By the time you hit the end of the year, most deals blur.
A couple of wins you’re proud of. A few that slipped and still sting. Demos, PoCs, “quick” security reviews that weren’t quick at all.
Most teams use MEDDPICC as forecast theatre, letters on a slide, red/green grids in QBRs, fields in the CRM. This is the version that actually helps you protect your technical time.
Before you promise yourself you’ll “be more MEDDPICC” next year, try something smaller and more useful: a 30-minute Quiet Deal Debrief with yourself, using MEDDPICC as your map. Not for your manager. Not for the forecast. Just for you.
Done well, this one quiet session will help you
- Be better by tying your technical depth to what actually moved deals
- Be faster by spotting earlier which deals were never going to land
- Be stronger by giving you cleaner language with account executives, champions, and economic buyers
- Feel more in control by turning late surprises into design choices
MEDDPICC as your SE operating system, not an AE checklist
Most SEs meet MEDDPICC as something that lives in AE land: “Can you help fill out the MEDDPICC slide?” “We need this for the deal review.” “Those fields are mandatory in Salesforce.”
Used properly, MEDDPICC is closer to your personal operating system for technical selling. It shapes which deals you go deep on. It forces your PoCs, demos and artefacts to line up with real business outcomes. It gives you a shared language to influence the rest of the deal team.
For SEs, three parts of MEDDPICC pay off fastest.
Three SE shifts that make MEDDPICC work for you
1. Metrics: from “slide 3” to “story spine”
Better & faster. In a lot of cycles, Metrics are just numbers on slide 3: “Reduce incidents by 20%.” “Improve conversion by 10%.” Everyone nods. Nobody uses them.
For you, Metrics should be the spine of the story. They decide which technical options are worth exploring. They give you a way to push back on “can we also…?” requests that don’t move the dial. They give your champion language to defend you when you’re not in the room.
Quiet question for your debrief: In each deal, did we have 1 to 3 specific metrics the customer genuinely cared about and did they show up in my demo/PoC, not just in a discovery doc?
If your wins had sharp Metrics and your losses didn’t, that’s your first upgrade: get to real metrics earlier, and keep them alive.
2. Economic Buyer: from “AE’s contact” to “earned moments of truth”
Stronger. On paper, the EB is “the AE’s relationship”. In practice, a lot of your best work happens in the EB’s shadow.
- You design the evidence they will trust
- You shape how risk, effort and impact show up in their world
- You equip your champion to survive the five-minute EB slot with a clear story
- You might never join the EB call; your fingerprints should still be all over what they see
Quiet questions for your debrief: For each deal, can I describe the real EB in one sentence that includes their goal and their worry? Did my work make their decision easier, safer or faster, or was I just running a PoC in isolation?
If the EB is a ghost in most losses, that isn’t just “an AE problem”. It’s a design signal: next time, build your demos and PoCs with the EB’s decision in mind from day one.
3. Paper Process: from “they’ll sort it” to “I design for sign-off”
More in control. “Paper Process” sounds like contract admin. For an SE, it’s where a lot of pain lives. Paper Process is everything that must be true for your solution to be legally, commercially and technically acceptable after the customer says “yes” in a meeting.
That usually includes
- Security review and risk sign-off
- Architecture or CTO review
- Data protection and compliance checks
- Vendor onboarding, SSO, environments, and accounts
- T&Cs that change how you implement or support
You don’t own those steps. But your work can make them simple or painful.
A quick story: You’ve probably had a “done deal” that looked like this. PoC went well. Users loved it. Everyone was talking like it was closed. Then security asked for things the PoC never proved. Legal found terms that clashed with how you actually deliver. The deal slipped a quarter, and suddenly “timing” was the official reason.
On paper, the team “had MEDDPICC”. In reality, Paper Process was guesswork.
Quiet questions for your debrief: In each deal, when did I first have a clear picture of the steps between “verbal yes” and “signed + ready to implement”? What technical or security artefacts did I create that made those steps smoother, or which ones did I realise I was missing too late?
Next year, treat Paper Process as part of your solution design. You’re not just designing how it runs in production. You’re designing how it gets approved.
Run your Quiet Deal Debrief in 3 steps
You don’t need a template. Just a notebook, a quiet 30 minutes, and four real deals.
1. Pick your four stories
Choose two meaningful wins, where your work clearly mattered, and two meaningful losses or painful slips, not freak edge cases. Give each deal a short name in your notes. This isn’t about reliving trauma. It’s about choosing four “episodes” you can actually learn from.
2. Walk each deal through MEDDPICC, one question per letter
For each deal, jot short, blunt answers. Messy is fine.
One question per letter
- M: Metrics — Did we have 1 to 3 specific, agreed metrics that showed up in how I designed the demo/PoC and proposal, or were we mainly trading in anecdotes and hope?
- E: Economic Buyer — Did I know who could really say yes/no, and did my work give them a simple view of value, risk and effort even if I never met them?
- D: Decision Criteria — Was I clear on what “good” looked like technically and commercially, and did I prove that, not just our favourite features?
- D: Decision Process — Could I have sketched their real internal path to a decision and where did that sketch turn out to be fantasy?
- P: Paper Process — When did I first understand the path through security, legal, procurement and onboarding and what did I build that made those steps easier?
- I: Pain — Was the pain specific, quantified and owned by someone senior, or was it a general “things could be better” vibe from a friendly user?
- C: Champion — Did I have a real champion with access and energy who could retell our story without me and what did I give them to make that easier?
- C: Competition — Who was I really competing with, and did I adjust my story and proof to that reality?
You’re not aiming for poetry. Just enough honesty to see patterns.
3. Spot one pattern and choose one new habit
Now zoom out across your four deals. What keeps repeating? Wins have sharp Metrics and Pain; losses don’t. The EB is fuzzy in every deal that slipped. Paper Process keeps ambushing you in the last month of the quarter. Champions love you technically but have no political power.
Pick one pattern that feels both true and fixable. Then turn it into one small behaviour you’ll start in your next cycle.
For example
- “In my first two conversations, I’ll always ask: ‘If this goes well, what would your leadership see as proof it was worth doing?’”
- “Before agreeing to a PoC, I’ll ask one security and one Paper Process question, and design the PoC to generate that proof.”
- “For every active deal, I’ll write a three-line summary aimed at the EB and share it with my AE and champion.”
Write your chosen behaviour somewhere you’ll actually see it when things get busy again. That’s the real output of your Quiet Deal Debrief. Not a perfect MEDDPICC score. A tiny upgrade to your operating system.
If you lead SEs
If you manage or lead SEs, you can turn this into a light-touch team ritual. Ask everyone to run a Quiet Deal Debrief on their own. Run a 45-minute session where people anonymously share patterns, not deal names. Notice which letters keep coming up as gaps.
If, for example, almost every story shows weak Paper Process and fuzzy EBs, that’s not a coaching note for one person. It’s a signal to change which questions are mandatory in discovery, tighten when you say “yes” to PoCs, and adjust how you run deal reviews.
You don’t need a giant programme for this. Just a bit of structure and honesty.
Why this small ritual matters
A single Quiet Deal Debrief won’t magically fix every cycle. What it will do is make you better at choosing where to spend your technical depth, make you faster at spotting deals that are missing critical ingredients, make you stronger when you push back or steer your AE in a different direction, and help you feel more in control of what happens after the great demo or PoC.
It’s the individual version of the work high-performing SE teams do when they build real operating systems around MEDDPICC, whether that lives in your CRM, in how you run deal reviews, or in something more structured.
But you don’t have to wait for the system to catch up. You can start with yourself, a notebook, four real deals and a quiet half hour with a hot drink.
That’s where “better, faster, stronger, more in control” actually starts.