Confessions of a BANT-osaurus

Good formulas and frameworks never go out of style.  

• Solving for X in a quadratic equation, FOIL 
• Area of Trapezoid, Base + Top / 2 * height
• Organizational transformation levers, governance, metrics and rewards

Imagine my surprise when I learned that BANT was considered passe by two of my colleagues who suggested:

"BANT? You know I love you brother. But BANT went out about 15 years ago. No qualification should deal with budget upfront. Deal with the need, what the problem is that you’re solving. If there’s a significant compelling event, budget will be there. But asking that upfront before we’ve aligned on the problem is the easy route to sales where you’re looking to pick off opportunities from bottom of funnel. Working top of funnel is harder and takes time, but is far more strategic!"

"BANT is something that I feel might be less relevant these days - it depends on your industry. Budget - Incredibly overrated. If the impact of not solving the problem is great enough, they'll find the money; Authority - Even CEOs these days like to build buy-in; Need - Here's where I think we SHOULD focus Timing - If the need is great enough along with impact, that will drive urgency."

Budget is something you should deal with way up front.  Don’t market or sell a channel integration system to the single retail outlet operator. Know who your ideal customer profile is, determine what their appetite is for your offering before you waste precious people, time and money.  Creating the budget early on in the buyer’s journey may be worthwhile but if only it is feasible.

• Our target market is retail chains with 25 to 250 outlets and web sales equal to or greater than 25% of the business.

Authority is not overrated and yes, single decision makers are as common as unicorns.   Are you marketing to the right personas with meaningful content that will drive a decision?  If your marketing and selling effort is not reaching the right authorization levels in the buyers' organization, making your revenue number is going to be tough.

• The three key personas we need to market and sell to are the CMO, VP of Store Ops and CFO.

Need, both colleagues recognize that need can drive budget and timing.  Well done if you’re dealing at the right authorization level. How many times have you seen talented sales people stymied by a blocker?  Now really talented sales people get beyond the blocker most of the time, but not always. Start with your marketing, by identifying personas and their needs, tailor content and adjust for compelling events.  Are you reaching the right level in the organization to stimulate need?

• Organizations in this category are struggling to keep up with Amazon, Wal-Mart and other larger integrated retailers.  Our solution solves for this by offering superior customer interaction.

Timing may not be relevant, if you don’t have quota or a quarterly revenue number to hit.   If you do, then building a pipeline of opportunities with customers who will buy over a time horizon is critical if you are going to hit your quarterly number, quarter after quarter.  Marketing's goal should be the number of sales qualified leads that close, this quarter and each quarter there after.

• The buying cycle for our solution is 3 months for 250 store chains and 6 months for 50 or fewer. 

Buyers go on varying journeys, selling cycle terminology is constantly evolving.  You can ask four questions in an account review, regardless of B2B, B2G or B2C and know whether or not your marketer and seller are aligned and your revenue number is secure.  

Digging into Budget, Authority, Need and Timing provides revenue focused executives with a clean way to shave away irrelevant variables, which what William of Okham meant before the term "occam's razor" was coined.

Whether you are a Chief Executive Officer, Director of Marketing or a Sales Operations Manager; if you have a role in revenue, BANT is the framework for identifying gaps and aligning teams.  Just like a2 + b2 solves for the length of c2.

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