The BANT method is the best-known qualification method in the world of sales. It aims to improve the sales cycle by accurately evaluating prospects according to four key criteria: Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing.
I) Getting the right deals into your pipeline with the BANT methodology:
Budget → The first letter concerns the budget, which can be a crucial factor in the buying decision. It's essential to ensure that a business can afford the proposed solution, but this doesn't have to be a deal-breaker.
Sample questions:
"What is your planned budget for this project?"
"Have you allocated specific funds for this solution?"
"How do you usually manage your spending in this area?"
"If there's no budget allocated, what ROI is expected? If there's no expected ROI, then what specific benefits are anticipated?"
Authority → The idea is to ensure that the rep works directly with decision-makers - or, at least, with people who can strongly influence a purchasing decision.
Sample questions:
"Who will make the final decision on this project?"
"Who are the key players involved in the decision-making process?"
"Can you give me an overview of your organization's decision-making structure?"
Need → By discovering the needs and problems of potential customers, the reps will be able to determine whether the solution suits their needs. If it isn't, it means they won't buy.
Sample questions:
"What are your main objectives or challenges to be solved with this solution?"
"What problems are you currently experiencing in your process or business?"
"How can our product/service meet your specific needs?"
Timing → Understanding how tight deadlines are can help salespeople determine which prospects should be dealt with first.
Sample questions:
- "What is your expected timeline for implementing this project?"
- "What are the important deadlines and time constraints to be respected? At a business level, at your level, at your company's level, or otherwise?"
- "By what date do you plan to have this solution up and running?"
Using the BANT method during the lead qualification phase allows you to ensure that your reps are putting the right effort in the right place and that your deals moving through your pipeline have all the elements they need to close. For example, during the closing phase, you'll avoid discovering that your sales rep wasn't talking to the right person from the outset.
II) Boost the adoption of your BANT methodology with Modjo:
Push the live use of BANT with Modjo Notes templates.
To guarantee the application of the BANT method you can create Modjo Notes templates. At the start of each customer meeting, the template will be displayed as a pop-up with all the key points your sales rep needs to qualify.
The information collected is automatically logged in your CRM.
These templates enable you to standardize your sales approach and make the analysis of your prospects more rigorous and the management of your pipeline more efficient.
In this way, you standardize your sales execution, and you can be sure that your sales reps will remember to ask all the questions they need to ask to qualify a lead. What's more, you won't lose any information because these notes will be automatically added in your CRM.
Evaluate the adoption of your methodology and identify your coaching needs with AI Call Scoring.
It's always very complicated to know whether your team is applying your qualification methodology. That's why we created AI Call Scoring.
It's a feature that, thanks to AI, automatically checks whether all the qualification questions have been asked by your sales reps.
This provides you with a score enabling you to understand which elements have been well assimilated by your team and which have been less so.
For example, here, the team is not implementing the BANT A "Authority" very well, which gives you a valuable indication for a future coaching session and for reinforcing the application of the BANT method in your team.
We hope that this article will give you lots of ideas on how to apply BANT in your team, and that all your deals that make it through to the closing phase will finally have a B-A-N-T.