Most sales leaders will recognise the conversation. The customer has been positive. The technical discussions have gone well. The proposal reflects what was asked for, and the salesperson believes a decision is close.
Then the date moves.
There may be perfectly understandable reasons. A finance director has competing priorities. The IT leader is worried about the disruption of changing provider. Someone who appeared supportive has struggled to build agreement internally.
The salesperson may have worked hard and acted in good faith throughout. The customer may also genuinely want to proceed. Yet neither side has fully understood what it will take to reach a decision.
This is where MEDDPIC can help. For MSPs committing substantial time to discovery, solution design and proposals, it gives the team a way to understand what needs to happen before the customer can move forward.
Why it appeals to MSP leaders
The business needs growth. Delivery teams need time to plan. Finance needs a credible forecast. Salespeople need enough space to develop relationships, particularly when customers are making decisions that carry personal and operational risk.
MEDDPIC gives them a shared way to discuss that uncertainty. Are the customer’s desired outcomes clear? Who can authorise the investment? How will the decision be made? Is someone inside the organisation prepared to help move it forward? What needs to happen before an agreement can be signed?
Those questions can help a manager see where a salesperson needs support. They can also help the team decide whether it makes sense to involve presales or build a proposal at this point.
MEDDIC covers Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion. MEDDPIC adds the Paper Process, while MEDDPICC also makes Competition explicit. In a managed services sale, competition may include renewing with the incumbent or deciding to defer the change.
When the framework creates false confidence
The difficulty begins when a deal review becomes a test that salespeople feel they must pass. If every review demands certainty, people can feel pressure to provide it before the evidence exists.
The CFO becomes the economic buyer because they control the budget. A friendly IT manager becomes the champion because they return calls. A target decision date becomes a forecast commitment because the customer said they hoped to finish that month.
A better use of MEDDPIC makes room for an honest answer. “We do not know yet.”
Perhaps the salesperson needs help understanding the investment case. Perhaps their contact would welcome support preparing an internal recommendation. Perhaps the customer has yet to agree its own decision process. The manager can help the salesperson decide how to find out without making the next customer conversation feel like an interrogation.
What buying managed services feels like
When a customer appoints an MSP, they place a meaningful part of their organisation in someone else’s hands. An IT leader may be concerned about how their team will be treated. A managing director may have experienced a difficult transition before. A finance director may support the investment but worry about costs emerging after signature.
These concerns may never appear in the original brief. They still influence the decision. A framework can remind us to ask about them. Understanding what they mean for the people involved takes listening, patience and credible follow-through.
How the other approaches help
The most useful comparison starts with the challenge the sales team is trying to address. These approaches overlap, but each brings a different emphasis.
| Approach | Where it helps | Where care is needed |
|---|---|---|
| MEDDPIC | Assessing whether a complex deal has a credible route to a decision | Treating assumptions as customer evidence |
| Challenger | Helping a customer see a reason to reconsider | Offering generic insight or challenging too early |
| SPIN | Understanding the business consequences of technical problems | Making discovery feel like an interview |
| Miller Heiman | Planning around multiple buying influences | Building a plan that changes little outside the sales team |
| Sandler | Agreeing expectations and discussing investment candidly | Making the conversation feel scripted |
| Value selling | Building a credible case for investment | Overstating the return or assuming the customer values the same outcomes |
Challenger can give customers a reason to reconsider
Sometimes there is no active project to qualify. A growing business may have accepted that each acquisition takes months to integrate. A salesperson with relevant experience might help the customer see how inconsistent technology across its businesses is contributing to that delay.
Challenger encourages sellers to bring a commercial perspective, tailor it to the people involved and help guide the decision. It requires judgement. A customer who has spent years managing a difficult situation may reasonably resist someone arriving with a confident diagnosis after a brief conversation. The insight has to be relevant, well researched and offered with respect for what the customer already knows.
SPIN gives discovery more depth
“Support takes too long” is often where the conversation starts. Who is affected? What work becomes harder? What would a better outcome allow the business to do? The real concern may be a delayed response to customers, an overstretched internal team or difficulty opening new locations.
SPIN’s Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-payoff questions help the seller explore those consequences. That gives MEDDPIC better evidence to work with. The conversation can become mechanical if the seller keeps moving through their questions while the customer is trying to explain what matters.
Miller Heiman helps explain how people reach agreement
Finance may want cost predictability. IT may want clearer responsibilities. Operations may need reassurance that implementation will not interrupt trading. All three can support the idea of change while wanting different things from it.
Miller Heiman’s Strategic Selling approach gives particular attention to these buying influences. It can help a salesperson who has a strong relationship with one person understand whose support is still needed and what each person needs to feel comfortable proceeding. The plan earns its keep through the conversations and actions it improves.
Sandler creates room for a candid conversation
Salespeople can spend weeks preparing a proposal without knowing whether the customer is ready to invest. Customers can feel awkward admitting that priorities have changed or that they are still exploring their options.
Sandler encourages both parties to agree what a meeting is for, what each needs to understand and what a sensible next step might be. Done well, that makes it easier to discuss investment and timing before either side commits substantial effort. Done rigidly, it can make a customer feel pressured to give an answer before they have enough information.
Value selling makes the investment meaningful
Customers need a credible explanation of why a better service is worth the price. Value-based selling helps connect the investment to outcomes the customer recognises. The branded ValueSelling Framework offers one structured way to do that.
For example, giving time back to an overstretched IT team may let it tackle overdue work. The benefit is real, but calling all that time a cash saving could undermine an otherwise credible case. The strongest metrics are built with the customer and carry assumptions both parties can discuss.
A well-qualified opportunity can still become a difficult contract
The buyer may have clear needs, executive support and a well-defined process. The proposal can still underestimate transition work, leave responsibilities unclear or promise a level of service the delivery team cannot sustain.
The customer experiences a gap between expectation and reality. Engineers inherit commitments they had little opportunity to influence. The account manager starts the relationship resolving avoidable problems.
Bring delivery colleagues into the review early enough to check service fit, transition dependencies, contractual commitments, capacity and cost to serve. Agree who will own the outcomes promised to the customer after signature. For recurring services, the quality of the sale becomes visible over the life of the relationship.
Is MEDDPIC’s popularity justified?
A Pax8 case study describes Infinity Group incorporating MEDDPICC into AI-supported qualification. That gives us a documented example of adoption. Evidence on how widely MSPs use the framework, or how it performs against alternatives in comparable businesses, remains limited.
Its appeal is understandable. For a substantial managed services agreement with several stakeholders, a difficult transition and significant contractual commitments, MEDDPIC gives the team a disciplined way to review the opportunity. A routine renewal or straightforward purchase generally needs a lighter touch. Let the complexity of the decision and the exposure for both parties determine the effort.
I would choose a primary framework that fits the business, then coach the skills the team needs. If discovery lacks depth, work on questioning and listening. If customers struggle to see meaningful differentiation, help sellers develop stronger commercial insights and build a credible case for value. If opportunities keep stalling inside larger organisations, give stakeholder strategy more attention.
When a salesperson brings uncertainty into a deal review, can they leave with a better way to help the customer? Can the delivery team stand behind the commitments being made? Those questions tell me more about how well MEDDPIC is working than the number of completed fields in the CRM.
Related reading: Why MSP sales pipelines become unreliable and New MRR is not the same as good MRR.