Prospecting rules: B.A.N.T

Keeping your sales funnel updated is important. As a company we should make it a habit. But event then there may be some wishfullthinking leads. How to distinguish prospects from leads?

You should follow the rule of: B.A.T.N = Budget + Authority + Time + Need

When you are digesting whether lead is a prospect or not you should have answer for every of these four questions:

1. Does Client have a budget?

2. Does he have an authority to process the purchase?

3. Does he have a need for the solutions we are offering him?

4. Is this right time to make a purchase?

It may seem trivial but i have faced many situations where asking those four questions could save a lot of time, energy and money.

Let me tell you a case where we were having technical dialogue about building custom software and it was a big project. I asked Client about budget to be sure we do not vary significantly. He said he don't want to share budget at that stage. I said it could be helpful as we are making custom solution and we can try to fit in the budget making some sacrifies in scope or other areas. He persisted. We have done numbers of meetings in time span of 3 months and then when we presented the proposal it occured that Client have 20k instead of 500k needed for the investment. Just because he did not wanted to share the information of the budget it results of dissapointment on both sides. Lessons learned: Dont have answers for for these 4 questions? It is not a prospect worth working on yet.