MEDDPICC

Paper process: the least interesting letter, and the one that moves your close date

Security review, legal, procurement and vendor onboarding. Invisible until it adds six weeks to a deal everyone had already agreed on.

Lesson 6 of 6

Paper process is everything that has to happen after the customer decides to buy. It is the letter reps skip because it is boring, and it is the single most common cause of a deal moving from one quarter to the next.

What it covers

• Security review. Questionnaires, penetration test reports, SOC 2, sometimes an architecture

call. Two weeks if you are prepared, two months if you are not.

• Legal. Their paper or yours, redlines, liability caps, data processing agreements.
• Procurement. Vendor onboarding, supplier registration, competitive bid requirements above a

threshold.

• Finance. PO creation, purchasing thresholds, and occasionally an approval tier nobody

mentioned because it is routine to them.

When to ask

Early. Much earlier than feels natural, because the answer never improves and the timeline only moves one direction.

The framing that works is helpfulness rather than process:

> "So I do not surprise you later — once you have decided, what does your side need? Security > review, legal, a PO? I would rather start gathering that now than find out in three weeks."

Prospects almost always answer this well. They have been through it before and they do not enjoy it either.

The specific questions

• "Is there a security review, and who runs it?"
• "Do you paper on your agreement or ours?"
• "Is there a spend threshold that changes who has to approve?"
• "Have you onboarded a new vendor recently — how long did it take end to end?"

That last one is the best of the four. It replaces a guess with a measured precedent from their own organisation.

What it changes

Two things, both valuable.

Your close date becomes real. A deal with a mapped paper process has a close date derived from their steps rather than from your quarter.

You can run it in parallel. A security questionnaire can be filled in while the technical evaluation is still happening. Reps who ask early routinely close weeks before reps who ask when the verbal yes arrives.

The failure

The verbal yes in week four, followed by silence, followed by the discovery in week seven that procurement requires three competitive quotes and a forty-page questionnaire. Nothing has gone wrong with the deal. It was simply never qualified on this letter, and the close date was fiction from the start.

Check yourself

Answers are shown as soon as you open each one. The explanation is the point, not the score.

1. When should you ask about paper process?

• Only if the deal is above a certain size
• After the verbal yes, so as not to seem presumptuous
• Early, framed as avoiding surprises later

The answer never improves with time, and asking early lets a security questionnaire run in parallel with the technical evaluation rather than after it.

2. Which question best replaces a guess with evidence?

• "Do you have a procurement process?"
• "Have you onboarded a new vendor recently, and how long did it take end to end?"
• "Can we get this done this quarter?"

It produces a measured precedent from their own organisation rather than an opinion about the future.

3. A deal gets a verbal yes in week four and closes in week eleven after an unexpected procurement requirement. What went wrong?

• The champion was weak
• Nothing went wrong with the deal; it was never qualified on paper process, so the close date was fiction
• The pricing was too high

This is the characteristic paper-process failure: the deal is healthy and the forecast was never real.

All lessons

1. 1What MEDDPICC is for, and what it is not
2. 2Metrics: the number the whole deal rests on
3. 3Economic buyer and Champion: who decides, and who sells for you
4. 4Decision criteria and process: the two letters that set your close date
5. 5Identified pain and Competition: why they would move, and what stops them
6. 6Paper process: the least interesting letter, and the one that moves your close date