How BANT Can Help In Qualifying Leads?

Qualifying sales leads can be one of the toughest nuts to crack. You need to know whether the opportunity in front of you is worth your time and effort. And this is important because, honestly, nobody wants to waste their time on a prospect who is not going to buy products or services. 

The lead qualification process quintessentially helps you determine whether a potential customer is truly interested in your offerings. 

If you look at it from another perspective, the process of qualifying something is innate in human beings. We want to know whether the restaurant we pick to have food will be worth our time and money, or a job that we’re taking will be worth our efforts. 

Even though every organization uses its own lead qualifying process, it is imperative to understand its importance. Today, we are going to talk about BANT, a popular lead qualifying process that helps sales reps find quality leads. 

Regardless of whether you’ve heard about it, BANT was quite popular years before, until organizations gave it up. And that’s because of the way people were using it.  

Let’s take a look at what BANT is all about-

What is BANT?

Wondering what is BANT?

The foundation of BANT was laid by the organization IBM, as one of the sales lead qualifying methodologies. Soon it became the go-to method for the job. BANT is the acronym, where- 

B- Budget

A- Authority

N- Need,

T- Timing

The four pillars of BANT help the sales reps discover some of the most important factors regarding a potential prospect. However, the effectiveness of the method reduced since people started using BANT as a checklist rather than a strategy. 

Sales rep prepared a questionnaire and started bombarding the leads with questions, without paying attention to the responses they were getting or the fact that it was an interrogation more than an interaction with them. 

However, when used as a strategy, BANT can help businesses capitalize on the right and most fruitful leads. 

Budget

One of the fundamental things that you do before you sell your products to someone knows their budget. Try to understand how much is the prospect willing to spend. Ask them questions like how much are you currently spending on this problem, whose budget is this coming out from, what is the ROI that you are planning to see with the money spent, along with how heavily do you weigh price into making this decision. 

Try to figure out your customer’s response around these questions so that you get to know the thought process behind their budget. 

Authority

Figuring out the authority in an organization means to know who will make the ultimate purchase decision. By having knowledge of the decision-maker, you can create an effective campaign that is targeted to the right person. This also means setting the right tone for your sales, conducting quality research and finding the pain points. 

When determining authority, ask questions like who will be using the product, has the organization invested in a similar product before, how was the response received upon using the past products, do you need to invite other people for the meeting, etc. 

Need

Why would someone want to buy a product from you until they feel that the product solves a problem for them? The point is that you can’t serve someone who doesn’t have a need. The more desperate their needs are, the more urgently you can submit a proposal and help them down a sales funnel. When trying to understand their needs, ask questions like how long have you had the problem or when did you identify the need, what happens if you don’t address this need, what measures have you already taken to address this need among others.

Timing

When it comes to sales, timing is everything. The more urgently they’d want something addresses, the faster they’ll look for a solution for it. Maybe they want a solution tomorrow or a year later, having this information helps in presenting them with the right motives and opportunities. 

When you’re trying to understand the timing of the purchase, explore ideas like are they planning to begin a new project, etc, what are the deadlines they’re expecting, when would they like to finalize the agreement among others.

Conclusion

Once you understand all these aspects clearly, you’ll get a clear picture of who fits the description of your ideal customer. Start making the move once you realize this and don’t make the budget a blocker. After all, if a little tweak in your sales process can help you earn a good lifetime value from the customer, it is worth a shot.