The most common enterprise sales qualification framework
| Why it matters | Key questions to ask | |
| M – Metrics What measurable value will the customer get? | Executives buy in numbers, not in features. Need to quantify the ROI before they’ll approve the budgetYou need to attach a number to the outcome | What does slow data cost you in real dollars?How do you measure success today?What KPIs are you trying to move? |
| E – Economic Buyer Who controls the budget and has the final say? | The economic buyer is the only person who can say YES to spending money.Champions often aren’t the buyerYou need to reach the EBIdentify the champion and give it the ammunition to convince the EB | Who ultimately approves the budget?Has the CFO/CTO bought something like this before?What does success look like to them? |
| D – Decision Criteria How will they evaluate and choose a vendor? | Every customer has a scorecard You need to know what they want and why they care about to win themUncover that criteria early and shape it into your product strengthsBased on these, you know which demos to prioritize | What your ideal solution look like?How are you weighing performance vs cost?Who else is involved in setting these criteria? |
| D – Decision Process What steps do they go through to make a purchase? | A fully convinced champion can’t close the deal aloneYou need to consider:ProcurementLegalSecurity reviewIT sign-offKnowing the process lets you plan the right actions at the right time | Walk me through how you’ve bought software beforeWho else needs to sign off (security, legal, IT)?What could slow this down or derail it? |
| I – Identify Pain What problem are they trying to solve? | No pain = no urgency = no dealPain must be real and big enough to justify the changeFeature-level pain does not close deals. Business level pain doesFind the business pain and connect it to cost | What happens if you don’t solve it?Who in the business feels this pain most acutely?Has this cost you anything – deals, customers, headcounts? |
| C – Champion Who inside the company will fight for you? | A champion sells on your behalf when you’re not in the roomYou need a strong champion to close the dealA weak champion is a prospect A champion:Must believe in youHave credibility internallyPersonally benefit from the outcome | Will they take your call after hours?Have they introduced you to the economic buyer?Are they sharing internal information with you? |
| ————————————— | ————————————— | ————————————— |
| P – Paper process What’s the legal, procurement, and contract plan? | Enterprise deals die in legal and procurement, not in demos. Important to understand the contractual journey Account for 6-week of legal reviews | Do you have a standard vendor contract or will you use ours?Does your legal team have a data processing agreement ready?What’s the procurement lead time typically? |
| I – Implicate the pain Have you made the cost of inaction visceral? | Identify the painImplicate means connecting the pain to real costFinancialReputational Competitive This creates urgency | What’s the cost per hour when the pipeline fails?How has this affected a specific business outcomeWhat happens if this isn’t solved in 6 months? |
| C – Competition Who else are they talking to? And how do you win? | Knowing the competitive landscape lets you shape decision criteria in your favor and prepare the champion to handle internal objections | Are you evaluating any other platforms alongside us?Have you used DataBricks or BigQuery before?What would make you choose us over the alternatives? |
- How to identify a champion?
- A champion can connect you with the Economic Buyer
- A champion shares internal information and treats you as an insider
- A champion has a personal stake in the outcome
- Tell me about a deal you worked on. Walk me through it using MEDDPICC.
- I’ll walk through a hypothetical based on a typical Snowflake deal. Say we’re selling to a mid-size fintech whose data team is struggling with Redshift performance and pipeline reliability.
| Metrics: Their nightly ETL runs 6 hours and fails 1-2x/week, costing ~$80K/year in engineering recovery time and delaying executive reporting. |
| Economic Buyer: The CTO owns the infrastructure budget. Our champion is the VP of Data Engineering — we’d coach her to present the ROI case to the CTO |
| Decision Criteria: Performance, migration ease from Redshift, and SOC 2 compliance for their financial data |
| Decision Process: Champion selects vendor → Security review (2 weeks) → Legal redlines → CFO PO approval. ~8 weeks post-selection |
| Paper Process: New vendor, so we’d need DPA and insurance certs early |
| Implicate Pain: Pipeline failures once hit during a quarterly close — the CFO didn’t have the numbers she needed. That’s the story that creates urgency. |
| Champion: VP of Data Engineering — her career growth is tied to her team shipping faster. |
| Competition: Databricks is on the list, but their team is SQL-first with no ML workloads, so we’d reframe the criteria around governance and ease of use. |
- When a new criteria comes to the picture:
- Can you help me understand where that came from?
- Is it a hard technical need, or a concern about data residency, cost control, or security?
- A prospect says everything is ‘fine’ and they’re ‘just exploring options.’ How do you uncover real pain without being aggressive?
- What would your team do with data if it just worked?
- A lot of data teams I talk to tell me X — is that resonant for you?
| Summary M — Metrics: The quantified business value the customer will get. – What does success look like in dollars? E — Economic Buyer: The person with budget authority who can say yes. – Who can actually say yes? D — Decision Criteria: The scorecard they’ll use to choose a vendor. – How will they score us? D — Decision Process: The steps, approvals, and timeline to make a purchase. – What steps to get to a signature? P — Paper Process: The legal, procurement, and contract steps to close. – What does legal and procurement look like? I — Implicate the Pain: Making the cost of inaction real and urgent. – What happens if they do nothing? C — Champion: The internal advocate who will sell for you when you’re not in the room. – Who’s fighting for us internally? C — Competition: Who else they’re evaluating and how you win against them.- Who else is in the room? |
| MEDD | PICC |
| Customer Side | Deal Side |
| What they measure?Who decides?How they decide? | The paper workThe pain depthYour championYour competition |
Daniela Fernandez 