BANT is a lead qualification process many small businesses use to determine how to rank and score leads in order to decide which ones to focus on. It involves using questions to understand a prospect’s (B)udget, (A)uthority to make buying decisions, a (N)eed for your solution, and the (T)imeline for making a decision.
What Is the BANT Method?
Lead generation using the BANT method follows a specific process that helps sales reps determine if a prospect should be pursued. It works by focusing on four specific areas to qualify each lead—each an important factor in whether a prospect is likely to become a customer.
The four areas that make up BANT’s definition include:
Budget
This part of the process involves the financial means of the lead’s business. Sales management professionals should be assessing if their prospects have a specific budget for your products or services, and how much they are willing to pay for it. For example, you can ask if they have purchased similar products or services before and how much they have allocated in their budget for it.
Authority
Authority involves determining who the decision-makers are for making a purchasing decision when talking with a lead. The lead should have the authority to sign contracts on behalf of the company and write or authorize payment. Often, when they don’t have direct authorization, they can connect you to the person who does. Asking questions about the buying process and who needs to be involved can help you determine whether they have purchasing authority.
Need
In this part of the BANT method, you’re assessing if your products or services actually solve a problem the lead currently has. For example, if you’re selling accounting software and they are a growing company that is still using spreadsheets, you could demonstrate the need for your product that could save them time by eliminating the manual process of spreadsheets and automating their accounting practices.
Timeline
You have to evaluate the level of urgency the lead currently has. Find out how soon they are planning to make a decision. For instance, if they are already in a contract with a competitor, the timing might not be right—but you’ll know when you should revisit if you ask when the contract expires. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential customer a question like “What is your timeline for making a purchasing decision?” Most customers won’t have a problem sharing this information.
How to Use BANT & How Not To
When employing the BANT method with a lead, you should develop steps that set the stage for success. Like any process or method, BANT is meant to give you a framework for discovering whether or not a prospect is qualified, and if not, where the gaps are. This gives you information you can use to either move the sales process forward or move on to other sales opportunities.
Here are five steps for engaging a prospect with BANT:
1. Schedule a Consultation
Be sure to make the consultation a two-way conversation. BANT isn’t meant to be used as a checklist, but as a way to guide a sales conversation and rank the lead appropriately. Set up a mutually agreed upon time to meet for about 15 to 30 minutes to determine if there is a good fit for working together.
2. Meet Where the Prospect Is Comfortable
You want to engage the prospect and make them feel comfortable, so don’t demand they come to your office for the consultation. Be flexible and ask where they would like to meet. It could be their office, a coffee shop, or even a video conference—make sure they make the choice to build rapport.
3. Prepare a List of Questions in Advance
Do a bit of research about the company and prepare a list of questions in advance you’d like to ask. For example, you’ll likely want to ask questions about if they’ve ever encountered issues with the problem your products or services solve and who at the company would be affected if they decided to make a purchasing decision.
4. Have a Dialogue, Not an Interrogation
Each discussion with every prospect should be a little different. Keep the discussion conversational. If a lead senses you are merely asking a pre-set list of questions each time, and aren’t genuinely interested in developing a relationship, you’ll likely shut the lead down—and you may never hear from them again.
For example, if you are talking with a lead and they say they aren’t going to have a budget ready for your product until three months down the line, don’t stop there and call them back three months later. By that time, they will probably have another solution in place. Dig deep to find out the why behind how their budget process works.
You might ask questions about how the budget approval process works, how long it takes to get an expense approved, and which stakeholders need to be involved. In my experience, three months—or more—was often a standard amount of time it could take to close a deal with a qualified lead, especially if it required board approval. This means it’s important to understand the process behind a customer’s answers as well.
5. Record & Score Your Prospects Answers
Even if you have the best conversation with a prospect, you won’t remember every detail if you don’t take notes. Bring a notepad or laptop and tell the lead you’re going to take some notes so you can go back to come up with the best solution for them.
Record your prospect’s answers and put them into your customer relationship management (CRM) system to help you determine if a lead is a good fit. With HubSpot CRM, you can create your own lead qualification criteria based on up to 25 different scoring sheets. Visit their website to sign up for a demo and learn more.
BANT Questions You Should Ask
When you’re following the BANT lead qualification method, you should prepare and bring a list of questions that can help guide the conversation. Once you’ve done it several times, it will start to feel natural and you’ll know what you should talk about next with each lead. These questions should be open-ended to allow a prospect to provide you with information, instead of just yes or no answers.
Here are some qualifying questions for each stage of the BANT method:
Budget
- How much are you currently spending to solve this problem or business need?
- If you don’t fix this issue, how much will it cost your company in the next three to five years?
- What is your budget range for this product or service?
- What kind of return on investment would you like to see if you purchased our product or services?
- Is there a particular budget line item this would come out of, and is it flexible enough to be factored into another category?
Authority
- Who has the power to make a buying decision—is it one person or several people?
- How many (and which) people will be using the product or services, as well as how many people will it affect?
- Historically, when you make buying decisions, what does that process look like?
Need
- How long has it been since you determined you have had this {specific} business problem?
- What do you imagine happening if you don’t address the problem?
- How have you tried to solve the problem before, and to what degree of success?
- Where does solving this problem stand on your list of priorities?
Timeline
- What is the estimated date for when you’d like to solve this problem?
- What are the revenue goals you have for the next fiscal year that our product could assist with?
- What major company initiatives are you planning in the next several months, such as hiring a large number of new staff, acquiring another small business, or moving locations?
4 Best Practices for Using BANT Effectively
While the BANT method is flexible and you want conversations to flow organically, there are good guidelines to follow to make sure you properly engage the lead. Here are four best practices to follow when using BANT with any lead.
Don’t Let Budget Be a Barrier
Don’t stop if your lead says the budget isn’t there. Dive deeper and see how big the problem is and how motivated they are to solve it. If you provide enough value on how your solution can save time (and potentially money, in some cases), many companies will find a way to afford your products or services.
Discover the Decision-makers
Identify all stakeholders. Before a purchasing decision can be made, you have to know who the decision-makers are and convince them you have the right solution. Some people who aren’t decision-makers will be happy to talk to you for hours on end, but if they can’t get you to the person who can sign off on a purchase, you’re wasting your time.
Identify How Decisions Are Made
Figure out how decisions are made in their organization. Do they operate on a fiscal cycle where buying decisions are made on a quarterly or annual basis? Perhaps they have a board that needs to vote on expenditures over a certain dollar amount. This helps you know far out to plan in advance, so you start conversations at the right time.
Use Software to Record Answers & Qualify Leads
Most small businesses use software such as a CRM to help them keep track of conversations with prospects during the sales process. You use a CRM such as HubSpot to record notes about your prospect’s needs, track emails and phone calls, and use that information to further qualify if they are a good fit.
Pros & Cons of the BANT Method
While the BANT method is a popular effective strategy for qualifying leads, it comes with strengths and weaknesses—just like any sales method. Let’s dive into a few of the pros and cons of adopting BANT so that you can determine whether it’s the best method for qualifying prospects.
Pros of the BANT Method
- Simplicity: It has an easy-to-follow format that is particularly useful for new sales professionals.
- Effectiveness: Used correctly, the BANT method is great for discovering if you should move forward with a lead by covering the four major areas.
- Credibility: BANT was designed by IBM, which had success using the method in their sales process.
Cons of the BANT Method
- Too rigid: For example, a sales rep might disqualify a lead based on budget, but they could have found a solution for it to be fit into the budget if they had asked more questions.
- Assessing need: In today’s innovative business world, sometimes you need to convince the lead they have a problem they don’t know already exists, which isn’t covered in BANT.
- Addressing multiple stakeholders: BANT was originally designed for shorter sales cycles with limited decision-makers. For longer sales cycles that impact a large number of people, another method may work better.
Bottom Line
Every business should adopt a lead qualification process to determine the leads most likely to make purchases and positively impact your revenue stream. BANT is a tried-and-true method that helps small businesses assess budgets, identify decision-makers, evaluate the need, and learn more about the amount of time it may take to close a deal.
No matter what method you use to qualify leads, it’s important to store each prospect in a CRM to store conversations and contact information. HubSpot CRM offers a professional version that allows you to automate lead qualification and prioritize follow-up by scoring your contacts across thousands of data points. Sign up for a 14-day free trial by visiting their website today.
