Monday, February 28, 2011

BANT is Bunk!

by Bill Barr

I keep hearing that some sales organizations expect their marketing department to “qualify” their leads with Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe (BANT). So Marketing sets up a call center, or uses other ways to “qualify” the lead so that sales can close it. Or sales organizations set up inside sales to move the opportunity to BANT qualified before handing it over to field sales to close.

If all sales managers want to do is get that kind of lead, then more power to them. I think that is Bunk! That’s not what professional sales people do. Professional sales people are the ones that need to do the BANT job. How else will they develop thought leadership, relationships and be able to establish the benchmark for the buying decision?

If all a sales leader wants is for the sales people to negotiate and close, all s/he needs to do is hire fast food workers for the job – “There you go, out the door, next guest please.”
If you are in commodity sales, then go there. If not, read on.

Real sales people should be living in the proactive qualifying stages of a buying process, not just in the reactive “get three bids” stage.

So then, what is a real “lead?” They come in all stages of the buying process. But research says that most don’t get worked because they are not “ready to buy.”

I like ones that are investigating, inquisitive, or not even looking. In other words, early in the buy cycle. Sure, I’ll take the active buyer leads as well, but that is not where the real eagles fly. Eagles want to know the basics of how to reach/contact them and what their job title is, but they also want to know what they found interesting when they looked at us. What was the topic of the trade show speech they followed up on? What was the gist of the ad campaign that got a name? Was it product push, needs focused, centered on new ways of working, or the payoffs of our offerings?

If you know what to do with it, any name is a good lead.

Bill Barr is owner of Sales Candy, a company that offers games providing experiential training in B2B selling. His blog is http://www.salescandy.com/wp/. You can reach him by email or call 336-937 0972. Visit www.salescandy.com.

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