Paper Process is a date problem, not a win problem
Paper Process is everything between verbal agreement and countersigned contract. Security questionnaire, legal redlines, procurement negotiation, vendor onboarding, purchase order issuance. None of it changes whether you win. All of it changes when.
Reps who skip this field set the close date on the verbal yes and then push it twice. ORM's read on slippage is direct: the best signal that a deal is at risk is a rep changing the close date, and a deal that slips from one quarter into the next is less likely to close even when it sits in commit. Mapping the paper trail during discovery is what keeps that push from happening. Ask who signs, what security review looks like, whether procurement has a standard cycle time, and whether a new vendor needs to be onboarded before invoicing.
Competition includes the status quo
The second C covers named competitors and the far more common alternative, which is doing nothing this quarter. A deal with no identified competitor is usually a deal where the rep has not asked. Buyers who cannot name what else they evaluated have not built a case strong enough to survive a budget review.
Documenting Competition also protects the decision criteria. If a competitor wrote the requirements list, your product gets scored against someone else's strengths, and the evaluation is decided before the demo.
When the extra letters earn their keep
Use MEDDPICC when deals pass through procurement, security review, or a legal team with a queue. Use MEDDIC when the evaluator and the signer are the same person, because empty fields train reps to treat the whole framework as paperwork.
The practical test is whether your last four losses were competitive losses or timing losses. Timing losses point at Paper Process. Losses to a named vendor point at Competition. If the answer is neither, the gap is upstream in Metrics or Champion, and adding letters will not fix it.
Connecting the framework to the number
Qualification only improves the forecast when its output is structured. Store Paper Process as a date and a named owner rather than a note, and store Competition as a picklist. Then the fields can be filtered, and a quarter's worth of deals can be checked for the pattern that keeps producing pushed close dates. That connection is what turns a qualification framework into an input for sales forecasting instead of a coaching artifact, and it is why forecast accuracy tends to move after a team standardizes these fields rather than after it adopts the acronym.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do the extra letters in MEDDPICC stand for?
The P is Paper Process, the sequence of security review, legal redlines, procurement, and purchase order that runs between a verbal yes and a countersigned contract. The second C is Competition, meaning the alternative the buyer is comparing you against, including the option to do nothing. The other six letters are unchanged from MEDDIC.
Should we switch from MEDDIC to MEDDPICC?
Switch when your deals routinely pass through procurement, security review, or a legal team with its own queue. If your average deal is signed by the same person who ran the evaluation, the two extra fields sit empty and add administrative work without improving qualification.
Does MEDDPICC replace your sales process?
No. MEDDPICC qualifies a deal. The sales process defines the stages a deal moves through and the criteria for advancing. MEDDPICC scores populate the exit criteria at each stage, which is how a qualification framework becomes inspectable rather than a private habit.
Which letter do reps get wrong most often?
Paper Process. Reps treat the verbal commitment as the close date and forecast accordingly, then discover a four-week security review nobody had scoped. The Paper Process field exists to force that timeline into the CRM before the close date is set.
Put these metrics to work
ORM builds custom revenue forecast models that turn concepts like meddpicc vs meddic into prescriptive action for your team.
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