In Salesgenie CRM++, we base our deal-progression workflow on the most well-known and time-tested method in vogue. It is called B.A.N.T.; yes, it is an acronym and I will come to that in a second.
But, first, who are the people in a buyer organization who buy from you?
Never mind that it is an organization, there are people working there who have their own needs, desires and agenda. We classify them as:
User Buyer : someone who will (or already does use, the same or similar) use the product or service that you are selling.
Technical Buyer: May or may not be using your product, but will be involved as an analyser of your product features and applicability in their organization.
Economic Buyer: This is the ultimate decider; the “buck stops with him”.
Purchase/ Commercial: We sometimes confuse the role of the commercial as that of the Economic buyer; this is wrong. His role is more akin to that of the Technical buyer, evaluating the financial implications of the purchase and presenting a perspective to the Economic buyer.
These roles can merge frequently, and they do. In various sales situations, different types of users may have more say. Knowing who they are and what they do is key to successfully navigating the sales process.
Now for BANT. What is it?
All B2B sales situations can be described in terms of the following:
Budget: What is the budget of the customer; how flexible is he? How will he get funded?
Authority: What are the roles in the purchase process? Who are they?
Need: What is the actual organizational need? What are the needs of the individuals involved in the purchase? What are the conflicts and what are the meeting grounds?
Timeline: How long will the process take to “close”?
In Salesgenie CRM++, once we recognize a “deal” , we guide the sales executive through a structured process which sticks to the BANT outline. The first of these steps is identifying the decision makers and their roles. The next is to present the solution to those persons, individually or collectively and log your assessment of their reactions (Technically qualified). Then, we send a quote, assess the “comfort level” of the quote price vs customer budget and thus “commercially qualify” the deal. The last step is time qualification where the sales person forecasts the date by which the deal will be decided.
The sales process of “Investigate –> Present solution –> Close” is what works in all B2B sales situations and we have tried to structure the deal progression on both the buyer and seller side to the ground realities.
Needless to say that the actual logging that the sales executive does is minimal. The software auto-updates the status and many fields based on the activities like sending a quote.
