Sales and PreSales team on a daily basis will have to navigate through a number of opportunities and decide on which one to pursue or drop. Most of times, a decision is made based on intuition, experience, personal bias and available knowledge. When the decision goes wrong, we will have to pay it using our time and efforts. To add, we will also be answerable for the organizational resources utilized for the same.
BANT is a life saver here. It helps in first level opportunity qualification, one of the hardest phases in opportunity management.
BANT stands for
- Budget: What is prospect’s budget?
- Authority: Is our contact a decision maker/influencer?
- Need: What is their business need?
- Timeline: What is timeframe they are looking to implement solution?
According to BANT if an opportunity satisfies any of the three above, it can be considered as BANT qualified. IBM has come-up with this revolutionary framework few decades ago.
Relevance of BANT has reduced now, considering the change in the economic landscape. But I still believe it can be used to qualify small-medium scale opportunities. Again, if you feel, you need a better framework, choose the one that gives to better confidence.
Which are the other frameworks used in similar lines?
Here you go
- GPCT (Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline)
- ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money)
- FACT (Fit, Alignment, Competition, Timeline)
If you would love to know more about this, reach to me at mail@hari.live.