MEDDPICC Leadership: Coaching to Decision Criteria

• How Does a Leader Qualify Decision Criteria?
• How Do We Prioritise the Customer’s Decision Criteria?
• How Do We Find Out the Decision Criteria? Where Does it Originate?
• Red Flags: Criteria not Connected to Business Value
• How do Teams Influence Decision Criteria?
• How Should Leaders Inspect Decision Criteria?

How Does a Leader Qualify Decision Criteria?

There is lots for a leader to understand – but at its core, some basic principles:

• What do we know about the Decision criteria?
• How have we validated the criteria (multiple personas)?
• How will the customer evaluate the criteria?
• How will we influence?

Leaders can also help in customer meetings by asking the customer how they will stack-rank the criteria to make a decision whether to act. 

How Do We Find Out the Decision Criteria? Where Does it Originate?

Decision criteria are never neutral. Bias exists in every conversation. Especially the bias to ‘do nothing’ because the world is a busy place and people are under pressure every day. So, what sources of criteria should we be checking for?

• Business stakeholders
• Technical stakeholders (including users)
• Suppliers (incumbent or new)
• Services business or consultancies
• Our target Champion
• Our sales or go-to-market teams, including technical and marketing teams.

The criteria, the priorities and value are critical to understand – without these, we risk a competitive issue every step of the way.

Dig Deep to Understand the Story of the Criteria

Like with every letter of MEDDPICC, just stating the facts isn’t enough – especially for enterprise deals. The role of a leader is to help uncover the story behind each criterion, to identify actions to acquire new or missing information.

Ask:

• Who introduced this requirement?
• Who owns the business outcome?
• Why does it matter to them?
• How will success be measured?
• Has another vendor influenced it?
• Are any important criteria missing?

Understanding the origin and backstory of the criteria often reveals hidden influence, political dynamics, and competitive threats.

Red Flags: Criteria not Connected to Business Value

Decision criteria should connect directly to the customer's business objectives and be measured in revenue, cost, risk, productivity, customer experience, or shareholder commitments.

A requirement becomes far more important when it is tied to measurable business impact.

Strong example

"Reducing incidents is a top-three criterion. Our Champion linked it to £200k of annual support and downtime costs, and the CIO confirmed resilience is one of the reasons the project has funding."

Weak example

"They want good support, competitive pricing, and these six features."

A useful coaching question is:

"What pain or Metric does this criterion connect to?"  If there's no clear answer, its importance may be overstated by the customer or unqualified.

Decision Criteria is Key to Proving Why Your Solution

Decision Criteria should support the customer's answer to three critical questions:

A team can build a compelling business case for the category and still lose the deal.

If the value only proves the customer should buy something, it helps competitors as much as it helps you.

To win, your differentiators must be reflected in the customer's Decision criteria and supported by Metrics.

How do Teams Influence Decision Criteria?

The best sellers do not simply collect Decision criteria. They help shape them.

This means taking action to drive customer understanding of:

• Why the issue should be addressed, and addressed now?
• Which of your capabilities matter?
• Which risks should be considered by acting or not acting?
• Which outcomes should be measured?
• Which differentiators create meaningful business value

This could be done through information such as whitepapers, case studies, demos, and customer reference calls – along with regular meetings.

For leaders – track leading indicators and meeting activity to see if the opportunity has existed to influence the Decision criteria.

How Should Leaders Inspect Decision Criteria?

At a minimum, the Decision criteria should be inspected from 30% of the deal maturity.

Decision criteria should become clearer as the opportunity progresses.

By the middle of the sales cycle, the criteria should be:

• Documented
• Prioritised
• Customer validated
• Linked to business outcomes
• Connected to specific stakeholders

By the later stages of the opportunity, there should be very few significant assumptions remaining.

How Do We Operationalise Qualifying Decision Criteria?

During a deal review, a well-qualified seller should be able to:

• Describe the most important Decision criteria with Metrics and an ROI document.
• Explain who owns them, with an org chart.
• Show how they connect to pain and Metrics – a 3 Whys slide.
• Demonstrate where our team has influenced the criteria.
• Identify any remaining assumptions or gaps.

If a seller can confidently answer those questions, their understanding of Decision criteria is likely robust enough to support an accurate forecast and a credible path to winning.

Your Inspection Checklist

☐   The most important Decision criteria are documented.

☐   Criteria are prioritised rather than treated as a flat list.

☐   Technical, economic and relationship criteria are understood.

☐   The owner of each important criterion is known.

☐   Criteria connect to pain and Metrics.

☐   The team understands where the criteria originated.

☐   Evidence exists that important criteria have been influenced.

☐   Differentiators have a quantified value, not just a feature advantage.

☐   Competitive strengths and risks are understood.

☐   The alternative of doing nothing has been considered.