Lead Qualification Frameworks

Here are a few specific ways companies can qualify their leads

To improve sales, a lead qualification framework is a type of workflow that sales reps use to determine if a prospect has a higher chance of becoming a successful customer. These frameworks include the following:

BANT

BANT is an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. BANT qualification is a series of questions designed to gather information on the four key aspects that the framework covers. These include:

1. Budget: Find out if the prospect can afford your product or service. Here are some likely questions to uncover information regarding budget:

• What does your budget look like for this project?
• Do you have enough funding for this project?

1. Authority: Determine who has the final say on buying decisions. Salespersons can ask:

• Is there someone else involved in making the purchase decisions besides you?

• Do you expect someone else to object to this purchase? If yes, what’s the best way around it?

1. Need: Find out if your solution meets the prospect’s needs using questions such as:

• What specific business challenges do you have?
• How long have you been seeing them?

• Have you addressed this problem before?
• Do you think there is a specific solution right for your business?

1. Timeline: Figure out the prospect’s timeline for possible purchase. You can ask:

• Is this a priority purchase right now?

• How soon do you need to tackle this problem?

GPCTBA/C&I

Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority/Negative Consequences, and Positive Implications (also known as GPCTBA/C&I for short) is a lead qualification framework developed by HubSpot to help sales reps provide useful guidance and value to informed buyers.

Here is what this framework means and the possible questions to use in qualifying leads:

1. Goals: Determine your prospects goals using questions such as:

• What are your specific company goals?

• What’s your company’s top priority for this year?

1. Plans: Determine the steps they are taking to achieve their goals by asking:

• What specific plans do you have in place to achieve the goals?
• What do you think will make implementation difficult?

1. Challenges: Help the prospect to get clear on their challenges so they can understand that they need your solution. One may ask:

• Do you think you can solve this problem by relying only on internal expertise?
• Will you be willing to seek external help if your plans are not working?

1. Timeline: Find out if the prospect is willing to commit now or in the future by asking:

• When can your team can start implementing this plan?
• Do you have the right resources to put this plan to work immediately or any time soon?

1. Budget: Dig deeper to get an insight into your prospect’s budget by asking:

• Our solution has the potential to bring you “X” dollars annually, but do you have enough funds allocated for it?

1. Authority: Being the decision-maker is not the goal of determining the authority of your prospect in the framework. Instead, the goal is to figure out what goes into the decision-making process. You can ask:

• Is this project important to the company’s authoritative decision-makers?
• What objections do you anticipate?

1. Negative Consequences and Positive Implications: Find out how achieving the goal or not will affect the prospect using questions such as:

• What will be your next move when you solve this problem?
• How does hitting this goal or not affect you personally?

CHAMP

Challenge, Authority, Money, Prioritization (or CHAMP) is a qualification framework that allows sales reps to focus on the needs and problems of the prospect. The framework enables salespersons to use Authority to go up the ladder until they reach the decision-maker instead of disqualifying the prospect because they don’t make the final decision.

MEDDIC

MEDDIC stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion. The framework increases the ability of salespersons to forecast with greater accuracy by understanding all the aspects of a company’s buying process. This qualification framework is best for selling products with a considerably higher average sales price.

ANUM

ANUM stands for Authority, Need, Urgency, and Money. The qualification process is like BANT, except that it prioritizes authority. That means the salesperson must first determine if the prospect can act or is the decision-maker. Need is also giving higher priority while Urgency in ANUM functions in the same way as Timing in BANT. Lastly, Money takes the place of Budget.

Picking the Right Lead Qualification Framework for Your Business

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to choosing a qualification framework.

BANT is a simple, time-tested method that works. However, a major drawback of the framework is the failure to include more stakeholders in the decision-making process. This is also a disadvantage of the ANUM framework. Also, the Timeline in BANT might cause sales reps to act prematurely and disqualify prospects who aren’t ready to commit immediately or shortly.

GPCTBA/C&I is an excellent framework but might not be suitable for every team, especially smaller teams, because of the complex qualification process involved. MEDDIC is best for when you want to bring about a behavioral transformation. Getting prospects to buy products with a significantly higher price tag requires this type of qualification tool. CHAMP is great if you are trying to focus more on the prospect’s pains and challenges. However, it can potentially cause a lag in your sales cycle.

You are wasting your and your partner’s valuable resources if you’re not enriching the lead with qualifying data and scoring the leads for qualification.  Automated systems, such as competitive lead routing and enrichment, can significantly increase your company’s sales velocity, and ensure your partners are receiving prospects ready for pursuit.

Automating your lead qualification and go-to-market strategies to close sales successfully are no easy tasks.