The MEDDIC Scorecard That Tells Me Which Deals to Kill
I’m shit at sales.
There. Said it. I’m a growth marketer who ended up running a company alone and suddenly had to sell. No SDR. No account executive. No one to hand the baton to. Just me, a HubSpot account, and a calendar full of “let’s reconnect next week.”
For a while I just winged it. Discovery calls with no structure. Proposals sent to anyone who seemed vaguely interested. Follow-ups whenever I remembered — which, honestly, wasn’t often enough.
Then I counted the hours I’d lost on deals that were never going to close. It was embarrassing.
So I did what any self-respecting marketer does when they’re bad at something: I built a system.
Why MEDDIC
MEDDIC is a B2B sales qualification framework from the 90s. Originally built for enterprise software deals. The name stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion.
I didn’t need to memorize any of that. What I needed was a checklist that forced me to be honest about a deal before I wasted another two weeks on it.
The framework gives you structure. I adapted it to what actually matters in my pipeline: smaller deals, shorter cycles, no procurement committee.
The 6 Dimensions I Score
Eight custom HubSpot properties. Six main scoring dimensions, each rated 1 to 10.
1. Pain — Is there a real, urgent problem? Not “it would be nice to solve this” but “this is costing us money right now.” A prospect who describes their problem in vague terms scores a 2. One who says “we’re losing 3 deals a month because of this” scores an 8.
2. Budget / Economic Buyer — Do they have money and is the person I’m talking to the one who controls it? Two things bundled together because one without the other means nothing.
3. Decision Maker Access — Can I get in front of whoever actually says yes? If I’ve been talking to an ops manager for three weeks and the CEO still doesn’t know I exist, that’s a problem.
4. Timeline — Is there a real deadline? “Sometime this quarter” is not a deadline. “We’re presenting to the board in March” is.
5. Champion — Is someone inside their company fighting for this? Not just interested. Actually pushing it internally.
6. Competition — Are we the only option on the table? If yes, score high. If there are three alternatives being evaluated and no clear criteria, score low.
Total possible score: 60.
The Three Zones
Simple rules that I follow without exceptions.
- Below 20 — Stop chasing. One last email, then close the file.
- 20-35 — Nurture. Stay warm. Don’t push. Wait for something to change.
- Above 35 — Push. Clear next step every meeting. Drive to close.
That’s it. No judgment calls. No “but this one feels different.” The number tells me what to do.
Three Real Deals
Chatty
Interesting product, interesting team. We talked for weeks. They seemed engaged.
Then I scored the deal. Budget: 2/10. Champion inside: 2/10. Decision maker access: 5/10. Total: somewhere in the low 20s.
I kept pushing anyway because the conversations were good. That was my mistake.
Closed lost, February 10. They decided to build in-house using Lovable. Weeks of follow-ups, one proposal, hours of prep. Gone. The scorecard had told me to stop. I didn’t listen.
Dedo / TheCave
This one was faster. Low budget signal from the first call. They asked if I had something for €49/month.
I sent a proposal anyway. Spent an afternoon on it.
Closed lost, February 11. No budget. The scorecard would have told me this in five minutes. I knew it going in and ignored it.
That stung. Not because I lost the deal. Because I wasted the proposal.
Jubatus
This is the one that made me a believer.
Initial score: 18/60. Below the threshold. Clear rule: stop chasing.
So I sent a break-up email. “Did I miss something? If the timing’s off, I’ll close the file and we can reconnect when it makes sense.”
Two hours later, they replied. Deal reopened. We’re now in negotiation at €2,500.
The break-up email did what three weeks of follow-ups couldn’t.
How It Lives in HubSpot
Eight custom deal properties, one per dimension (with two supporting fields for notes). Each scored 1-10 manually after every call or meaningful touchpoint.
The deal view shows the total score at the top. I’ve set up a color-coded pipeline view: red for below 20, yellow for 20-35, green for above 35.
Every Monday morning I open the pipeline and ask one question: am I spending time in the green zone?
If I’m not, something is wrong with my prioritization.
What the Scorecard Doesn’t Do
It doesn’t make me better at sales. I still fumble discovery calls. I still sometimes pitch before I’ve properly diagnosed the problem. I still forget to ask about the budget early enough.
The scorecard doesn’t fix any of that.
What it does is make me faster at quitting the wrong deals. Which frees up time for the right ones. Which, eventually, is the only thing that moves revenue.
There’s a version of this where I keep grinding Chatty for another month, keep following up with Dedo, and never send the break-up email to Jubatus. That version doesn’t close anything.
The Honest Take
10 deals scored in the current pipeline. Most of them sitting in the yellow zone.
The ones I’ve lost (Chatty, Dedo) were both predictable by the scorecard. I just didn’t follow the rule.
The one I recovered (Jubatus) was a direct result of following it.
The framework isn’t magic. It’s just math applied to decisions I was making on gut feel. And gut feel, at least for me, is expensive.
I’m still shit at sales. But the playbook doesn’t need me to be good. It just needs me to follow it.
Are you scoring your deals? Or are you also running on gut?