Before you start the relationship building process with prospects, you need to identify which of your prospects are hot and which ones are not. Using BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time) criteria, you can better qualify what leads you should go after. Originally developed by IBM, BANT criteria can help you determine if there’s a budget, who holds the authority regarding the purchasing decision, their business needs, and the timeframe for the implementation. A sales rep needs to fill in three of those four criteria in order for a lead to be a sales opportunity. If sales reps can do this, they won’t be potentially wasting time with a lead that might have a need but no budget, or one that has a budget but the timing isn’t right.

Determining if a prospect has room for your solution in their budget is a critical step to closing a sale. The budget qualifying process usually falls into three categories: the prospect has available room in their budget; the decision maker doesn’t have room, but will find the money; it’s not currently budgeted, but may be next year. The budget is usually the most difficult part of BANT to discover, but it’s also the most integral part to the BANT equation. In order for sales reps to accurately develop their sales forecast, they must uncover the prospects that have money budgeted for their solution. It’s even more important now because of how companies’ budgets have been dramatically reduced, coupled with their capital spending plans. Fortunately for IT sales reps, there appears to be good news on the horizon. Comments from EMC’s CEO and CFO and data from CIO.com survey identifies that companies will start increasing their budgets and spending for IT infrastructures in 2010.

Sales intelligence resources can also assist you in determining the components of a prospect’s budget; what their capital spending plans are (time) and uncover their current business drivers (need). Sales steps should start the relationship building process by asking questions to better understand their problems and opportunities. By doing this, they can make a bridge to the budget discussion without forcefully asking if they have money to spend. You don’t want to be kicking tires with a prospect that has a need, but doesn’t have a budget. Identifying who owns the budget and if they currently have money for your solution will accelerate your sales cycle. If authority, need and time all meet the necessary criteria, getting your solution budgeted should be the priority for the decision-maker. Identifying the budget can be difficult, but once done, you’ll have discovered what prospects are hot, and you will be in a better position to forecast your sales.

Sales Forecasting Template

SalesQuest has created a FREE Sales Forecasting Template and Worksheet that will help you qualify your leads better and keep your sales pipeline full.

Download the FREE Sales Forecasting Template and Worksheet

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

One of the most under-utilized resources for sales research is a company’s quarterly earnings call transcript. Earnings calls are held four times a year to update investors on the performance of the company over the last quarter and their future outlook. They generally include financial information like operating expenses, capital expenditures, stock share prices, and GAAP analysis.

These reports are free and easy to find, but the amount of text and numbers in them can seem completely daunting at first glance. Admittedly, a majority of the information in these transcripts is not useful to a sales rep, but taking time to go through with a fine toothed comb will almost always yield at least a few “golden nuggets” of actionable information.

Tom Costa at Eyes on Sales notes that the CEO and CFO “talk candidly” about sales performance, initiatives, and new product announcements, and he discusses how to use the transcript to define prospects and competitors in your industry. Sales reps can (and should) use the information in these transcripts to fully-prepare for a prospecting call.

The CEO and CFO are generally the two company representatives that present to investors during a quarterly earnings call. Of course, much of the information they give is geared toward shareholders and is boring financials, but the one piece of helpful data that they generally give in the call is the company’s capital expenditures. They often discuss the expenditures for the year to date, as well as what their budget/goal amount is for the rest of the fiscal year. By pulling up the company’s earnings call transcript on and doing a search for “capital expenditure” or “capex” can give you insight into how much the company has been spending, and what their budget is for the coming months. This, of course, could prevent you from wasting time trying to sell to a company that doesn’t have the money to buy your product.

Understanding an account does not only mean knowing who the decision makers are and the company’s organizational structure; one of the worst things you can do is to go into a sales call and not fully-understand and be attempting to solve one of their business problems. Coming in to relieve a pain within a company is a much more effective approach to selling than pitching your product blindly to an exec that you have pegged as the exec with the money burning a hole in his pocket.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The Aberdeen Group’s PACE Model defines the methods of success of Best-in-Class sales teams and outlines their abilities in the “C” section, titled Capabilities. This list is what sets successful sales forces apart from just average or failing ones and defines their best sales strategies. It consists mostly of processes that exist within the sales department that make a rep’s job easier while also saving time, as well as making the sales process more organized.

Structure and continuity are extremely important in keeping a sales team functional and the sales process successful. Aberdeen’s defined “Best-in-Class” companies have a “formal and documented sales process” in place.  Keeping things organized and requiring a specific progression of steps in the sales cycle ensures that corners are not cut, the prospect is well-qualified and well-nurtured, as well as making sure that no information is lost. The Commence CRM Blog does a great job of defining the reasons that standardization is crucial to a successful sales department. The steps of the process must be clearly defined and simple to follow; the more you can avoid confusion and make this process visible, the more it will actually be followed.

In conjunction with a documented process, Best-in-Class companies have a process for tracking prospect engagement, from e-mail to website visits. CRM systems are a perfect example of a repository for all of this information; phone calls and other correspondences can be tracked, saved, and viewed here, and the progress from lead to customer can be clearly seen. Also, when something goes awry in the sale and it becomes a loss, this data can be analyzed to help determine why the sale was not successful and thus avoid the problem with future opportunities.

Another capability of Best-in-Class companies, not surprisingly, is also a part of most CRM systems: “a centralized repository of account, contact, and opportunity information.” Keeping track of all activity within an account is essential in avoiding making mistakes like repeated calls to the same VP, or e-mail blasting an opt-out. It is also extremely informative to be able to see an account’s history if you are looking to for win backs with a former client so you can approach it with more sensitivity than a new account. Aberdeen also cites that having a “process for unifying customer information gathered through multiple disparate ‘customer touch points’” as a quality of Best-in-Class companies, and clearly, this is a function of a CRM system.

Another less obvious, but easy step to take in order to be more successful, is to encourage communication between reps. A central system like a CRM or even a live messaging functionality on the company intranet can provide an outlet for reps to talk to each other. The ability to share tips and strategies that have helped them close deals, as well as share common gripes and then collaborate to find a solution is invaluable; a two-man effort is always better than one.

In short, there are more than a few defined capabilities (mostly provided by software or SaaS) that can help your sales force hit their quota. By nature, people are lazy; just by implementing very clear and easy-to-follow strategic processes and centralized the information and resources, you will see results.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.