A SaaS sales cycle is an inherently tactical process. Between lead generation and product demo, there lies the all-important task of sales qualification. Without an efficient sales qualification process, salespeople would either be sitting around twiddling their thumbs or distributing their time evenly across all prospects, including those who were never going to convert anyway.

Enter tactical sales frameworks, which cut through the noise and reveal which leads will most likely lead to accounts. They save your sales reps time, boost your deal win rate and help speed up your sales cycle.

Do your salespeople have a roadmap for qualifying sales leads? Without it, making informed decisions is difficult. In the absence of some sort of qualification process, sales professionals are left to their own devices. It is also a symptom of a weak sales methodology, which informs how a sales process is built. If the process does not define a structured way to qualify leads, it is broken.

In B2B sales, a sales qualification framework can have a transformative impact on your deal lifecycle. How? By streamlining your sales process, allowing you to allocate your resources better, and enabling you to close deals consistently.

What is BANT sales methodology?

IBM introduced the BANT framework in the 50s. It was massively popular in the 60s and 70s, used by salespeople from IBM and other companies for lead prioritization.

Under this lead qualification method, you single out organizations based on their budget, authority, need, and timeline.

• Budget: Determine if the prospect has a budget allocated for the solution you’re providing. If they don’t view your solution as more of a priority than other areas, they aren’t likely to have a budget for it or be willing to spend money on it.
• Authority: Identify the decision-maker in the prospect’s organization. This individual has the power to make purchase decisions.
• Need: Identify the specific need the lead is trying to meet or the pain point they’re trying to solve.
• Timeline: Does the lead know when they want to purchase the solution? Do they have an implementation timeframe?

Cisco, Microsoft, and HubSpot are examples of companies that use BANT.

What is MEDDICC sales methodology?

MEDDICC was developed in the 1990s by Jack Napoli and Dave Dunkel at PTC. They used the process to grow sales from $300 million to $1 billion in four years.

MEDDICC is an acronym for the following:

Metrics: What are the metrics on which decision makers will evaluate your solution’s value? Can you deliver said value proposition?

Economic buyer: Who is the individual with the authority to make purchase decisions?

Decision criteria: What are the lead’s criteria for choosing a solution, and do you meet them?

Decision process: What steps does the lead take until they seal the deal with you, and how can you move along swiftly through each?

Identify pain points: What are the lead’s challenges, and how does your solution address them?

Champion: Who in the lead’s organization will advocate for you and influence the decision-making process?

Competition: Who is competing with you, and how do you position your product to look better than the competition?

Salesforce, IBM, and Oracle are examples of companies using MEDDICC.

Note that there are variations of MEDDICC. MEDDIC does not consider your competitors in the lead qualification process. MEDDPICC includes a ‘paper process’ outlining the steps from a ‘yes’ to the signed contract.

Differences between BANT and MEDDICC

From the discussions above, you know that BANT involves fewer steps to qualify a sales lead. It is suitable for a relatively straightforward sales process and when selling to a start-up or small business. On the other hand, the MEDDIC sales methodology is better suited to enterprise sales involving multiple stakeholders and a complex decision-making structure.

BANT focuses on understanding the lead’s readiness to move forward in the deal process and accelerates sales efforts in closing the deal. With more variables, the MEDDIC framework takes the lead’s decision-making process and key decision makers/champs into account when planning and directing sales efforts.

Key Similarities between BANT and MEDDICC

Beyond the obvious similarity that both frameworks are designed for qualifying leads, they consider the prospect’s pain points. Both frameworks put the prospect and her needs at the center of the qualification process.

Which sales methodology should you adopt?

It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Given the simplicity of BANT, sales reps could use it to get an initial qualification on deals and then pass them on to sales managers. Another possible scenario is using BANT for smaller clients and reserving MEDDICC for enterprise deals.

When deciding between the two, consider the following factors:

• The complexity of your sales structure and deals. If mostly complex, MEDDICC is preferable to BANT. The reverse holds for simple sales structures and deals.
• Your lead scoring system. It is a natural choice if you score leads based on the BANT criteria. If you consider additional parameters like buying process or advocate, use MEDDICC.
• Reaching out to champion. Does your sales process emphasize engaging the advocate at the lead’s organization? If so, MEDDICC is the logical choice.
• Your tracking tools. Do you have simple lead management and tracking tools that align well with BANT or advanced systems that lend better to MEDDICC?

Conclusion

Lead qualification saves sales teams time and energy in chasing after leads that are unlikely to convert to deals. In that time, they could be directing their efforts on high-quality leads looking for a solution and, in all likelihood, won’t stop until they find it. A proven qualification process gets sales teams there faster.

The beauty of BANT lies in its simplicity. There are fewer boxes to tick before pronouncing leads as qualified and taking them through the deal pipeline. But BANT may be too simple when your sales structure is complex and the deal cycle long. It is when MEDDICC can be more useful in guiding your salespeople toward the best leads and boost close rates.