From POC Failures to Predictable Sales: How Deep Tech Founders Can Use ChatGPT for MEDDIC Qualification

We’ve built something incredible. The tech works. The demos go well. Everyone seems excited. So why aren’t these POCs converting to paid contracts?

If this internal monologue sounds familiar, you’re not alone. I’ve struggled with this and the majority of founders I work with who want to transform their innovation into scalable commercial success suffer from one of these problems:

Your POC projects fail to convert into paying customers.
Deals that seemed certain to close suddenly go cold.
Your sales pipeline is full of deals that never close.

I’ve noticed they stem from three fundamental issues:

Wasting time on deals that would never close
Not exploring promising deals enough.
Believing a great product sells itself (spoiler: understanding buyer behavior is as important as building great technology)

As deep tech founders, we’re drawn to product development. We’re comfortable discussing technical specifications and feature sets.

The harsh truth is that sales qualification—determining which prospects deserve your attention—often determines successful scaling and running out of runway.

MEDDIC: The Qualification Framework Deep Tech Founders Need

The MEDDIC sales qualification framework has become the gold standard for enterprise sales, particularly in complex, high-value B2B transactions—typical of deep tech startups.

MEDDIC stands for:

Metrics: Quantifiable impact of your solution - in your customers’ words
Economic Buyer: The person who can buy your product.
Decision Criteria: The metrics or qualitative measures your customer will use to decide to buy your product.
Decision Process: Steps to reach a decision - in your customers’ mind
Identify Pain: The challenges your solution addresses for your customer
Champion: Your internal advocate

You might have noticed the emphasis on your customers’ words. It’s easy to engage with our own opinion on the metrics and process they should follow.

Harsh truth - you can’t change how your customer buys, so give up. Stop fighting and trying to educate. Your job isn’t to change their buying process, it’s to sell them a product the way they want.

You’ve experienced annoying salespeople who call you when you just want to buy online. Don’t be that salesperson.

When applied correctly, MEDDIC clarifies which deals to focus and which to avoid. But there’s a catch: implementing MEDDIC requires experience, discipline, and a systematic approach—things early-stage founders often lack while juggling multiple roles.

Leveraging ChatGPT to Apply MEDDIC Without Hiring a VP of Sales

What if an experienced sales leader analyzes your customer conversations, identifies qualification gaps, and coaches your team—without the £150K+ cost of a seasoned VP of Sales?

That’s where ChatGPT comes in. I’ve developed a prompt that transforms ChatGPT into a virtual Chief Sales Officer who analyzes your customer calls through the MEDDIC framework, providing objective qualification scores and targeted coaching.

Here’s the prompt:

You are my chief sales officer, you’re an expert in sales qualification. Use the MEDDIC formula to qualify the call transcript, scoring each category for 0 - 10. Always back up your claim with a quote an label the quote with the name of the speaker. Before you start, read the transcript and ask me who is the customer and who is from our team. Make sure you only quote the customer - not us. Focus particularly on “Identify Pain” giving disproportionate focus to this part of MEDDIC. Give coaching notes to your team members in the call to help them improve their selling techniques.

How It Works: A Real-World Example

Use a tool like Otter.ai, or Zoom or Teams’ built-in recorder to record your sales calls. Before recording, ask for permission, especially with traditional companies, and explain why. I say “recording ensures I don’t miss anything and lets me stay focused on you. It’s for internal use only.”

You can find an anonymised version of a real transcript here. Here’s the output and a link to the chat (ChatGPT o1).

Prompt Output

MEDDIC Qualification & Scores Below is how this opportunity aligns with each element, focusing on “Identify Pain.” Each category is scored from 0 to 10. All quotes are from John Smith (the customer).

M (Metrics) – Score: 7/10

Reasoning: John Smith clearly references potential volume and how many devices some customers are producing (in the millions). While he doesn’t provide hard ROI figures or budget numbers, he does highlight the scale and cost sensitivity.

John Smith: “For example, in two weeks, I’ll visit someone producing about 1.5 million pieces.”

This shows a real, quantifiable demand for a solution—especially at high volume. However, we still need more specifics on budget impact, cost savings, or ROI targets to raise this score further.

E (Economic Buyer) – Score: 8/10

Reasoning: John Smith is a VP at the customer; he likely has significant influence or direct authority over budget decisions. Although we haven’t heard him explicitly say, “I hold the budget,” he strongly implies he drives strategy around compliance and security solutions.

John Smith: “It’s really interesting to see people react and realize, ‘Now we have a real issue, and we have to start.’ We see this in all the questions.”

Because he speaks about “management meetings” and shares how the organization is addressing compliance, it’s likely that he either is or has direct access to the economic buyer.

D (Decision Criteria) – Score: 7/10

Reasoning: John Smith repeatedly references the importance of cost, time to market, and compliance (especially CRA) as key decision drivers. However, the exact technical and commercial criteria (e.g., must integrate with existing factory lines, must remain under a specific cost threshold) are not spelled out in detail. We do see the main selection filter:

John Smith: “So how to bring the device, at scale, to the market? … That’s exactly where [our solution] fits. … They’ll want to know about costs—this is a cost-critical matter.”

We have a preliminary grasp that compliance, cost, and ease of provisioning are top priorities. More detail on final standards, proof of concept, and timeline would improve clarity around the exact decision criteria.

D (Decision Process) – Score: 6/10

Reasoning: The conversation uncovers near-term activities, such as upcoming management meetings and the possibility of partnership presentations, but the exact timeline and steps to final approval are not fully mapped. We know they are “starting now” because of the compliance deadline, but we don’t yet know each gate, who signs off, or how procurement is structured.

John Smith: “I have a management meeting … The primary question on the agenda is, ‘How do you handle key installation on devices during production?’”

He gives insight into next steps (management discussion), but we still need clarity on the formal process (e.g., RFP, POC phases, final sign-off).

I (Identify Pain) – Score: 9/10

Reasoning: The pain is very clear and urgent: customers need to comply with CRA requirements, are confused about provisioning keys and secure onboarding at scale, and risk being “lost” if they don’t act now. John Smith emphasizes the pressing nature of compliance, the complexity around production lines, and the risk of failing to meet market and legal expectations.

Key Pain Points Summarized:

Provisioning Complexity: They lack an established, scalable method to securely install keys in high-volume manufacturing.
Compliance Urgency: CRA compliance is both new and evolving; they can’t wait for final harmonized standards.
Cost Sensitivity: Adding secure elements can be expensive.
Time-to-Market Pressure: A lengthy development cycle (~1.5 years) means decisions must be made now.

John Smith: “They have to start now; they have to make their considerations now—otherwise, they are lost.” John Smith: “So how to bring the device, at scale, to the market? … The device onboarding to the network is the trickiest part for them to implement.”

These comments lay bare the “pain” they’re experiencing around compliance and provisioning.

C (Champion) – Score: 7/10

Reasoning: John Smith may well be a champion. He openly states that he sees a need for a secure provisioning solution and wants to include it in front of customers. He’s actively requesting materials (“Send me two slides … so I can show how to do provisioning”), which suggests he’s willing to evangelize.

John Smith: “Send me a two-slide summary that I can use in two weeks when I meet a customer. That would really help.”

He’s engaged and wants to bring our offering into discussions. However, we still need to confirm his influence internally and whether he is truly dedicated to championing our solution over other potential vendors.

Coaching Notes for the Team

Dig Deeper on Decision Process

Encourage John Smith (and other stakeholders) to outline who signs off on budget, how compliance decisions are ratified, and key milestones. Ask more follow-up questions about the internal steps once he presents your slides to his management team.
1. Quantify the Cost of Inaction
John Smith mentions that not starting now risks being “lost,” but tie that to a dollar value or a timeline. Ask him (or his team) how missed deadlines or non-compliance might affect revenue, market share, or production costs.
1. Expand the Champion Role
He appears enthusiastic, but ensure you provide him with the specific talking points and ROI messaging so he can effectively make the internal case. The more you equip him with business, technical, and financial arguments, the stronger your champion becomes.
1. Elevate the Sense of Urgency
He already has a strong sense of urgency around compliance. Reinforce that it isn’t just a “long-term worry” but an immediate threat to 2025 product launches. Leverage real examples or mini-case studies to show how others solved it quickly and the cost/pain when they didn’t.
1. Positioning Provisioning as the Core Differentiator
Pain is centered on provisioning. Make sure you continue to highlight that your solution is easy, cost-effective, and proven at scale. Emphasize the readiness to deploy—no waiting for new standards to finalize.
1. Keep It Simple
John Smith stresses that sales teams “will need a plain-language approach.” Coach your team to avoid deep technical jargon when presenting. Instead, showcase how you can solve the top compliance pain points straightforwardly.

By addressing their immediate provisioning and CRA compliance pain, you can accelerate urgency. John Smith is open to collaboration and likely a champion for your offering, but you’ll need to help him build the internal business case and navigate the exact decision process.

Overcoming the Three Core Problems

Let’s connect the initial problems I identified and how the ChatGPT-powered MEDDIC qualification system addresses each one:

1. Wasting time on deals that would never close.

The MEDDIC framework forces you to score each opportunity objectively, revealing deals lacking critical elements like a true economic buyer or clear decision criteria.

If you don’t have a clearly identified pain, the deal will never close. If you can’t agree on an identified pain within one to three calls, move on.

2. Not exploring promising deals deeply enough.

The MEDDIC analysis highlights where your qualification is incomplete. The coaching notes push you to dig deeper on specific elements—like understanding the full decision process or quantifying the cost of inaction. This approach ensures you invest in understanding the buyers’ needs, timelines, and decision-making structure for your most promising opportunities, rather than having surface-level conversations across many deals.

3. Believing a great product sells itself

The MEDDIC framework shifts your focus from product features to customer buying behavior. The qualification process trains you to identify pain points, map decision processes, and find champions—the human elements of selling that matter as much as your technology. Over time, this approach transforms your team’s sales approach, creating a culture that respects both product innovation and sales discipline.

Implementation: How to Make This Work for Your Startup

Here’s how to implement this in your sales process:

Record customer calls (with permission).
Use tools like Otter.ai or Teams/Zoom to transcribe them.
Feed the transcripts to ChatGPT using the prompt above.
Review the MEDDIC scores and coaching suggestions.
Adjust your follow-up strategy based on the analysis.
Track which scores correlate with deal success over time.

Ready to transform your sales approach from hoping to knowing?

I offer hands-on sales acceleration programs that help deep tech founders implement the MEDDIC qualification system across your organization.

You’ll close more deals and build a repeatable, scalable sales process that investors love through my proven methodology.

Don’t let another promising POC slip away. Book a consultation call at nickblack.us where we’ll analyze a recent customer interaction and show you how this system can work for your technology and market. Your runway is precious; invest it in deals that will close.