Like, do we get that Meddic is 30 years old?

MEDDIC: A 30-Year-Old Playbook vs. 2025 Realities

Let’s face it: MEDDIC was invented nearly 30 years ago in an era of the fax.

Yet some sales leaders still treat it like gospel, as if nothing has changed since the 90s.

Meanwhile, today’s B2B deals have morphed into a completely different beast, and MEDDIC is looking as up to date as… well, the fax.

CFOs now guard the castle: These days finance scrutinizes every deal.

In fact, in 79% of purchases the CFO holds final decision-making power.

Your carefully nurtured champion can’t sign off without convincing the CFO, who couldn’t care less about your MEDDIC checklist and instead wants to see cold, hard ROI.

Too many cooks in the kitchen: The average buying committee now has 10+ stakeholders (often with a VP or two in the mix).

MEDDIC’s quaint focus on a single Economic Buyer and Champion doesn’t reflect this reality – you’re actually selling to a bustling committee where everyone and their intern has a say.

One champion isn’t enough when consensus is the new king.

Non-linear, never-ending deal cycles: Remember when deals had a tidy start, middle, and close?

Now the typical B2B cycle drags on ~12 months and feels more like a maze than a straight line.

Buyers stall, restart, and change their minds – a whopping 95% of buying groups revisit decisions mid-process due to new info or internal debates . MEDDIC’s notion of mapping a single Decision Process falls flat when the process keeps zigzagging back and forth.

Buyers do their homework (and then some): Perhaps the biggest wake-up call – by the time a rep gets in the room, the buyer is often 60–70% through their journey . They’ve been online, reading reviews, and 80–90% of buyers already have a vendor shortlist before even talking to sales.

In other words, your prospect formed opinions long before you could Identify Pain or Influence Decision Criteria. MEDDIC isn’t built for a world where the buyer shows up half-sold (and not necessarily on your solution).

Now, here’s the real kicker:

How do most sales orgs implement MEDDIC in 2025?

As a rigid check-the-box exercise.

Managers roll out MEDDIC and promptly turn it into a compliance drill.

Reps must fill out a scorecard:

Got a champion? ✅ 

Identified a metric? ✅ 

Know the decision process? ✅

The result?

Qualification theater – everyone performing the motions, often with dubious sincerity:

Reps invent “champions” and guess metrics just to appease the CRM police. (Sure, that intern who likes our LinkedIn posts can be our champion, right?)

Sales managers treat MEDDIC scores like a school report card, so reps focus on filling in blanks instead of digging deeper. It’s hard to truly discover the buyer’s needs when you’re more worried about whether your MEDDIC form is 100% complete.

The whole exercise can become about pleasing higher-ups over helping the customer. MEDDIC was meant to keep deals on track, but in practice it often rewards pencil-whipping and happy ears. No wonder 40–60% of “qualified” deals still end in no decision – the spreadsheet looked green, but the customer wasn’t convinced in real life.

Slightly sarcastic translation: Clinging to MEDDIC as-is in 2025 means pretending a 1990s playbook can handle 2025’s chaos. (Because nothing says modern sales excellence like forcing Gen Z reps to follow an acronym that’s older than they are…. 😂)

It’s time to ask: who are we fooling? MEDDIC compliance might make your boardroom feel in control, but it’s not swaying today’s CFO-heavy, group-think buying collective.

So, dear CROs and VPs of Sales, if you’re still pushing legacy MEDDIC and expecting magic, it might be time for a reality check.

The modern buying environment is too complex, skeptical, and dynamic for a one-size-fits-all checklist.

The good news?

There are fresh approaches emerging that actually align with how 2025 buyers buy - the kind built on flexible discovery, mutual collaboration, and truly understanding the buyer’s ever-shifting priorities.

In fact, forward-thinking sales teams are already ditching the MEDDIC security blanket for new frameworks (the very kind that George and I have been busy teaching) that are purpose-built for today’s convoluted Midsize and Enterprise deals.

Bottom line: you can keep running your sales playbook on the nostalgia of MEDDIC, or you can upgrade to a strategy that meets buyers where they are now.

Just don’t be surprised when those who rewire their playbooks start eating your lunch…like, it will happen.

The choice is yours – adapt or get left behind, acronym and all.

Modern buyers often know which vendors they’ll consider long before a sales rep gets a chance to engage.

Happy scaling, peeps! - Sara Storm