Is BANT dead? Has today's buyer made BANT an antiquated methodology?

I'd say yes. I wrote a post on this very question about an approach that is replacing BANT called APNRP, originally presented by Bill Herr of Unica. In today's environment -- that has rejected the "hard sell" -- I believe this is a better approach.

APNRP approach:

Attributes
Does the prospect company’s size, annual revenue, number of employees, and industry fit the targeted market?

Position
Do the title and job function of the individuals making the evaluation, recommendation or purchase decision match the customer profile?

Need
Has the target expressed any interest in — or taken any action toward — learning how to solve the problem the selling company’s product can solve?

Readiness
Has the lead expressed any interest in learning more about the product or service being sold?

Preferences
Has the lead answered the question of how they want to be contacted in the future?

If you'd like to read a more detailed presentation on how APNRP helps marketing and sales, you can here. http://b2bmarketingsmarts.com/?s=BANT

I don't necessarily care what acronym model we use to describe this. I do know however, that a customer who doesn't have all 4 elements (budget, authority need and timeframe) is simply not ready to buy at that point in the process. He may have been 6 months ago, or he may be 6 months from now, but he isn't a statistically good bet for the immediate time horizon. It doesn't matter how excited he is or how willing he is. If he has everything else but no budget to work with....no cigar. Same with everything else in place but he/she has no decision making authority....again...no cigar.

You can nurture these things all you want (obviously recommended), but you can't hand them quite yet to expensive direct sales people and ask them to push the rope against the wall. Use the rest of your marketing arsenal, and get them to sales when BANT or BANT-like qualification is in place. So, I guess I am saying, the principles represented by BANT are tried and true and very much alive.

Hi Craig,

My answer: yes, no and it depends.

YES - BANT was dead from the get-go for some types of solutions. If a solution is new-to-market and an organization was unaware of this disruptive solution, then how could a budget have already been established?

NO - BANT is not dead for mature markets or in markets with a rigid evaluation process. If a market is mature, most evaluators will understand what the going price is and will have budgeted appropriately, even if a precise figure is not established. The public sector and those organizations with a tendering process have a very well-defined evaluation process and with budget.

DEPENDS - I am not sure that the definition of a lead is as important as the lead management process. For example, if a reasonable starting point is BANT then BANT it is! As long as sales agrees to follow-up on leads in an effective, proscribed manner, provide feedback to marketing and revise the lead definition as needed, then BANT is a good a starting point as ever. If this process drives closer collaboration and alignment between sales and marketing, then BANT will work.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/RobertLesser
Blog: http://www.directimpactnow.com/blog/

A good sales exec will tell you that their best selling takes place once they are face to face with a prospect. Haven't you ever heard a sales person say that they created an opportunity? The following are four situations where you can throw BANT out the window and just sell.

Get face-to-face and then start selling:

BUDGET - Bad economies. Prospects haven't budgeted for projects, we have to show them solid ROI
AUTHORITY - A CFO is a CFO. If you have a decision maker in your hands, sell. Authority is implied, not measured
NEED - Emerging technologies. Prospects don't know they have a Need, we must educate them
TIMING - Tomorrow is too late. If prospects haven't budgeted, don't know they have the need, then the timing is NOW to start selling

I wrote on this topic last year: http://www.green-leads.com/b2b-blog/bid/19168/BANT-It-s-Not-Always-The-Lead-S...

BANT is not dead but it is definitely under the weather and needs better care from its primary care physicians (sales and marketing executives).

As a salesperson’s tool for measuring a prospect's relative readiness to buy, BANT remains valid and useful to the sales process.

However, there are times (too many times, by my observation) that BANT is used as a rigidly applied internal service level agreement between sales and marketing (or between sales and pre-sales lead development). In some environments, BANT is set up such that the sales team literally can't talk to buyers unless BANT is fully achieved, or until a certain score threshold has been satisfied. This is a good idea when every sales person's time is fully utilized talking to BANT-qualified prospects. However, most of the time this is not the case. There is always some "excess capacity" in the revenue factory, which can actually be good thing. So to the extent that BANT is ever used to keep a less-than-maxed-out sales person from talking to a buyer who is less-than-fully-BANT-qualified, it's not a useful metric.

I think BANT is most useful when applied at the level of the individual salesperson, who must prioritize his/her time as if it were money to spent (time is the salesperson's most valuable currency). As an operational metric, BANT is not flexible enough for practical application, in my opinion.

BTW, marketers have their own version of BANT. It's called Cost per Lead (CPL). It's another metric that is useful in a narrow context, but can needlessly limit outcomes if applied too rigidly. For more on the perils of excessive adherence to CPL (and 3 metrics that are better to use), see this post:

http://www.focus.com/ugr/research/marketing/asdf/

BANT is not dead! It is one of the pipeline development tools available. When looking at the sales funnel creation function BANT is a deeper tool for those companies looking specifically at initiatives now. When the sales funnel is fully explored from the creation of an initiative to the actual purchase there will be many more opportunities available. Lead generation teams need to be developed for optimization of all opportunities from initiative creation at the top rim of the funnel to the actual bottom of buying.
There are companies who generate opportunities at the top of the funnel.. they just use another enterprise selling methodology.
Expansion of the lead gen process into demand creation process is what is becoming more valuable for companies today.

Great question Craig, and great responses so far. I'd have to say that I do not think BANT is dead - not by a long stretch. I also do not think that today's buyer has made BANT an antiquated methodology. Answering the first question may just answer the second one, and here's why:

I agree with your premise that the buyer has changed. They ARE starting their buying process without a budget, but that does not mean that the entire BUDGET process isn't still as important. That information is still part of the lead qualification route. The information that teleprospectors/inside sales reps gather from their qualification of potential sales opportunities is every bit as relevant today as ever. I think that it's evolving as buyers evolve. No, they may not have budget to buy today, but finding out when they'll have money, or how they can get money, or even that they're willing to be shown where money can be reallocated from is information that any good sales rep would love to have.

In order to pass over a qualified lead to sales, we still have to define what "qualified" means. BANT is still important because the information gathered is still the very essence of what the word "qualified" means. In this instance, Marketing and Teleprospecting/Inside Sales are "qualifying" for where a prospect is in the sales process. I agree with Susan Fantle, that, "'sales ready' is NOT 'purchase-ready.'" Still, BANT is necessary to determine where a prospect is between the two.

In saying that, I think that the answer to, "Has today's buyer made BANT an antiquated methodology," is "no," because it has helped in the evolution of the process as a means to determine their position in a sales cycle.

http://www.twitter.com/umbertom
http://blog.insideview.com/

Across our customer base (500+ sales organizations), we see that N is becoming the key. Customers need help surfacing their Need, and defining an ROI for their project.

We also see that the need for a well defined sales process (BANT or other) is higher than ever, as the new generation of reps are less likely to have gone through formal training, and structuring the conversation with the prospect into a well defined process is more important then ever (to avoid spending a lot of time in low-yield sales engagements).

Great discussion. I think that for complex services and solutions BANT is much less important. As Umberto says, need is becoming more important. We must help buyers discover their needs in the epiphany stage of the buying process. I also think that we're going to need to take a more content-based approach to qualification. If we have good content targeted to all the different stages of the buying process, we can start to use their pattern of consumption of content in the lead qualifying process by scoring the various pieces.

Chris Koch
@ckochster

Great article today on BANT today from Trish Bertuzzi entitled "Get rid of BANT and go to NOW" -- The efficacy of BANT is a hot topic on the blogosphere.

http://blog.bridgegroupinc.com/blog/tabid/47760/bid/12167/Get-Rid-of-BANT-and...

Thanks Craig. Great article and very thought provoking discussion indeed. In my most simplistic view of the world though, I think to myself. Does it really matter that buyers are more educated and closer to a decision by the time they get to you? If all that means is that they are already have pretty much made up their minds by the time they got through the blogosphere to you, wouldn't it still be a good idea to make sure they still have a burning need, a checkbook at the ready and they are actually authorized to make the purchase at that time? If you just "guess" they are ready and pass them on for closing you may simply burn sales cycles that you can avoid by simply checking their readiness and ability to purchase. I think this is a false dilemma. Whatever we call it, it's wise to make sure you got a live one before you break open the champagne..

I love Michael Hanna's weighted BANT for situations where BANT is useful for sales and marketing teams to help structure questions to advance the sales cycle: http://salesopssolutions.com/2009/12/07/bant-scoring/

Good discussion thread here Craig,
I started following on Trish Bertuzzi's blog this morning and she pointed me here. I guess I struggle with one size fits all qualification processes. When I see one being pushed as the next great thing, I suspect the person has either never sold or is trying to sell me something. :)

The big point that Trish made that i agree with (that others have also said here) is that every marketing-to-sales lead qualification process needs to be mapped out to reflect all the variables of your sales and marketing team competence, complexity of sales, buy cycle processes, target audience (tier 1 vs tier 2/3 firms, industries, etc) and target contacts (IT vs. line of Business titles).

Frankly the change in the nature of the buyer and how they approach their research and evaluation process does not invalidate any of the various approaches like BANT. When it comes to B2B Marketers, i believe they often times error in attempting to plug in one of the approaches without really spending time with the sales teams (especially the top sales person) to understand how they identify and qualify their ideal prospects/opportunities.

Gathering prospect intelligence to find good prospects and determine if they are "sales-ready" is just not as easy as many pundits would have you believe. BANT is alive and well in B2B sales and marketing. Just know that is just one of many tools and approaches to finding real buyers.

Craig
I would say that the BANT qualification is partially dependent upon the B2B solution ASP value being proposed. BANT as a lead criteria is the foundation of enterprise size opportunities. However to really get to BANT you will likely need to have someone validate that via phone in the lead qualification processes.

The cost of this level of lead qualification must be justified by the size and ASP value of the opportunity. You cannot spend $300 to tele-qualify a $3000 opportunity.

What is critical is to insure that the lead criteria be established with alignment with sales and marketing. At Avaya we tele- qualified 100% of our enterprise leads. For our SMB market with a much shorter sales cycle, our channels were more interested in the volume of leads that met the minimum aligned lead criteria.

For our enterprise leads we always tried to establish the full BANT criteria, however establishing a firm BUDGET was frequently not known or established at the earlier stages of the sales cycle that the sales force sought. At that time the sales cycle was 6-12 months and and sales force wanted to be in early enough to help influence the decision criteria.

In the tele-qualification process we put heavy emphasis on understanding the NEED ( the problem they were trying to solve). We worked to identify DECISION CRITERIA (what the criteria that the decision was to be made in solving the problem). For the AUTHORITY we tried to identify the DECISION PROCESS (who was involved in making the decision). Identifying where did our contact fit into the food chain. In many cases we moved up the decision hierarchy from the influencer to the decision maker.

This process worked well at Avaya where over the 8 years of the program (2000-2008) the enterprise conversion rate from a MQL to a SQL leads was between 70-80 % of the leads distributed.

BANT is BANT . . . a collection of 4 buyer descriptors that we used (back in the early days of direct marketing) to provide our clients with a starting point from which to start a more substantial dialog about "What is a qualified lead?"

Buyers are buyers . . . have they changed in the past 20-years? You betcha they have.

Is BANT still relevant? Sure it is -- if you use it as a means to an end and don't mistake it for the end.

I don't think it's dead. Companies can certainly still qualify using BANT, but I don't think full BANT qualification is necessary for a lead to be considered sales-ready. I think if you can qualify on the "A" and "N" part of BANT, then it's good enough. If you've found the right decision maker or key influencer and they have a need for your product or service, then they will find budget and it will fall within a reasonable timeframe.

BANT is not dead yet but it may be dying a slow death. The piece which is difficult to define is timeline. In the past year and a half almost everybody's average sales cycle has been much longer with a higher percentage of projects never happening.

I would call BANT more "customizable" than "dead". The B can stand for - ability to secure Budget - as opposed to Budget has been secured.

Authority can mean - ability to influence decision makers, etc.

I believe BANT is as relative today as ever -- and has always depended on the complexity of the buying process. If I am selling copiers door-to-door (single call close) -- I need to answer BANT quickly (does the customer have $2,500, the ability to buy, the need for a new printer, and are looking). For a more complex buying process, I may not know (nor the customer may not know) what the exact budget is -- but we better know where the budget is coming from. We may not know who exactly has "authority", but we should understand how the decision process will work and who needs to be involved. We do need to understand the drivers behind the buying process -- the greater the urgency the greater the chance of a decision being made (instead of abandoned) and typically with greater velocity (time frame).

A lead is often defined by sales as someone with BANT - budget, authority, need and timescale. This is actually quite a way down the pipeline from what is often defined by marketers as a lead - someone who has shown an interest in the product. Sales people would call these suspects. Once that interest is confirmed they become prospects and once BANT qualified they become leads.

But there is a more basic problem here. Buyers have taken control and find out about products, solutions and vendors on the web. They then check these out with reviews, buying guides etc. and ask people they trust on social media. They are thus making their buying decision without reference to sales people - or becoming leads.

So waiting for your marketing team to deliver you BANT qualified leads you can close is an outdated methodology - as is shown by the plethora of "Where have all the buyers gone?" type articles in sales media. The answer - they no longer reach your CRM or allow you to BANT them - they make the decision themselves and the first you hear about it is when the deal goes to a competitor or they ring you up and say "Here's the best price on the net. Beat it."

You need to be out there at a much earlier stage in the decision making process if you are going to influence the buying process and make sales.

It has survived since 1898 on the impulse response which is being replaced by informed decision making, but a 112 year life cycle has legitimate legacy value

If you think BANT will help you sell, just look at the results over the past, say, decade or two. With all of the lead gen technology, with SPIN and BANT and Solution selling, face-to-face vs phone, etc. etc. the success numbers have basically remained the same. That's because the sales model and BANT merely handles the needs analysis and solution placement end of the spectrum.

It's now possible (with Buying Facilitation(R)) to help buyers navigate through their behind-the-scenes decision issues that have been private, and off-line to sellers. Buyers have to do this stuff anyway (manage problems with colleagues, internal politics, external vendor issues, history, relationships, etc.) and the time it takes them to do it is the length of the sales cycle.

So BANT aside, if you merely focus on the solution placement, and don't use decision facilitation as an added skill set to help buyers navigate through their crummy internal stuff that needs to buy-in before they can purchase, it doesn't matter what you use, as the results are the same.

I wrote a blog post about the two models working together today on www.sharondrewmorgen.com.

sd