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BANT (Sales) Definition

BANT refers to a sales qualification framework that is used to determine and evaluate prospects based on authority, needs, timeline, and budget.

A Little More on What is BANT

The concept of BANT was developed by IBM to identify prospect opportunity. According to the IBM website, the following has been discovered. BANT opportunity identification criteria: The BANT opportunities are identified through extensive communication to clients or prospects to determine the business and solutions to the problems that may face the business According to BANT framework, a validated opportunity occurs when the prospect has three out of four BANT items. The decision of the framework lies on the ISR or sales representative which can either choose a tighter or looser BANT form.

• Budget  What is the budget for the prospect?
• Authority Does the prospect an influencer or have the decision-making authority?
• Need  What is the business need for the prospects?
• Timeframe  Within what the prospect will implement timeframe solutions?
• Modern Challenges with BANT applied to SaaS Sales
• Budget  currently, the SaaS subscription model draws from OpEx budgets. However, traditionally, the purchases were from a CapEx budget. Does this imply any change?
• Authority  Do organizations still currently make decisions of purchases on a one senior authoritative voice enforcing choice?
• Need  This involves determining What is a Need vs. a Must and a Want? Does it further determine how SaaS address a Need or are a greater portion of the services just a Nice-to-have?
• Timeframe  This seeks to determine whether the concept of framework differs from SaaS deal with measurement of sales cycle taking place after some time and the implementation of a single click?

Above all, does the current world still based on sales-centric where individuals look for clients budgets that support sales solution? Or have changes occurred to the situation that the current world is based on more customer-centric in which individuals assist customers in determining, diagnosing, and resolving a problem? If changes have occurred, what changes are they? And in light of this shift, how does individual qualify for SaaS deal? After considering all these, it was found that, when BANT is used in traditional SaaS sales qualifications, few changes are realized:

• The problem for SDRs: SDRs backfires when assigned to BANT to qualify a deal since they start selling when the client is still receiving information.
• The problem for AEs: When AEs executes BANT to qualify a deal, they are affirmatively answered even before the deal is not yet qualified.

References for BANT

• https://www.saleshacker.com/bant-sales-qualification-new-era/
• https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/bant
• https://www.yesware.com/blog/bant/

Academic Research on BANT

• Factiva reshapes marketing for better lead generation, Scott, A. (2006). Journal of Organizational Excellence, 25(2), 39-46. In the face of increasing online and business search and retrieval, the markets remain active and work effectively. This paper explores the impact of online and business information on the market activities. According to the study, it was revealed that the current marketing firms leverage new market intelligence, new leadership, decision-making tools, technology and a new mindset that aims at collaborating to achieve an inside-out and a top-to-bottom transformation.
• The digital evolution in B2B marketing, Council, M. L. (2012). The Corporate Executive Board Company www. mlc. Executive board. Com (assessed November 2014). This paper examines the evolution of B2B marketing and its essential in the marketing arena. The study revealed that potential customers turn to the personal networks and the available public information through social and digital media platform. The customers use the B2B scope to diagnose their problems and form their opinions about solutions.
• Can marketing automation be the glue that helps align sales and marketing?, Redding, S. (2015). Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 16(4), 260-265. In the current world, marketing is continuously challenged making sales to generate high-quality leads. This article examines the impacts of market automation in shaping the sales and marketing around the world. The article also discusses the role played by technology in business transformation. The study was based on the interviews of marketers that provided an in-depth understanding of the impact of technology on marketing. From the study, it was revealed that technology plays an essential role in shaping the market in the current world.
• B2B TECH STARTUP MARKETING AND CLOUD COMPUTING: UTILIZATION AND IMPACT OF CLOUD MARKETING AUTOMATION SOFTWARE, Smith, S. (2016). (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon). The cloud computing proliferation has led to the development of enterprise marketing areas such as the platforms offered by Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, IBM, and Marketo. This regard, this article examines the impact of enterprise marketing software on the business. The author provides that the enterprise marketing software has tremendously changed the B2B technology startups. The markets have switched from using traditional marketing mediums such as televisions and magazines to automated systems that combine search engines such as email campaigns sales
• Marketing and Sales Automation, Hannig, U. (2017). In Marketing and Sales Automation (pp. 3-18). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. The current world market has experienced various strategic changes in the marketing communication. This paper examines and discusses the marketing and sales automation that has considerably shaped the marketing. According to the author, the current marketing and sales automation follows the emergence of technology.
• Adapting the Lead Management Process, Hidalgo, C. (2015). In Driving Demand (pp. 91-104). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. This paper focuses on determining the obstacles that occur in B2B marketing. According to the article, it was revealed that most of the organizations are still struggling to change their marketing strategies. The author also discovered that the marketers are struggling to take advantage of increased market automation and demand generation budget.
• Automating Lead Creation in Tradeshows: Event tool implementation in Marketo-SalesForce architecture, Invenius, L. (2017). The objective of this paper is to explore the automation of lead creation in market-sales force. The automation is based on the event tools selected by the customers, lead creation and resource registration. From the study, it was revealed that most of the customers and markets rely on the blueprint and automation of the market-sales force system. Therefore, it was recommended that lead automation should be developed to improve the quality of the lead.
• Moving the NeedleLead Scoring and Progression, Albee, A. (2015). In Digital Relevance (pp. 211-218). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. The objective of this paper to make a comparison of various lead scoring against one another. According to the author, lead scoring help in aligning the right follow-up to the market automation. The lead scoring also helps the marketers and sales individuals to identify the prospects in the buying process. Besides, lead scoring helps ensure the best leads are followed up on immediately by prioritizing leads according to revenue potential and buyer readiness.
• The Definitive Guide to Data-Driven Sales Forecasting, Forecasting, D. D. S. The Definitive Following the introduction of new technology, most companies have been facing challenges related to achieving effective and accurate forecasting. In this regard, this paper seeks to explore and provide a solution to the forecasting challenges facing the marketers and the companies. It further provides the mechanism that can be used by the marketers and companies to obtain accurate forecasting.
• B2B-Telemarketing Model For an International IT-Company, Korhonen, J. (2014). This paper aims at developing a practical and functional B2B telemarketing model for the companies that use the model. According to the author, the contemporary state of B2B was discovered to be one of the best and widely used as a direct marketing option.