Sales qualification is an early but extremely important step in the sales process. It helps the sales rep make the rational decision to pursue the relationship with the customer and move to the next stage of the sales process, or work on nurturing the lead indeed until the right time comes.
The blog will be looking at the different sales qualification frameworks and why they are important in the business-to-business technology sales process.
What is Lead/Sales qualification?
Sales qualification is the process of assessing if a lead is a good fit for your technology products and solutions based on a set of criteria. This can help improve the close rate as the sales rep decides to engage further only when there are good chances for the lead to turn into a customer. Without qualifying a lead the sales rep will be loosing a lot of time and energy talking to 100s of customers and at the end closing just a little business.
Why is sales qualification important?
At the time of writing this article, there are 60M professionals in LinkedIn in the Middle East and Africa region. There is no sales team that can handle this amount of customers. Therefore, it's crucial for the sales team to be able to rationally decide where they should invest their time and energy. A solid sales qualification process can lead to the following results:
- Higher close rate
- Higher revenue and margin
- Improved customer satisfaction...
On the other hand, the lack of a sales qualification process can create a frustrated sales team, unhappy customers and negatively impact the company top and bottom line.
What are the Sales qualification frameworks?
Sales qualifications frameworks are a set of criteria that salespeople can use to assess if a lead is likely to become a customer.
Although every sales lead is different, there are some common characteristics that are shared among the successful wins. Those characteristics have been reproduced in the sales qualification frameworks to make the sales qualification a systematic and rational process.
Below is a brief description of the five major sales qualification frameworks used by technology companies.
BANT Qualification Framework
The sales rep should qualify the lead based on 4 criteria:
- Budget: Does the customer have the required funding for the project?
- Authority: Is the lead in a positon to make a decision about the purchase or is it someone else?
- Need: What challenges is the customer facing and how do they think they can solve those problems?
- Timeline: How quick the customer plans to move with the purchase?
CHAMP Qualification Framework
CHAMP is an alternative to the BANT with a little more focus on the products and services offered and how they can solve the customer's pain points.
- Challenges: does the company's products and services solve the customer's pain points?
- Authority: Is the lead in a positon to make a decision about the purchase or is it someone else?
- Money: Does the customer have the required funding for the project?
- Prioritization: How quick the customer plans to move with the purchase? Is it on top of their agenda?
MEDDIC Qualification Framework
MEDDIC is a more complex qualification framework that proved to be effective. The MEDDIC qualification criteria are:
- Metrics: What quantified outcome is the customer hoping to get out of your products / services? (e.g. increase in revenue, cost reduction, margin improvement...)
- Economic buyer: Who is the person that will make the buying decision?
- Decision criteria: Based on what criteria the customer will decide or not to make the purchase?
- Decision process: Which process will the customer follow to evaluate the potential purchase?
- Pain point identification: What challenges is the customer facing and how do they think they can solve those problems?
- Champion: Is there someone inside the organization that believes in your offering and can act as a "champion" during the buying process?
ANUM Qualification Framework
ANUM is similar to BANT just that the order of the used criteria is different.
- Authority: Is the lead in a positon to make a decision about the purchase or is it someone else?
- Need: What challenges is the customer facing and how do they think they can solve those problems?
- Urgency: How quick the customer plans to move with the purchase?
- Money: Does the customer have the required funding for the project?
FAINT Qualification Framework
FAINT is also another variation of the BANT. The only difference is that it brings another evaluation aspect which is the "Interest".
- Funds: Does the customer have the required funding for the project?
- Authority: Is the lead in a positon to make a decision about the purchase or is it someone else?
- Interest: is the customer aware of your offering? Are they interested?
- Need: What challenges is the customer facing and how do they think they can solve those problems?
- Timing: How quick the customer plans to move with the purchase?
When it comes to choosing which sales qualification framework to adopt, this all depends on your organization, sales team, complexity of your offering and sales process... What's certain is that sales success requires an effective qualification.
We hope you enjoyed our blog post on sales qualification. We would like to hear from you if you're interested in learning more about how we approach lead qualification and nurture our leads! If you have any questions, please contact us at us. Thank you for reading and we hope this article was helpful!