SPIN and MEDDIC in practice

SPIN: four families of questions, in order

SPIN, formalized by Neil Rackham in the 1980s from the observation of thousands of sales conversations, sorts questions into four families: Situation (how things work), Problem (what is stuck), Implication (what it leads to) and Need-payoff (what it would change). It is the situation, pain, impact, next step sequence from the previous lesson, with a vocabulary that became standard.

SPIN’s strength is delaying the solution. As long as the prospect has not said themselves what the problem leads to and what they would want instead, your product has no place in the conversation. The implication questions do the persuading for you.

MEDDIC: six things to know before saying “this is an opportunity”

MEDDIC, born at PTC in the 1990s, is not a list of questions but a list of checks. Metrics: what quantified gain the prospect expects. Economic buyer: who signs off on the budget. Decision criteria: what they will compare solutions on. Decision process: through which steps and in what timeframe. Identify pain: the pain, named by the prospect. Champion: someone inside who wants the project to succeed.

For an SDR, MEDDIC is how you qualify the meeting you hand to the Account Executive. A meeting with a named pain, a rough number and an idea of the decision process is worth ten meetings of “he said yes”. The six boxes will not all be filled after a first call, and that is normal: write down what you know and what is missing.

• Metrics: “What does that add up to, in hours or meetings, over a month?”
• Economic buyer: “This kind of decision, who does it go up to?”
• Decision criteria: “What would make one solution win over another?”
• Decision process: “How did it go the last time you switched tools?”
• Identify pain: the pain in their words, noted during the call.
• Champion: “Who on your side would gain the most if this changed?”

The same call, seen through both methods

Take the recorded call from the listening lesson: an SDR calls a CFO who is hiring three reps. Through SPIN, the call has a situation question (“what made you hire?”), a restatement of the problem, but no implication or need-payoff question: the prospect never said what the lost time costs, nor what they would want instead. Through MEDDIC, the call gives the pain (identified and restated) and a hint about the process (opening the Benelux), but no number, no economic buyer, no champion.

Both readings point to the same gap: the impact was not explored. That is what SPIN calls implication and what MEDDIC calls metrics. When both methods say the same thing, that is where to work.

Prospecting or sales cycle: which method, when

In prospecting, the call lasts three to eight minutes and aims at a meeting. SPIN runs the conversation; MEDDIC is used at the end, in two lines in the CRM, to tell the Account Executive what you know. In a sales cycle, over several weeks, MEDDIC becomes the opportunity’s dashboard: every empty box is a risk, and the next meetings serve to fill it. SPIN remains the way to ask questions at every stage.

What to remember as an SDR: you do not have to fill MEDDIC, you have to open it. A named pain, an order of magnitude and the name of the person who decides, and the meeting you hand over has a chance.

Go further

• SPIN Selling The four question families, with examples by stage.
• The MEDDIC framework The six checks and how to fill them over the cycle.
• SPIN vs MEDDIC Why the question is badly framed, and how to combine them.