Identifying which prospects are willing and able to actually become clients is one of the hardest challenges sales professionals face. Often, potential buyers couldn’t be more interested in what you’re selling, but they simply don’t meet the requirements.
For example, many people are interested in buying a Ferrari, but most can’t afford it. Can you imagine how much time and money Ferrari would waste on marketing and sales materials aimed at prospects who aren't qualified? Some people just don't fit the criteria to become customers or clients.
This is why it’s so important to determine which potential customers are worth investing in. Still, effective lead qualification isn’t easy to master, so adopting a sales qualification methodology like BANT may be just the framework your sales team needs.
BANT is a sales qualification framework that helps sales teams identify leads worth pursuing by considering their Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeline.
It was developed by IBM in the 1950s to qualify leads more quickly. The strategy worked well for IBM and other companies back then, and today, it’s still one of the most popular sales qualification methods. When applied correctly, the BANT framework saves sales teams time and effort, as sales reps can bypass prospects with no potential.
The pillars that hold BANT together are the essential information sales reps should learn about potential customers to determine whether or not they’re a good fit. The framework is useful for qualifying prospects in a business-to-business (B2B) sales setting. By doing so, sales reps can quickly qualify (or disqualify) prospects and dedicate efforts only to the accounts that are most likely to conduct business with the organization.
So, to effectively apply the framework, sales reps should ask the following questions about:
Does the potential lead have the necessary budget to close the deal? What are the budget constraints?
Is the prospective client the decision-making authority and, therefore, the one who will make the ultimate decision?
Is your product or service truly needed to reduce this prospect’s pain? What is/are the prospect’s major pain point(s)?
What is the prospect’s desired timeframe to make a purchasing decision?
Viable leads need to meet at least three of the four BANT criteria. However, evaluating prospects solely based on these questions isn’t realistic. Here are some action points a sales team can use to effectively determine whether prospects meet the BANT sales framework criteria.
Identifying the B in BANT isn’t just about knowing if the prospect has the budget. They may have budget limitations that don’t allow them to allocate funds. So, to effectively implement the budget component, ask the following questions:
Ask the potential lead about their budget range to address their needs and see if that budget is within a reasonable range of your product or service’s price. From there, you can learn if the prospect can afford the product or service and tailor your sales approach to offer a solution within the prospect’s budget.
If you can’t clearly determine the prospect’s purchasing power, the workaround is to learn whether they have spent any amount on similar solutions and how much it was. When you know the potential customer has invested in resolving this issue before, it’s easier to assume they have the budget component covered and move on to assess other criteria.
If the expected ROI aligns with your solution, the prospect is worth investing in. On the other hand, if there’s an unreasonable divergence between the prospect’s allocated budget and their expected ROI, you may want to disqualify them right away.
The A in BANT, the authority component, requires those involved in the sales process to identify stakeholders in charge of purchasing decisions. Identifying key buying decision makers is essential to properly qualifying leads, as investing time and effort in economic buyers rather than end users is more worthwhile.
You may be in touch with someone who needs the solution but doesn’t have the authority to close the deal. Plus, the solution the prospect needs isn’t always among the executive leadership’s priorities. So, make sure you know from the beginning whether the person you’re interacting with most is a champion or the actual individual who calls the shots with purchasing decisions.
Identifying and understanding the N in BANT may be the most important action point in lead qualification, as it’s impossible to close a deal if your product or service doesn’t offer a solution to the prospect’s needs and pain points.
Only by clearly defining the prospect’s challenges can you verify whether your solution addresses all of them. If it does, it’s easier to personalize a proposal that aligns with the prospect’s business. In the same way, you can quickly disqualify the prospect if your solution doesn’t cater to their specific needs.
Knowing how the problem was addressed before helps you understand why previous strategies didn’t work out. With this information, you can determine if and how you can create better solutions and approaches to overcome unaddressed challenges.
The T component in BANT represents the timeline in which the prospect intends to close the deal. Knowing this timeframe is key to determining whether the final deadline fits your schedule if the deal goes through.
Finding out when the potential customer expects to see value is vital. This information helps the sales team prioritize leads based on the likelihood of them making a purchase shortly, and it also helps post-sales teams understand what these new customers expect.
Qualified leads are the ones whose decision-making process doesn’t take longer than your average sales process. Similarly, you don’t want to invest in potential clients who need a solution on a timeline that your team simply can’t deliver.
Mixing the BANT sales qualification framework with digital tools is an excellent strategy to enhance the lead generation and qualification process. Using a CRM tool is helpful for sales teams that want to collect and store lead data from various sources and categorize the information according to predefined criteria.
CRM platforms are the key to storing prospects’ information in one place. Centralizing lead data allows the sales team to stay on top of active leads, streamlining the lead qualification process.
The ideal CRM platform provides features that allow sales teams to track KPIs, such as the number of qualified prospects that convert into closed-won deals. This is an excellent way to check whether the BANT lead qualification framework is working with your team.
After analyzing the insights provided by your CRM tool, you may infer that using the BANT sales qualification framework was less effective than expected. It’s possible BANT isn’t suitable for your team, and that’s alright.
Although BANT has been around for a while and works well for many companies, it’s important to consider the following aspects before adopting it:
The BANT lead qualification framework focuses on determining whether a prospect is right for your company. By nature, it’s seller-centric because the lead’s viability is the center of the strategy. If your sales efforts aim at building meaningful relationships with the target audience, then BANT might not be for you.
Some people think BANT is an outdated method that lacks empathy and is just about ticking boxes. If you think BANT is too old-school for today’s buyers, more modern approaches may better fit your team.
Even though the BANT lead qualification questions are the core of the strategy, relying solely on them is like shooting yourself in the foot. The BANT questions are for seamless use in conversation, not for running an unpleasant questionnaire. If you see the framework as a checklist, this approach won’t work for you.
Despite being a beloved framework for global organizations, some sales experts aren’t big fans of the BANT framework. Some key concerns regarding each component are:
At Streak, we’re neither cheerleaders nor naysayers when it comes to BANT; we know its efficacy depends on the organization, team, and product. Whether you give it a try or not, we recommend a CRM solution to optimize lead qualification and balance multiple prospects concurrently. Since the BANT framework aims to enhance lead qualification and save precious time, gathering all lead information and neatly storing it is essential to success.
Everyone on the sales team can manage leads, prospects, and contacts directly from their Gmail inbox with our CRM, Streak. The tool automatically creates a dedicated workflow for each lead and account, complete with contact information, exchanged emails, calls, and any other interactions you’ve had.
Streak also features a powerful mail merge tool for sending mass, personalized lead-nurturing emails, which you can craft applying the BANT criteria.
Not convinced you can optimize your lead generation process directly from Gmail? Then, see it yourself and request a free 14-day trial of Streak today.
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