Qualifying leads with BANT

BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Time, and is a more advanced lead qualification practice than demographics and firmographics. BANT takes into consideration the ability to secure facts about the prospect before moving forward, and therefore these are questions often asked by the sales rep to further qualify the lead. 

Although you can ask some of these questions up front on a website form, my philosophy is that your forms should always be short and leave the tough questions to your sales teams. Research shows that the longer the form, the more drop-off you have. 

Budget Budget is a big one. Make sure the lead can afford your product or service. This is often one of the first questions that your sales rep asks in order to determine whether the lead is good or not. Both B2B and B2C companies care about the answer to the budget question How much do you have budgeted for this project/item  

Your lead will likely not give you a specific answer, so expect a range, and be ready to ask some other questions (like what she s currently using today) to indirectly deduce a conclusion. And also remember that budgets are flexible and can change. However, don t spend time trying to sell a 3,500 handbag to someone who only really has the money to spend 350. 

Authority After you have determined that a lead has the dough to spend on your product or service, find out whether he has the authority to make the decision. Can he sign that dotted line If so, you cire truly in luck. But most likely, the first contact you speak to will be a gatekeeper of sorts, or an influencer, as 1 like to call them. Your first contact, even if she is not the decision-maker, is most likely crucial to the decisionmaking process. She heis either been tasked to find a solution, or is the one experiencing the pain that your product can rectify. 

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