involve InfoSec, legal, MSAs, RFPs, or incumbent vendors, run MEDDPICC. The cost of adopting MEDDPICC is two more discovery questions. The benefit is catching the slips that happen after the verbal yes.
Related reading
Bring this into Salesforce with CRUSH
MEDDPICC fails when it lives in a slide deck. CRUSH brings every letter into Salesforce: Paper Process steps tracked against close date, Competition mapped to specific committee members, Champion strength scored against access and engagement.
We built CRUSH so that the methodology your team learned in onboarding is actually the methodology that runs the deal in week 8.
