SPICED – A More Versatile Sales Framework for the Modern GTM Motion

Over the last few posts, we brought together an eclectic mix of a number of different sales methodologies and qualification frameworks—SPIN Selling, The Challenger Sale, The Jolt Effect and MEDDPICC—into a single, Unified Sales Process.

What's striking about these, is that they were built on data from structured observation, behavioural science, and machine learning. But while they were each developed with scientific rigour, they are often perceived as rigid or hard to implement outside of complex, high-ticket Enterprise deals.

The reality is, the most effective sales teams combine both art and science — and build an operating rhythm that’s appropriate to their motion, market, and maturity.

That’s where SPICED comes in.

Scaling Simplicity: Making Methodology Work in the Real World

SPICED was developed by Winning by Design not as a replacement for traditional methodologies, but rather as a practical operating system for modern GTM teams.

Unlike some frameworks that only address sales, SPICED was designed to work across the full customer lifecycle — from Sales to Customer Success, from onboarding through to expansion. It blends sales process with qualification logic, without needing a different tool at every turn.

And while SPICED may look lighter than its predecessors, it actually encapsulates many of the same core principles — just with a simplified structure better suited for faster motions, mid-market teams, or cross-functional alignment.

It’s intentionally a step down in complexity and sophistication from our Unified Sales Process, as SPICED strips out some of the nuance required in models like Challenger or JOLT, making it better suited to teams or motions that don’t need to reframe buyer thinking or manage deep psychological indecision. It’s a simpler, more accessible framework that still delivers structure and consistency where it's needed most.

SPICED Explained – A Simplified Framework with Complete Coverage

Here’s what SPICED stands for — and how it maps back to the more detailed elements of our unified sales methodology:

🔵 S – Situation: This is the context of the customer’s world today. This is the same as in the SPIN sales methodology.

• Think: industry, business model, size, growth stage, tech stack, GTM motion.

• Goal: understand where the customer is starting from.

✅ Why it matters: Without knowing where the customer is today, you can’t meaningfully diagnose or recommend change.

🔵 P – Pain: These are the challenges the customer is facing right now. Equivalent to Problem in SPIN and Identify Pain in MEDDPICC.

• Often surface-level at first: inefficiencies, manual work, poor conversion, etc.

• Must dig beyond symptoms to root causes.

✅ Why it matters: Pain is the trigger for change. No pain = no deal.

🔵 I – Impact: The commercial consequences of the pain, what’s at stake if nothing changes. This is the same as “Implicated Pain”—a concept straight from SPIN, and critical to MEDDPICC qualification. This is where the value conversation begins.

• Ties pain to quantifiable business impact—time, money, risk.

• Includes both hard metrics (revenue loss, churn) and soft impacts (frustration, inefficiency).

✅ Why it matters: It creates urgency and builds the business case for change.

🔵 CE – Critical Event A compelling reason to act by a specific time. This introduces urgency and timing pressure. It's the deadline or trigger for action. In many ways, this replaces MEDDPICC’s 'Champion' and 'Economic Buyer' by focusing on timeline ownership.

• Could be internal (budget review, board meeting) or external (IPO, compliance deadline).

• Anchors the deal timeline to a real business milestone.

✅ Why it matters: Without a Critical Event, deals drift. This is WbD’s answer to ‘compelling event’ in traditional sales language.

🔵 D – Decision: How and by whom the decision will be made, or the combined process, people and criteria required to make the decision. This collapses MEDDPICC’s Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria and Decision Process into a single, practical lens.

• Includes buying process, stakeholders, approvals, and procurement stages.

✅ Why it matters: A strong deal isn’t just about value—it’s about process control.

SPICED brings together discovery, qualification and process navigation in one framework — and it’s flexible enough to work across GTM functions and segments.

Where SPICED Excels

SPICED doesn’t try to out-do SPIN or MEDDPICC. Instead, it reframes the sales approach in a way that’s easier to adopt and scale across teams and motions.

It excels in several areas:

1. It simplifies without oversimplifying. SPICED shortens the learning curve without losing critical thinking — it keeps discovery structured and qualification rigorous.

2. It supports team-wide adoption. Because SPICED can be used by CS, SDRs, AEs, and even Marketing, it creates a shared language across the revenue engine.

3. It blends sales process and qualification logic. You don’t need one framework for methodology and another for forecasting — SPICED does both.

4. It aligns well with faster-moving, less complex GTM motions. Where Challenger or JOLT might feel like overkill in a commercial or mid-market context, SPICED remains accessible and highly actionable.

Where SPICED Fits in the Sales Process

Let’s map it to the same five-stage sales process we’ve been using:

Because SPICED is modular, it can be revisited and expanded throughout the cycle. Like MEDDPICC, it isn’t a one-time inspection — it’s a thinking framework used from first contact through to expansion.

From SPICED to the Bow Tie: What Happens After the Close

So far, we’ve focused on pre-sale methodology—how to qualify, discover, sell, and close.

But SPICED doesn’t stop at Close/Won.

It’s designed to be carried into onboarding, adoption, and expansion — helping CS and account teams tie delivery and success plans directly back to the original pain and impact.

This sets us up perfectly for the next phase of the GTM story — the Winning by Design Bow Tie Model.