Most companies that inquire about our services have already made a decision to outsource those functions and are seeking to find a partner that offers the best fit for their specific challenges.  Every so often, however, we encounter a company that is actively struggling with the in house vs. outsource dilemma.

Certainly, the ability to develop “inside sales” resources in house offers a great deal of potential, and some companies elect to go in that direction.  Typically, their thinking is based upon assumptions that taking the process in house will give them greater control and communication, greater levels of expertise, a methodology for training new sales resources and, perhaps most importantly, offer significant cost savings.  On the surface, it seems like a simple cost-effective decision, especially when just comparing hourly rates – the most obvious metric.  Unfortunately, the issues are far more complex than that, and those objectives are rarely, if ever, met successfully.

First, most organizations don’t have systems in place that facilitate control and tracking of teleservices activity.  Success in this endeavor is far more complex than simply mandating some number of calls per day and providing a basic database (CRM) into which the results can be reported.  The requirement to actively manage the process is often overlooked.  And that’s not a part-time activity taken on by someone with little or no expertise in the area.  There is a need for ongoing monitoring of calls, to be sure that your brand is being represented with the degree of quality it deserves.  And there is a need for careful review of notes to ensure that potential opportunities are being managed appropriately and are not lost for lack of follow up and tracking.  Analogous to medical records, there is a need to ensure that the notes related to the progress of each opportunity are sufficiently detailed to enable someone else to take over the record should the current business developer be replaced.  As a result, there is far more management time needed than is typically planned.  On top of having to provide systems and dedicated management resources, you’ll need to provide dedicated, isolated space and phone systems that will support phone-intensive activity.  Those costs are typically overlooked and are always present in abundance.

Perhaps the most challenging issues relate to personnel (as is usually the case).  You’ll need a systematic methodology for recruiting, hiring and training qualified people.  The more complex your subject matter and value proposition, the more difficult it will be to find the “right” people.  Complex products and services need to be handled in a consultative dialogue, not with a script.  That means you’ll need people who can think and probe and listen and “peel the onion.” Personnel management is an ongoing process because there will inevitably be turnover.  And, with turnover, comes more efforts at recruiting, hiring and training (with lost opportunity cost during the ramp up period).  And that’s true even if a career path is established, because you’ll need to replace them when and if a promotion occurs.  These rather substantial indirect costs are also rarely considered when a company considers going down the in house path.

To further complicate matters, because these dedicated people are likely to be doing the same thing day in and day out, all day long, they will be significantly less productive later in the day than earlier.  The smarter and more sophisticated the people are that you hire, the greater the likelihood that boredom will soon set in (repetition is not stimulating to these folks).  This inevitably leads to shorter tenure and higher turnover rates.  And then there’s vacation and sick leave with lost opportunity costs associated with those periods as well.  We always project our productivity as double that of a dedicated in house effort, and I’ve never been wrong about that estimate.  If anything, double is a generous view of in house productivity.

So, while hourly direct cost is significantly lower using in house resources, the total direct + indirect costs are often 50-70% higher than the rates we charge.  In fact, the most common outcome is to scrap the in house resources and go back to the old (extremely costly) plan of the “same old way.”

So, if you have success in managing all of that and end up with a winning program, please let me know.  Because, as you can see, it will be unusual.

The B2B Magazine’s Lead Generation guide is out.

Some interesting articles that may be of interest includes …

• Finding new ways to maximize your list
• Telemarketing can still ring up sales
• What’s a marketing customer vs. a sales customer?

~mf

LiveChat has been used primarily as a support tool on consumer-related sites.

Recently, however, B2B companies have begun using chat as a tool to enhance users’ experience on their websites.  There are many people who are skeptical of the value of this tool and some even view it as detracting from the users’ experience.

eti Sales Support has been engaged in a new client initiative in which we are utilizing “proactive” chat to engage prospects early on In their discovery process – depending on their behavior and time on certain pages– to explore and see if LiveChat is able to  increase the number of qualified leads being generated.

Does it work?

The short answer is “yes,” but only when it’s done right.   LiveChat can and does enable you to engage with prospects intelligently and proactively to identify qualified sales-ready opportunities.

Effective B2B LiveChat , requires the deployment of intelligent  well trained “people” to communicate and smartly engage with your prospects.  There is nothing more frustrating to a prospect than having to deal with canned, non-meaningful responses from poorly trained agents who are asking scripted questions as opposed to engaging in a consultative dialogue with highly qualified and trained Business Developers.

If your brand is important to you, then you must tread very carefully if you intend to embark on any strategy that short changes your customers and prospects and harms their experience while visiting  your websites.

We’re also finding that highly focused well executed live chat can markedly help a prospect move into and down the funnel, thereby decreasing the average time it takes to move the prospect from “suspect” to “sales-ready.”  And because it is a proactive approach, we’re engaging prospects much earlier on and directly – before they may possibly leave the website in favor of a competitor’s site.

There are, however, a number of caveats.

Being a relatively new way of business to prospect communication only a fraction of the prospects offered the chat option accept and participate in a livechat.  It’s difficult to know if this has some negative impact on the overall user’s experience.  My feeling is that it is relatively harmless and will be less so as the communication medium becomes more frequently used.

Of those who engaged in a live chat (in our current sales support program’s case to date), 20% represent some real sales potential.  Others fall into the following buckets:

• Technical Support
• Customer service requests
• Foreign inquiries
• Miscellaneous/ non-sales related

Of the 20% who had some sales potential, roughly 50% were sufficiently qualified in a follow up phone qualification process to meet our client’s specifications for a qualified sales-ready opportunity.

So yes we’ve demonstrated that it can and does work if handled and managed properly.

Stay tuned.  I will update this blog periodically as eti develops a set of best practices and processes to maximize the lead generating capabilities of these activities.

What are the primary differences between Appointment Setting and Lead Generation efforts?

• It’s relatively easy to get appointments.  Even with top decision makers in large companies.
• It’s generally much harder to identify genuine purchase potential in addition to setting an appointment with the key  individuals who would ultimately be involved in making a purchasing decision.

Why?

Appointment Setting:

Assuming the solutions you offer and your brand is well positioned in the marketplace, then many executives may be at least willing to “learn” more about what you might be able to do for them.

If you’re brand is not well known, then it’s certainly much harder.

However, when little or no commitment is involved, it’s an easier row to hoe.

This does not, however, signal that they have real buying interest.  They may have a need.  They may even have some pain.  But that’s not what’s being asked of them.  They’re simply being asked to say yes to “learning more.”  Most of all, it doen’t mean that their organization has the capacity to implement the required change in the near term.

Yes, a good sales person who is worth his or her salt might take this opportunity and, over time, develop it to the point that a sale can take place.  However, rarely do appointment setting programs generate near-term sales.  And rarely are sales persons efficient and patient enough to nurture leads over time to ensure their long-term success.

Of course, you can always get lucky.  But luck is not a strategy.
It’s always useful to remember in this context that in any given sales force the 80/20 rule generally applies.  80% of the sales force is comprised of order takers (or farmers) and only 20% are real hunters.  Moreover, generally speaking, 80% of the sales force generates 20% of the sales revenue.

So is an appointment with a decision maker in and of itself a “bad” result?  No.  It’s just not an efficient or productive one, because the productivity of the sales person is not maximized and the cost per sale, ultimately, is more expensive   even if your cost per appointment is lower.

Lead Generation:
Consider on the other hand a lead generation effort that is focused on maximizing sales productivity.  It emphasizes identifying real “ready to engage “opportunities, enabling the sales person to spend more time selling to the right prospects at the right time.  In other words, lead generation effort should not just open the door,they should open a door only where real potential to purchase exists.

Why it comes down to sales productivity.

Sales productivity has been addressed many times in this blog.  In fact, for the past 20 years it has consistently been eti Sales Support’s motto.  (You may find the 3 part blog entitled  Rethinking BANT by Sheldon Sachs, eti’s VP of Business Development, of interest.)

Table 1:

So even though the cost per opportunity is higher ($1,000 vs. $600) via a Lead Generation effort, the number of “sales” over the equivalent period is double and the actual cost per sale is $455 less than the result of an Appointment Setting effort.

Lastly, let’s also not forget the Lost Opportunity factor.  If your sales people are not calling on those prospects that have real buying potential and the competition is, then your poor investments in Appointment Setting are just that much more costly because they are spinning their wheels talking to the wrong people and the wrong prospect companies.

So think twice about wasting precious selling time on plain old appointments.  A better choice would be to invest in a highly effective and sustained lead generation effort that will result in real sales sooner.

The term ‘call guide’ is often mistakenly considered synonymous with the term ’script.’  Perhaps in some circles, that is, indeed the case, but not at eti.  Since our inception in 1987, we have never used scripts.

Scripts are intended to be delivered verbatim by Telephone Sales Representatives (TSR’s) as they conduct their interactions with prospects.  Most times these scripts are TELL-type documents that essentially require the TSR to deliver/read the exact canned message regardless of the responses or needs of the person they are calling.  The key skills for the caller are outwardly focused on reading a message as opposed to engaging in a dialog, probing and listening for need, pain and interest and being able to adjust accordingly.

Why a script?  Because TSR’s working in such environments usually cannot be trusted to engage in a meaningful discussion with their prospects.  Neither their educational background nor their business experience gives them the ability to undertake the essential consultative dialog that is required.

Typically, the script structure has a fixed blurb about the product / service / charity / politician being sold or promoted and then some responses are provided for the most frequent questions and or objections.  Scripts are generally used in low-cost consumer and fund raising environments or in commodity Business-to-Business (B2B) applications where brand and market positioning are not as important as breadth of coverage.  They are also often used in high-pressure boiler rooms where ‘dialing for dollars is the name of the game.

Call Guides, on the other hand, are used to engage a prospect in a focused discussion (a consultative dialog) between a Business Developer (BD) and a prospect.  Call Guides do not dictate in any way exactly what must be said, how or in what sequence.  Instead, they set a framework for the prospective conversation.  In our world, a call guide is comprised of probing questions that are designed to stimulate a discussion about the product, service or solution about which we are calling and how it might benefit their organization.  The idea is to seek and develop a “mutual perception of need” between our clients’ offerings and the needs of the prospect organization.  Ultimately, it is there to provide a road map for the BD to navigate the prospecting waters in order for both parties to assess the potential for a mutually valuable business relationship.

Generally, Call Guides are used in sophisticated B2B environments for more complex lead generation and qualification programs.  Using call guides requires BD’s with solid education, intelligence, relationship development skills, business acumen, aptitude and comfort engaging in a consultative relationship with someone who typically knows far more than they do about the topics being discussed.  These are precisely the characteristics that we seek when evaluating people to work as BDs at eti Sales Support.

The Aberdeen group is out with their 2009 buyers guide.  This study focuses on the Best Practices of Best-in-class companies who deploy outsourced B2B Teleservices.

Some highlights …

Best-in-Class companies have sales teams with an average of 90% achievement of the overall sales team quota

Best-in-Class companies increased their average revenue per sales rep by 10% on a year-over-year basis

Best-in-Class companies experienced an average 7% year-over-year improvement of their bid-to-win ratio

Here is the press release:

SOURCE: Aberdeen Group

  

Dec 10, 2009 10:00 ET

B2B TeleServices: The 2009 Buyer’s Guide

Going Beyond the Simple Acquisition of Flat Data or Sales Appointments

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – December 10, 2009) – Top performing sales organizations are meeting the challenges of increasing the quality of incoming leads, as well as the overall size of their pipeline, by turning to external providers of business-to-business (B2B) teleservices for a wide variety of deliverables, according to a new research study published by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS).

“B2B TeleServices: The 2009 Buyer’s Guide,” which examined 206 organizations deploying outsourced B2B teleservices, found that the sales teams of Best-in-Class companies achieved an average of 90% of the overall sales team quota.

“When organizations deploy an outsourced B2B teleservices provider to acquire and deliver some form of sales opportunities, they are essentially seeking to fill the selling pipeline with as many qualified leads as possible,” says Peter Ostrow, Research Director, Sales Effectiveness, Aberdeen Group, the report’s author. “Leading companies are building substantial, multi-faceted relationships with solution providers that go far beyond the simple acquisition of flat data or sales appointments.”

The report reveals what leading companies have been able to achieve through deployment of outsourced B2B teleservices, such as:

 

--  7% yearly increase on average in bid-to-win ratio

--  Average annual revenue per sales rep has increased 11% year-over-year

Click here to obtain your copy.

Final part of a three-part blog

Part 1 | Part 2

In Part 1 of my three-part “BANT rant,” I expressed doubts about BANT being sufficient as the determinant of qualified sales opportunities.  First and foremost, BANT takes a seller-centric perspective that doesn’t consider the ways in which buyers think, at least not with respect to purchases that are not commodities.  Second, I suggested that while the BANT elements might be necessary for a buying decision, by themselves they are not sufficient to ensure that a purchase decision will ever be made, or if that purchase decision will be favorable to you.

In the second part, I reviewed each of the BANT elements, exploring in sequence why I felt that the BANT model is overly simplistic and fails to consider the buyer’s perspective.  I argued that requiring a Budget, for example, was less relevant than having adequate Resources (to acquire your solution), and might even work against you if that budget was determined without your input.

Then, I suggested that Need was also seller-oriented; the buyer is focused more on having a reason to act…now if the problems are imperative.  We have a multitude of needs that often remain unfulfilled for lack of impetus.  And, depending on how vital it is to obtain an adequate solution, the resources will flow accordingly.  Finally, I argued that decisions (perhaps for anything other than commodities) are virtually never made by a single individual, especially in the enterprise.

In all, I thought the following questions were far more buyer-oriented and relevant to how and when a decision would be made:

• Is there a compelling reason to do something?
• Are the stakeholders who would feel the impact included in decision-making?
• Is there a solution out there that can resolve the problem using the resources available?
• And, are there substantial consequences for failure to act timely?

Perhaps the very best place to start is by taking a hard look at the sales process and analyzing the critical stages.  First, a statement that may seem, on the surface to be overly simplistic, but when you consider it carefully, you may find yourself in full agreement.

The biggest impediment to closing a sale is inertia.  And, overcoming inertia is the primary challenge.
Look at some of the language of selling: “value is more important than cost,” “it’s vital to provide clear ROI,” “establish mutual perception of need,” “where’s the pain?” and so on.  These are all perfectly legitimate perspectives, and I have made similar statements like that many times in coaching sales people.

But, the fact is, you can definitively establish value and pain and need and ROI and yet the prospective buyer simply doesn’t buy.  They continue the status quo with all of its inherent costs and pain (all of which they have openly acknowledged).

I can’t help believing that the reason for inaction is that the perceived cost of changing the way in which they currently operate – financially, emotionally (more likely) or both – exceeds the cost of maintaining the status quo, even to the point where status quo leads to the failure of the company.  It may not be rational, but it is quite human.

So, if inertia is the critical factor that a sales person needs to overcome in order to successfully conclude a sale, then it is vital for them to have an understanding of the prospect company’s orientation to change.  Wouldn’t it be important for them to know if a company is risk averse or, alternatively, is an early adopter, or somewhere else along the continuum?  And wouldn’t that be a valuable element to capture and rate relative to the qualifying characteristics?

This is clearly the missing element in the traditional BANT paradigm because, regardless of whether you view the sales process from a buyer or seller’s perspective, an opportunity can’t be seen as fully sales qualified unless there is a legitimate possibility that the prospect company will make the necessary changes.
So what we do have?  I suggest “I CARE”:

• Imperative – a compelling reason to consider a new solution
• Consequences of inaction
• Agreement among stakeholders
• Resources to obtain a solution
• Environment conducive to change (overcoming inertia)

This acronym represents a more practical and accurate method for defining a qualified sales opportunity and it is equally applicable to both seller and buyer.

First, it’s important to uncover a compelling reason for a company to take an action to meet a need or resolve a challenge.  Next, the consequences of inaction need to be sufficient to warrant a search for a solution.  Is there consensus for taking action among all the key constituents (stakeholders) who are feeling the impact of the need/challenge as well as those responsible for resolving it?  Then, a solution needs to available and the capacity to obtain the resources needed for a solution needs to exist (remember, if it’s important enough, the resources can be found, regardless of budgetary considerations).  And, last and most important, how amenable is the organization to effecting change?

Before I end this, I don’t want to forget the promise I made at the end of the first part.  Here is the setting:

You are walking down the street on your way to an important meeting.  It is lunchtime and you are hungry, you have the resources and sufficient time to eat.  There are a multitude of restaurants and street vendors, including some of your favorites.  Although you are hungry, eating is not your highest priority.

Your decision to stop and eat is reasonably complex.  There are competing needs, at varying levels of urgency.  You are hungry (a function of an early breakfast), abetted by a regular ritual of eating lunch at the prescribed time.  So your internal debate will take a multitude of factors into account.  For example:

• I’m hungry
• This meeting is very important
• I always eat at this time of the day
• I have sufficient time to eat before my meeting
• I would love a few moments to check my email and voice messages before my meeting, (but I could do that without eating)
• If I don’t eat, my growing hunger may become a distraction during the meeting
• I have more than enough money in my pocket and, besides, my bill for lunch will be covered as a reimbursable expense

While considering your options, these and other questions will arise until you make a decision.  And, of course, making no decision is equally a decision.  In complex businesses, making no decision is what happens all too frequently – because the cost of doing something has ripple effects throughout the organization.  Inertia – maintaining the status quo (sometimes even in the face of all rationality such as unquestionable ROI) – is too often the easiest course of action.

How would this decision-making process be represented in the I CARE model?

• Imperative: hunger, time of day (lunchtime)
• Consequences of inaction: poor meeting performance, distraction
• Agreement among stakeholders: You (and your growling stomach)
• Resources: money is not an issue, and it’s a reimbursable expense
• Environment conducive to change:  it boils down to inertia, doesn’t it?

How can a proprietor get you to stop and eat?  What can they do to raise the threshold high enough to overcome inertia?

You experience the answer all the time in those situations, don’t you?  Some vendors and restaurants pump out tantalizing smells of their luscious offerings and tease you with them.  Others do something with their display; maybe they toss the pizza in the front window, or display the desserts or even offer you a complimentary taste in front of their establishment.  Maybe they offer free Wi-Fi that enables you to easily and quickly check your messages.

All of those actions and offerings are designed to entice you to into their establishment and overcome inertia.  When they hit the right hot buttons for you, you’re sold.  But even having decided where you may eat, unless all the other factors are aligned you still may not physically go in (inertia).  It’s only at the point that you decide to CHANGE the course you’re on right now that the sale may actually get consummated.

To conclude what we’ve been exploring over the past few weeks, BANT has been a useful and important early model for focusing the qualification process.  But it needs some rethinking because it fails to consider the prospective buyer’s viewpoint and is inadequate in identifying the elements that are the key determinants for concluding a sale.

When a seller has a clear understanding of how a prospective buyer makes their decisions, and solid insight into how the prospect views the issues and their proclivity to change the way in which they behave, they have more chance of success.  This more closely aligns their goals with those of the prospect and provides them with far better insight as to the hot buttons that will serve to overcome inertia (which is, after all, the heart of the sales challenge).

And isn’t the purpose of defining a qualified lead all about providing sales people with opportunities that offer them a better chance of closing more sales in less time?  Success in that endeavor is the basis for enhancing sales productivity, maximizing ROI and increasing sales revenue.

BANT, however time tested, does not necessarily increase the chance of sales success.  I CARE does it better.

Part two of a three-part blog:

(See first part.)

In Part 1 of our three-part “BANT rant,” I began by raising some doubts about the efficacy of the BANT approach being the defining factor in determining a qualified sales opportunity.  I offered two main reasons why I felt that BANT wasn’t sufficient as a definition.

First and foremost, BANT offers a seller-centric perspective.  Budget, Authority, Need and Timing are not the ways in which buyers think, at least not with respect to purchases that are not commodities.  They think about business challenges, resources, relationships and the potential (and actual) consequences of action and inaction.  And organizational politics come into play, as tends to happen all too frequently with real people in real life, even when there is alignment within an organization as to goals and objectives.

Second, I suggested that while the BANT elements might be necessary for a buying decision, by themselves they are not sufficient to ensure that a decision will ever be made to purchase, or if that purchase decisions will be favorable to you.

Let’s look at each of the elements independently:

B (Budget)
Plainly, if a prospect already has a defined budget, then you are probably too late to the party.  They may have already been in discussion with one or more of your competitors, and that’s how they came up with that budget..  Or they may have established a budget based upon some other basis (research), but it is not likely to be the budget you would preferably craft for them, nor does it consider the value of your solution (remember, it’s rarely about price and generally about value).

It’s akin to the RFP dilemma.  If a company has issued an RFP, and you were not involved in setting those standards, then it was established based upon a vision that did not include your solution.  And, unless your solution matches the requirements to a tee, you may not want to get involved.  RFP’s, for the most part, create commoditized procurement decisions, not value-based decisions.  If you are not selling a commodity, and if you don’t want a decision made essentially on the basis of price, then you need an opportunity to demonstrate your value.

The bottom line is that it may be preferable for them not to have a budget (just as you’d prefer them not to have an RFP).  Yet you do want them to have the resources needed to fund a solution to the needs they have and the challenges they are facing, preferably at a level that makes your solution affordable.

Ideally, however, you want to help them craft both a solution and a budget and you should want to be there before that process is initiated.  So, the very best time to get involved is before they have a budget and before they have envisioned a solution.

Given all of that, is Budget truly a qualifying criterion?  Now we’re left with ANT or, if we substitute Resources for Budget, we have RANT.

A (Authority)
Most people assume that this means that you have identified or (preferably) are engaged with the decision-maker.  This is way too simplistic for the real world.  The problem is that, in virtually every situation imaginable (especially in a complex B2B setting), there is no single decision-maker.  Decisions are never made by a single person and, perhaps, never even by a single department.  The truth is that most enterprises have matrix relationships in which anyone, at virtually any level, can raise their hands and put the brakes on a decision or a shift in direction.

Even in small “mom and pop” businesses, decisions are rarely made by a single person, even the owner.  In almost every situation, there are trusted advisors, spouses, key staff and even business colleagues outside of the company who can influence a buying decision significantly.

What is vital is to gain an understanding of how decisions in areas related to your solution are made within organizations.  You need to know who is typically involved in that process and gain an understanding of the relationships (from both a personal and business perspective) among the key people involved.

Finally, you also want to understand another critical element:  the company’s orientation to change.  Is this a company that takes risks, or are they risk averse?  Are they somewhere in the middle?  Their orientation toward change will tell you a great deal more than you can imagine about the strategies you should employ to move them toward adopting your solution.

N (Need)
Of all of the BANT elements, this is the most seller-centric of all.  I can’t begin to count all the times that a sales representative has come to me and said, “It’s a slam dunk … they NEED our solution.”  In the story I related at the end of the first segment about walking down the street at lunchtime on the way to a meeting, the need for food is clear.  We need it to live and we need it to satisfy and resolve pangs of hunger.  But, do we need it NOW?  It may be lunchtime, but there are competing needs and demands that have greater urgency at present and render that need less vital.

So, it’s not about need, it’s about some compelling event or reason that raises the urgency of that need to an “act now” level.  Absent that level of motivation, there is no credible impetus for change and no substantive reason for the resources to be expended, even if the money is available and someone is willing to spend it.

T (Time frame)
This is also a seller-centric view.  What is really meant here is, “is this opportunity going to come to fruition in the near-term so it becomes worthwhile for me, as a salesperson, to spend my time on it?”  And, the truth is, in and of itself, it is meaningless.  Time is only important in the context of all of the other elements.

Do we have a compelling event?  Is everyone who is feeling the impact of this event involved in the decision making process?  Is there a solution out there that can resolve our problem using the resources we have available?  And, what is the consequence to us (as a company) if we fail to act timely?

Those are the more important determinants of the relative value of a potential sales opportunity.

In the third and last segment of this discussion, we’ll focus in on putting this all together into a practical framework.  And then, perhaps, we can begin to consider an answer to the question I raised at the end of my walk in the city at lunchtime story:  what can a proprietor do to get you to eat at his or her establishment?

Part one of a three-part blog

Four commonly accepted parameters are almost universally used to define a qualified lead.  The folks at IBM are widely credited for the development of an acronym for those parameters – BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe).

More formally, the acronym is applied as follows:

• Is there a Budget allocated for a solution (and is it sufficient for your solution)?
• Has the Authority for the purchasing process been identified (and are you in touch)?
• Is the Need for a solution well defined (and does it match your capabilities)?
• What is the Timeframe for purchasing and implementing a solution?  Is it in the next six months, 12 months, or over a year?

Many companies use this paradigm as the heart of their lead scoring process.  It helps them decide how and where to focus their resources to bring revenue into the pipeline.  So it’s important to confirm that the BANT approach is both valid and sufficient to meet that need.

I plan on exploring these issues in detail in this three-part blog.  You can think of it as my three-part BANT rant, starting with this segment as an overview.

From my vantage point, there are two obvious problems with BANT.  First and foremost, it is seller-centric.  And, as every successful sales person with experience knows, it’s never about you (the seller), it’s ALWAYS about them (the prospect).

If you fail to look at the relationship from the prospect’s (buyer’s) perspective, the likelihood of making a sale is diminished – unless, of course, your offering is so far superior to the competition that the decision is a no-brainer.  But if that were the case, then your closing ratio would be very close to 100%!  Correct?

The second problem is that this seller vs. prospect perspective pushes BANT off the mark.  You do need money, a decision-making process, a need and (assuming it’s important), a time frame for making a decision and implementing a solution.  But the BANT parameters themselves are only tangential to what’s truly important in selling.  And, as a whole, while these parameters are arguably necessary, by themselves they are not sufficient as qualifying criteria.  They lack essential characteristics that are, perhaps, even more important than those four.

Let me offer one simple example as “food for thought” (sorry in advance for this).

Food is a universal need for all living things.  No argument there, I presume.  We can survive without food for a reasonably long time; maybe even weeks.  But, without food, we will end up just a dead as we would without oxygen.  There’s the “N” in BANT.

So let’s consider this scenario:

You’re walking down a busy city street around lunchtime.  You’re hungry, but you’re also on your way to a very important meeting with a new client or a hot prospect.  You’ve got plenty of money in your pocket and a budget reserved for lunch (there’s the “B”) and you need to make a decision (you are obviously the “A”) as to whether or not to stop to eat before the meeting.  You’ve got 30 minutes until your meeting starts and you’re five minutes away from the location, so time is more than sufficient (“T”).

You pass a multitude of restaurants and street vendors along the way.  How can the owner of a food establishment predict how likely you are to stop and eat?  And, what, if anything, can the proprietor do to get you to eat at his or her establishment?  (By the way, this example would be just a valid if there were only one food source along the route – and it was your favorite.)

If you think about this dilemma from the perspective of the proprietor as well as your own, you’ll begin to understand the case I plan to make over the next two weeks.  I plan to focus more directly on why I think BANT is only part of the story and, specifically, what those shortcomings are.  And then, I’ll explore ways to add value to BANT so that you are more aligned with the buyer’s perspective.

Finally, I’ll offer an alternative viewpoint on how to better define a qualified lead – identifying the factors that are both necessary and sufficient – and one that should enable sales people to focus their energy on opportunities with greater potential for success.

 Sheldon Sachs