If you’ve landed on this article, you’ve probably already decided you want your team to use MEDDIC or MEDDPICC®. Perhaps they’ve just finished training, and you’re looking at how to keep them using it day-to-day. Maybe you’re tired of using resources for training, just for your sales team to go back to old habits. The solution is to bring the methodology into their daily workflow, the problem is the how.

When it comes to MEDDPICC®, you probably have all sorts of questions:

• Should it just be a set of fields on the Opportunity?
• Is MEDDIC really suitable for my team?
• What’s the difference between MEDDIC and MEDDPICC®?
• Is Salesforce the best place for it?
• How do we make it usable without turning it into more admin?
• Has anyone already done this in a way that works in real life?

The good news is we’ve already answered some of these questions for you:

“What Is MEDDPICC® Sales Methodology? (With Real Examples)”

“Why You Should Implement MEDDPICC® Sales Methodology in Salesforce”

“Best Questions To Ask When Using MEDDPICC® Sales Methodology”

The short answer is: yes, teams do run MEDDIC / MEDDPICC®  inside Salesforce. The useful answer is that there are different ways to do it, and they don’t all produce the same result. Some approaches give you something that looks like MEDDPICC® on the record, but still leaves managers digging for the truth during meetings. As a leader, a successful implementation of MEDDPICC® should do a few things for you: increase revenue (obviously), while using resources more efficiently. Also, something we think is crucial, which is often ignored is that it should be easy to coach and review.

This article walks through the main options for running MEDDIC / MEDDPICC®  in Salesforce, what each option actually involves, and where the trade-offs show up in practice.

MEDDIC / MEDDPICC®  in Salesforce: What happens after training?

After MEDDPICC® training, the instinct is to open Salesforce and think: right, where do we put it? How do we make the team use it? You can add fields to the Opportunity, make them required, maybe stick a traffic light on it. Except, we know from experience, this rarely leads to a truly successful MEDDIC / MEDDPICC® implementation.

When you implement the MEDDPICC® methodology, it shouldn’t be treated as “extra info” to store. It’s supposed to change decisions such as which deals get resources and which deals make it into the forecast. If the data you capture can’t be trusted, then all MEDDPICC® training will do is create a change in language, but to see real success with this methodology, it needs to influence decisions. 

Salesforce, by default, won’t do that for you. It will happily store a “Champion” field even if the salesperson is using the word to mean “someone who was friendly.” It will accept “Decision Process = defined” even if nobody can explain how procurement actually works at that account. 

It’s important to consider Salesforce’s own research, which says salespeople only spend about 28% of their week actually selling. The rest goes on deal management and admin. So, when MEDDPICC®  becomes “another set of fields”, salespeople fill it in quickly, from memory, in the rush before a pipeline review and you end up with low quality data. That comes with a price tag, with Gartner estimating poor data quality costing businesses $12.9M per year on average.

So this isn’t about “can we add MEDDPICC®  to Salesforce?” You can. You should be thinking about what you capture, in what format, and how do you make sure MEDDPICC®  actually influences decisions instead of becoming extra admin work?

Next, we’ll look at the most common manual approach teams take when building MEDDIC into Salesforce. 

How to build MEDDIC / MEDDPICC®  in Salesforce manually

Put simply, if you want MEDDIC to live inside Salesforce without installing anything, you can create a set of Opportunity fields for each MEDDIC element. Give team members a simple way to signal “how strong this is”, usually Red / Yellow / Green. Then you pull those signals into a visual summary so managers can scan an Opportunity and see where the deal is weak without reading paragraphs of notes.

Daniel Marcus’ “MEDDIC summary” setup is a good example of what this looks like in practice. The build normally breaks down into four pieces.

1) Create the MEDDIC fields

Most teams start by creating one picklist per MEDDIC category (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Pain, Champion – plus Paper Process and Competition if you want MEDDPICC®).

Instead of creating seven separate picklists with seven separate value lists, you can standardise the values using a Global Value Set (“Red / Yellow / Green”) and apply it across each field. This keeps it consistent across the Opportunity. 

At this point, you have MEDDIC “in Salesforce”… technically. But how useful is it in practice? A row of seven picklists doesn’t really help in a deal review, which is why most manual setups add a visual layer.

2) Add a visual “traffic light” layer 

Instead of displaying “Red / Yellow / Green” as text, you can upload a set of images into Salesforce and use formula fields to display the correct icon based on the picklist value. 

That starts with storing images as a Static Resource (often a zip file of icons). Salesforce supports static resources specifically for storing internal assets like images and zip archives that you can reference elsewhere.

Then you create formula fields that use an image function to show the right icon for each MEDDIC element. Salesforce has a help article outlining this exact pattern: show a specific image depending on the value of another field.

Now your Opportunity layout can show deal status without the reader having to parse a wall of picklist text.

3) Build a “MEDDIC Summary” field you can use in layouts and reports

Individual traffic lights on the Opportunity are fine, but they still force someone to scan across a row of fields. You can create one summary field that combines the icons into a single strip you can drop into reports.

It works like this:

• You create one formula field per MEDDIC element (Metrics Image, Economic Buyer Image, etc.)
  
• Then you create one more formula field called something like MEDDIC Summary
  
• And the “summary” field is literally just those image fields joined together:
  

That single field becomes your at-a-glance view. Most teams add two things around this:

Notes fields (optional, but common).

A traffic light colour doesn’t exactly give you the kind of detail that can transfer into conversations or decision making. “Champion = Green” might be true, it might be nonsense. So teams often add long-text fields (Metrics Notes, Decision Criteria Notes, etc.) so salespeople have somewhere to put the detail that sits behind the colour.

Once MEDDIC Summary exists as a single field, you can use it in reports which give you a lightweight pipeline view where you can spot obvious gaps without opening every record. That’s the upside of this manual approach: you can get a quick “shape” of MEDDIC across the pipeline without installing anything.

4) Add enforcement so it doesn’t become optional

You don’t want MEDDIC to be viewed as “nice to have”, so you need to add rules. We’ve seen it in countless sales orgs, MEDDIC is technically implemented, but it’s not enforced and therefore salespeople just don’t follow the methodology OR they do the bare minimum.

In Salesforce, that usually means validation rules. For example, blocking a stage change unless certain fields are completed. Salesforce’s own guidance describes validation rules as a way to verify data meets your standards before the record can be saved, and there are specific examples for using them on Opportunities.

This is also where manual MEDDIC setups start to split in two directions:

• Teams that keep it lightweight (fields + summary) and accept inconsistency
  
• Teams that enforce it hard (gates + rules) and accept friction
  

The trade offs from manually adding MEDDIC into Salesforce

The manual approach can look great in a sandbox. However, a MEDDIC / MEDDPICC® implementation won’t fail because people can’t create the right fields, it will fail because of workarounds and poor adoption. That’s the risk with manual MEDDIC configuration, not that you can’t build it. It’s that you build it… and then you inherit three ongoing problems:

1. A “Green” field still doesn’t explain anything.
   
2. Notes help, but they don’t scale.
   
3. RevOps/Sales leaders become the MEDDIC police.
   

If you want MEDDPICC®  to consistently influence decisions (not just be present on the record), the manual approach tends to hit its ceiling fast.

Next, we’ll look at the other option: installing a native Salesforce app that’s designed to make MEDDPICC® data usable in practice.

A native MEDDPICC® implementation in Salesforce

We built Plan2Close MEDDPICC® in partnership with MEDDIC Academy so that the questions, advice and criteria inside Salesforce reflect the methodology as it’s actually taught, instead of a local version invented through custom fields or one individual’s research. That means the data you see in the Opportunity is more consistent, more coachable, and far more reliable for real decision making.

It is designed to implement MEDDPICC® directly on the Opportunity record. Salespeople do not leave the Opportunity. Managers do not review MEDDPICC® in a separate system and all qualification, evidence, coaching, and follow-up activity lives on the same record as stage, amount, and forecast.

How MEDDPICC® is structured in Plan2Close

Instead of asking reps to summarise MEDDPICC® in fields, Plan2Close breaks the methodology into a structured question set aligned to the eight MEDDPICC® elements:

• Identify Pain
  
• Decision Criteria
  
• Economic Buyer
  
• Metrics
  
• Decision Process
  
• Paper Process
  
• Champion
  
• Competition
  

Here’s an example of Identify Pain: 

Each element contains a defined set of questions, which have their own status symbols. Each question opens up into an individual view where users can see evidence, activities, tasks and coaching. From there, the rep must do three things:

1. Set a status
   Plan2Close uses clear status options (for example: yes, no, needs better evidence, requires manager review). These can mean different things depending on an organisation’s needs, and can also be configured to be a yes/no checklist.
   

2. Add evidence

To change the question status, the salesperson will need to add evidence. In a manual build, this evidence usually ends up as optional notes that aren’t reviewed, compared, or tied to decisions. In Plan2Close, evidence is required in context, reviewed by managers on the record, and therefore directly influences progress and scoring, which makes it part of qualification and coaching, instead of text stored in a field.

In time, you will also be able to use this information to spot patterns. Which kind of evidence usually isn’t enough? Which evidence typically signals high likelihood of closing? 

3. Log or create tasks/activities

Tasks and activities are tied directly to MEDDPICC® questions, meaning qualification gaps don’t stay theoretical.

For example, if a rep can’t confidently answer an Economic Buyer question, that uncertainty doesn’t just sit there as a “NO.” They can immediately create a follow-up meeting with the buyer, or a task to validate decision authority, directly from that question. Or, they can assign a task to their manager asking for advice. 

For managers, this changes the conversation. Instead of asking, “Why is Economic Buyer still unclear?” they can see the evidence, see the open activity tied to it, and judge whether the right action is already in motion. MEDDPICC® stops being a static assessment and becomes a live plan for moving the deal forward.

Built-in MEDDPICC® coaching 

Alongside the question list, reps have constant access to a coaching panel. This panel can be customised by the organisation, but it also comes with default guidance explaining what a “good” answer looks like for each MEDDPICC® area.

How MEDDPICC® Progress and Scoring Works

As salespeople answer questions, Plan2Close turns their inputs into useful data.  

There are three layers of visibility:

• Question-level progress tells you whether a rep has been able to back up their answer with evidence verified by a manager.
  
• Element-level progress shows which parts of MEDDPICC® are genuinely solid and which ones need attention. You can see, for example, a deal that looks fine overall but is weak on Decision Process and Paper Process which might create “surprise” delays.
  
• An overall Plan Score gives you a consistent, accurate number in line with the stage of the sale that is available both in the opportunity and in reports and dashboards.

A manager can open an opportunity and immediately see whether the risk is one specific gap (for example, Champion is weak but everything else is strong) or whether the whole deal is being carried by optimism (lots of unanswered questions across multiple elements). That changes how you coach, where you spend time, and what resources you’re willing to commit to a deal. 

And once this is reportable across the pipeline, you can spot patterns. Are deals sitting in late stage with low plan scores? Are teams consistently skip Paper Process? Is there a part of Decision Criteria that is always unclear?

By “usable MEDDPICC® data”, we mean data you can easily use to make decisions, and consistent signals you can compare across deals.

Here’s how the view looks:

Choosing how to implement MEDDIC/MEDDPICC® in Salesforce

So yes, you can use MEDDIC / MEDDPICC® in Salesforce.

But if you take one thing from this article, let it be this: getting MEDDPICC® into Salesforce is the easy part. Getting it to produce usable, trusted signals is the part that decides whether it increases revenue and forecast accuracy.  

If your goal is simply “MEDDPICC® exists on the Opportunity”, you can build it manually.

For MEDDPICC® to influence decisions (coaching, resourcing, forecasting) then you need it captured in a way that’s consistent, reviewable, and hard to game.

Check out what that looks like in your own Salesforce org, by trying Plan2Close MEDDPICC® FREE for 30 days!

If you have unique requirements, feel free to reach out to our team!

MEDDPICC® is a registered Trademark of Darius Lahoutifard, founder of MEDDIC Academy, where MEDDPICC® courses can be taken.