Sales POP - Purveyors of Propserity
Sales Strategies and The BANT Approach
Blog / For Sales Pros / Dec 27, 2016 / Posted by Nikolaus Kimla / 6379

Sales Strategies and The BANT Approach

0 comments

Within many sales strategies, BANT—Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe—has been a handy salesperson tool for decades. Throughout the world sales reps keep it firmly in mind, and use it as a mental checklist in qualifying an opportunity. Sales managers routinely remind their sales team members of it so they’ll use it.

Each of these components, though, contains its own checklist of data so that each data point will be fully satisfied.

Budget

Right off the bat, when qualifying a prospect company, you want to know if there is adequate budget available for your product or service. Put plainly: do they have the money? This is, of course, the oldest and most basic point of prospect qualification. The salesperson should find out if budget is available for this purchase, very early in the sales process.

There are many ways to pose this question so it won’t be awkward. You can smoothly ask something like, “If our solution solves your needs, will funding be available to move it forward?”

It’s a very good idea, at this stage, to also discover your prospect company’s decision-making process. Gather as much detail as you can because, as the opportunity moves forward, you’re probably going to have to gently coax your contact to push it through to approval.

Authority

You also want to get this one answered right up front: Does your contact have the authority to make this purchase? Or are they merely a gatekeeper?

In most cases, the person you’re in contact with will not have purchase authority, or will only have partial authority. They will often have to submit the purchase to others for budget approval. If this is the case, you should find out who is the ultimate authority or authorities. In conversation with your contact, you can then work out if the person you’re working with can deal directly with the approving person, or if you’ll be needed to talk to the authority, also.

If your contact will do all the negotiation with the budget authority, make sure you supply them with all necessary information to bring the deal to a close.

Need

Need is prime motivator of this opportunity through all steps of approval and to a close. The more intense the need, the more your contact—and all others involved in the purchase approval—will want your product or service, and will push for it.

The establishment of need will, of course, be partly accomplished by the prospect company. But in a greater degree it will be up to you. Most of the time the company will begin the process considering that they require a product or service such as yours—but your job is to discover all the reasons behind this need, and how deep it truly is. You are then tasked with clearly showing the prospect company how well your product satisfies that need. This is actually the crux of closing the sale, and as such is a vital part of sales strategies.

Your contact may not even know the reasons behind a need, simply that the company needs a product or service like yours. You should get your contact to find out, or find out yourself.

Timeframe

As part of all the qualifying information you are gathering, you’ll want to know how long this sale will take to close. Usually a company will have already established at least a rough timeframe for purchase.

One major reason you want to know this right up front is that they may not even be looking to buy for a year or more—they’re just gathering information right now. You’ll want to make a note as to when they’re going to be serious shoppers.

If they say that they’re looking at buying some time in future, any salesperson worth their salt is going to politely but firmly see what they can do to move that timeframe closer to the present.
Such a move is dependent on the specific circumstances of the prospect company, and your sales skill. It also ties right in with need.

CRM and Sales Process

Budget, authority, need and timeframe—BANT—are 4 essential elements for qualifying a prospect. If all 4 of these factors are satisfied to company standards, the lead is then moved into opportunity management within the sales process.

But as an opportunity moves through the sales process, further and continuous qualification will be needed. A robust CRM solution, totally adaptable to a company’s sales process, makes it possible for salespeople to keep all necessary factors in place and move the highest percentage of opportunities possible through to a close.

Learn more about Pipeliner CRM: Instant Intelligence, Visualized. 

About Author

CEO and partner of pipelinersales.com and the uptime ITechnologies, which I founded in 1994 and has since played a significant role in the development of the IT-environment. pipeliner is the most innovative sales CRM management solution on the market. Pipeliner was designed by sales professionals for sales professionals and helps close the gap between the requirements of C-level executives for transparency and the day-to-day operational needs of field and inside sales. I am also the founder and Initiator of the independent economic platform GO-AHEAD!, which orientates itself on the principles of a free marketplace in terms of liberal and social responsibility. Connecting people, the trust of business leadership in terms of values such as freedom, self-responsibility, and entrepreneurial spirit, and strengthening their awareness in order to create a dynamic boost within the economy triggered through spontaneity, all stand for the initial ideas surrounding GO-AHEAD! I studied in Los Angeles and Vienna and received my Masters's Degree in 1994. I am married and have 3 children My Specialties are in: Sales Management, Sales CRM Software, CRM Cloud Solutions, SAAS, Business Strategy, Software Development, "Pipeline Management", Social responsibility, outbound sales, b2b sales, inside sales, sales strategy, lead generation, sales process, entrepreneurship, coaching, mentoring, speaker, opportunity management, lead management, Austrian School of Economics

Author's Publications on Amazon

This is a practical manual covering the vital subject of Sales Management. I firmly believe that sales are the most important profession for dealing with today’s turbulent world and Econo my, for salespeople create wealth and produce peace. But salespeople need a competent, stable leader—and…
Buy on Amazon
Inside this eBook, you’ll discover a series of chapters dedicated to some of the most important areas facing sales today. From the sales process definition to measurement, lead generation, and proven sales techniques, this comprehensive eBook will provide you with the information you need to…
Buy on Amazon
A common term in sales today is EQ, which stands for “emotional I.Q.” It means the skill a salesperson has in reading emotions and utilizing them in sales. It means empathy and a number of other abilities. The short version is, it’s an I.Q. when…
Buy on Amazon
People are smart to question the future of automation, for it has become part of everything we do. With the quantity of applications and technology around us, we yet still crave more. We become convinced of its power when our package is delivered from Amazon…
Buy on Amazon
Sales management isn’t a simple subject by any means. But at the same time, it does have some basic and somewhat simple fundamentals—and that is what we are bringing to you with this book. First come pain points of sales management, and how to overcome…
Buy on Amazon
Today the Internet has transformed a seller's market into a buyer's market and author Nikolaus Kimla states that the role of sales has never been more crucial. It is now time to give salespeople the role they factually can play: entrepreneurs within the enterprise. They…
Buy on Amazon
This is our public declaration of the intentions behind Pipeliner, and our objectives and motives for the product and for our company. Behind the development of that CRM application and, in fact, behind everything we do, we have a real cause. The story begins with…
Buy on Amazon
For the future, there must be a perfect balance of humans and technology. You have to have the perfect technology, andthen the perfect human being in application, performance and presentation. Today and into the future, it’s a 50-50 balance. In the past it was perhaps…
Buy on Amazon
The salespreneur is based on the concept of the entrepreneur. Before we can explain the salespreneur, you have to have some understanding of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur plays a crucial role in any economic system. The entrepreneur seeks out information that can be utilized for…
Buy on Amazon
A seasoned captain would never leave port without a competent navigator. In a similar way, a sales manager might be a total ace at "commanding the ship" – at inspiring and coaching sales reps, pointing out and getting agreement on making quotas, and keeping everyone's…
Buy on Amazon
Comments

..
..
..
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. For information on cookies and how you can disable them, visit our privacy and cookie policy.