The deal from the engineer's seat · Qualification

Score this deal

Score a customs-documents deal 0–3 on each MEDDICC letter from the evidence given, total it, and pick the one letter to move this week.

estimateeasyExercise · 3 min · 16 of 64

On this page

A freight forwarder wants its customs documents classified before a clerk sees them. Two calls and one site visit have happened; sales wants a score before Thursday's pipeline review.

The situation

The forwarder clears about 900 shipments a day through 40 clerks, each shipment arriving as a bundle of 4 to 12 PDFs: invoices, packing lists, certificates of origin, bills of lading. On the site visit the operations director said clerks "lose about two hours a day each re-keying from the wrong document"; nobody has measured it. On the second call the CFO joined, asked for the payback period, and said she signs anything under twelve months. The director described the path after a pilot as "procurement, which takes about six weeks, then the CFO", with no dates. Asked what "correct" would mean for a classification, the clerks said "it should just work"; we proposed 95% against their own labels and they nodded. The CFO put a figure on the pain: demurrage fines last quarter were $180k, most traced to late clearances from documents filed under the wrong type. The director set up both calls and attends everything, but has not granted data access or signed anything. One clerk said the ERP vendor "demoed something like this"; nobody followed up. Use the 0–3 scale from MEDDICC, scored from the engineer's seat.

The question

Score each of the seven letters 0–3 with one line of evidence per score, total the deal, and name the letter you move this week and the letter you hand to sales today.

A strong answer · Rubric · Where answers go wrong

Write your answer first, then open

A strong answer

Metrics, 2: a number exists, "two hours a day per clerk", in the customer's words, but it is an estimate with no baseline measured. Economic buyer, 3: the CFO is identified, met, and has said what she needs, payback under twelve months. Decision criteria, 1: the 95% is our proposal, and "it should just work" is not a criterion; a nod is not a signature. Decision process, 2: a path exists in the director's words, procurement then the CFO, with a duration but no dates and no owner. Identify pain, 3: $180k of demurrage in a quarter, from the person who pays it, traced to the problem. Champion, 2: the director spends his time on it and convenes the calls, but has committed nothing in writing and has not opened the data, which is the test. Competition, 1: a clerk's remark about the ERP vendor, never asked about; we are assuming we are alone.

Total 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 14 of 21, with no zeros and two ones.

The letter to move this week is decision criteria, from 1 to 3: sit with four clerks, label 200 bundles, measure their agreement with each other, and write the threshold into the scoping doc with the director's name beside it. That also tests the champion, because the labelling needs the data access he has not given; if it arrives, champion goes to 3 with it. The letter to hand to sales today is competition: ask the CFO, not the clerks, what the ERP vendor showed and whether it is being evaluated, because the payback she wants is measured against the best alternative, not against nothing. Metrics moves on its own once the labelling clerks time themselves for a week.

Rubric

scores every letter with one line of evidence, not an impression
distinguishes the customer's words (2) from our proposal (1) on decision criteria
reads the CFO's payback sentence as the economic buyer's criterion and scores E accordingly
names decision criteria as the letter the engineer moves, with the labelling as the mechanism
hands competition to sales with a specific question and a specific person to ask
reports the total with its shape, no zeros and two ones, not the number alone

Where answers go wrong

"Metrics is a 3: they told us two hours a day." Loses because nobody measured it; a number spoken by a director is a 2, and the pilot's baseline week is where it becomes a 3.

"Champion is a 3: he set up every call." Loses because convening is not committing; the test of a champion is whether he spends his own capital, and the unopened data access says he has not yet.

"14 out of 21, decent, keep going." Loses because the two ones are the ones that decide the contract: an unstated criterion lets the pilot be argued down, and an unknown competitor is what the CFO compares the payback against.