Competition in MEDDPICC: The Four Forces You're Really Up Against

Most sellers treat competition like an event.

They wait until the buyer mentions another vendor. Then they panic and start spouting differentiators. “We’re the best at…”

Or they assume there’s no competition because the buyer is friendly. Or they use the lazy line: “We’re not really competing.”

That’s almost never true. If the customer isn’t actively choosing you, they’re actively choosing something else.

What Competition Really Means in MEDDPICC

In real deals, competition is every alternative path the customer could take instead of choosing you.

MEDDICC and MEDDPICC do a good job of making competition visible, especially by separating named competitors from the status quo. That’s the first step. What most teams miss is how to unlock each competitive gate, in order.

Competition isn’t one moment. It’s a sequence of four forces, and each one asks a different question:

1. Status quo. Is this problem worth solving?
2. Named competitors. Who should we solve it with?
3. Build vs. buy. Can’t we just build it ourselves?
4. Resource and priority. What else should we spend this money on?

By the time you’re on a shortlist, you’ve already fought other competitive battles, and you may have already lost one without knowing it. If you’re only designing for named competitors, you’re losing deals before and after the one you think you’re fighting. I cover each gate in depth in The Sales Competition You Didn’t Account For. This page focuses on how to grade Competition in MEDDPICC and which plays move it.

Why It Matters: “No Decision” Is Three Decisions

There is no such thing as no decision. Every “no decision” is really a decision to keep the status quo, to prioritize something else, or to delay because nothing forced timing. All three were predictable before the deal died.

This is also where deals get commoditized. If you haven’t beaten the status quo and haven’t differentiated against the real alternatives, every solution looks similar, and the only lever left is price.

How to Grade It: What Done Looks Like

Done means the forces working against the change have been identified and neutralized. Identified isn’t enough. Knowing a competitor’s name is a start, not a grade.

Listen to how the deal sounds.

Red sounds like:

• “We’re not really competing.”
• “They seem to like us.”
• “They hate their current provider.”

Red is when you can’t name the real alternatives, including status quo and internal build. It’s also red when the status quo is still winning: the buyer likes you but hasn’t agreed that staying put is unsafe, costly or unacceptable.

Yellow sounds like:

• “I heard they’re looking at Vendor X.”
• “I think we’re the front runner.”
• “I don’t think they could do this themselves.”

You can see the field, but you haven’t shaped the evaluation. One or more gates is still unstable: urgency isn’t hardened, criteria aren’t shaped, build vs. buy hasn’t been neutralized, or you don’t know if the project will stay funded and resourced.

Green sounds like: “Here’s what we’re being compared against, here’s why each option is being considered, here’s the criteria we agreed matters most, here’s the proof that shows why we’ll win, and they agree with our differentiators.”

Green means you’ve beaten every gate and been told you’re the vendor of choice, or it’s been strongly implied.

Common Competition Mistakes

• Leading with Why Us before Why Change. You lose to “not a priority” before a vendor ever shows up.
• Letting the buyer define the criteria without you. Generic criteria create a generic comparison, and the cheapest acceptable option wins.
• Being reactive. Competition is present from the first meeting. If you wait for a name, you’re playing defense.
• Failing to create contrast. This may be the biggest one. When buyers can’t see the contrast between options, they pick the cheapest.
• Being afraid to ask. Sellers worry that naming competitors will create competition, or they don’t want to hear an answer they can’t control. Ask anyway.

Plays to Neutralize Each Force

Disrupt Status Quo (Gate 1). Interview end users of the current solution about what they like and don’t like. Find the key deficiency, quantify it, connect it to business priorities, then take it to an executive who can sponsor an evaluation: “I was doing some homework on your business, spoke to XYZ, and discovered ABC, which is likely costing you $123 or impacting your ability to [specific outcome]. Can we find time for me to review my findings with you?”

Options to Solve (Gates 1 and 3). Present multiple legitimate paths: stay with the status quo, build internally, buy software, or outsource. Walk through the tradeoffs that matter: cost, time to value, ongoing maintenance, quality, risk and internal load. The buyer self-discovers the right category, and your approach feels rational instead of salesy.

Put Them in a Box (Gate 2). When a competitor is named, describe where they’re strong, who they typically win with and what they’re known for. Then contrast that with the buyer’s specific needs and explain why companies like them choose your approach. Keep it factual. No bashing.

Planting Land Mines (Gate 2). Find an area where a competitor is weak against the buyer’s criteria, like integrations, service, uptime or key workflows, and encourage the buyer to test it: “You mentioned this is really important to you. Next time you talk to so and so, ask them how they handle that.”

Deposition (Gate 2). Reframe the competitor as solving a smaller, downstream slice of the problem while you solve the bigger business issue leadership cares about: “I understand why you’d evaluate them, lower cost, lighter lift, but here are the problems that still exist, which hurt your overall ROI, and you’re still left with ABC issues.”

Side-by-Side (Gate 2 and late discounting). Build a comparison matrix tailored to the buyer’s decision criteria, and use it when the buyer says “You all look the same” or asks for a discount.

Cost of inaction (Gate 4). You beat priority competition the same way you beat the status quo. If the buyer understands what the current state costs every month, Why Now answers itself. You don’t manufacture urgency. You remind them of what they told you.

How It Connects to Deal Management

Competition is its own criterion in Deal Management, and it leans on three others.

Current State, Desired Future State and Change Justification aren’t just discovery criteria. They’re your competitive infrastructure. They decide whether you win Gate 1, Gate 3 and Gate 4, and the criteria you shape in Future State decide Gate 2. That’s where Decision Criteria does its competitive work: if you’ve shaped criteria well, the bake-off is largely a formality.

The document that should exist is a one-page competitive strategy: the real alternatives, what each is optimized for, the buyer’s criteria, where you’re differentiated and vulnerable, and your proof plan to win. Something you can forward internally that still makes sense without you.

Where to Go Deeper

• The Sales Competition You Didn’t Account For walks through all four gates and the inbound vs. outbound differences.
• Go / No Go Decision in Sales shows where to confirm the gates are cleared before you commit resources.
• Back to the MEDDPICC overview, or start at the first letter, Metrics.