In sales, there are many different qualification methodologies: MEDDIC, Champ, NOTE, and many more that I can't remember. The granddaddy of them all is BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline). I like BANT the most because it's well known, easy to remember, and the elements of it don't require as much explanation as the elements of some of the other methodologies. As simple as it is, it still encompasses things that aren't strictly qualification. That's complicated by the fact that we're seldom explicit about what we are qualifying - an opportunity? a prospect? a lead?

The purpose of qualification is to direct sales resources to the most productive activities available. BANT potentially fails that test by disqualifying leads that are early in their buying journey. Imagine Maria, a director of digital marketing, who is dissatisfied with one of the core systems in her martech stack. She has budget and authority to continue operating the system as is. Replacing it, or even bringing in a services vendor to enhance it will require budget to make the changes. Getting that budget is going to require the approval of her boss or potentially someone even higher up the chain. She doesn't really have a timeline yet. If the system she wants to replace was purchased as a subscription, she wants to replace it before the renewal is due, but she doesn't know yet if that's even feasible. In other words, all she has is Need.

In order to get budget, authority, and timeline, she's going to need to do some research and build a case for the change. This is a big part of the reason that 67% (or 83%, or 90%, depending on whom you believe) of the buyer's journey happens digitally before they ever make contact with you. Let's assume that Maria has done the digital portion of her journey and that what you sell is in the list of products she's considering. She sees that you are hosting an event in her area, and registers to attend. Assuming that whatever details she provides match your criteria, she's now a marketing qualified lead. If an account rep were to contact her following the event, and strictly applied BANT, the lead would be disqualified.

If the rep has 3-5x pipeline coverage from high quality opportunities, that's arguably the right decision. Clearly, turning this into an opportunity that has a price, probability, and close date is going to take a LOT of work by both the buyer and the seller. If the rep is juggling high quality opportunities that passed a strict qualification, the effort is probably better spent on one of those. In my entire working career, that's a situation I have very rarely seen.

The right decision is to recognize that Maria has a genuine need here. The key thing is that Maria knows she has the need. The research effort she's made in getting this far is evidence of that. Too often, sales and marketing professionals start with the assumption that "Everyone in this industry needs what we do!", whether it's a CRM, website hosting, event management, or whatever. That may be a true statement, but if they are satisfied with what they have, the need is already fulfilled. As the Sandler guys like to say, No Pain = No Sale.

If Maria can articulate why she is dissatisfied with the status quo, this has potential to be a real opportunity, but it's probably going to take an amount of time that is at upper end of the range of your sales cycle. You've got to make an investment decision about how much time you need to put into determining the path to getting authority (sometimes called power) on board to establish the budget and timeline. Assuming you have some confidence in your estimates of how long that will take and how likely it is that you will disqualify as a result of that process (have you tracked those on your previous deals?), it's straightforward to figure out if it makes sense for you to keep going or not.

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