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bant as a sales qualifying framework is one that gets a little bit of a bad rap when you look on linkedin and through some of the blogs that are posted by sales organizations from around the world and the reason why it gets that is because it is outdated it was created in the 1950s by ibm in a time where talking about budget first and authority second was totally cool nowadays when we use bant as our qualifying framework here at atlantic growth solutions we truly modernize it but understand its roots bant is the four most important criteria for qualifying an early stage deal it covers the most necessary components now when we say modernize we take a word like budget and talk about it in terms of affordability if we're targeting the right ideal customer profile we should understand that they are able to afford your solution as long as it makes sense and is going to help them solve a problem or pain that they experience daily once we understand the affordability aspect then it's authority but it's authority on the level of who in your organization does this impact what role might your prospect play in terms of the overall decision-making process if they're an evaluator that's perfect we need to be having a conversation with them to understand what they look for when they evaluate if they're an influencer then we want to make sure that we have a great relationship with them as well because they're going to be a champion within that organization helping us get a deal done again if it makes sense for their organization and finally if we get to contact with a decision maker that's the ultimate person that we want to be discussing a new solution with but it doesn't always have to be so again not necessarily are you the authority to sign off on this new product or solution but are you an authority that has some sort of say in how this uh solution may be implemented in your organization next would be the need and this is probably the most important part some of the more modern frameworks put this first which we do believe is the driver for a good sales conversation if the customer the prospect has a need that's compelling enough it's going to make sense for them to carry on a sales conversation throughout the sales process with you and your team so some may put that first some may lead with that and that's okay again bant as a framework might have made sense budget first authority second and then need in timeline you can modernize that to whatever way those items flow best for you and your prospects if need is supposed to be first that's great sometimes we may even talk about need as challenge what challenge do they face within that organization that we can help address by talking human to human we can have a better conversation rather than talking a little bit more robotic which might have been okay back in the 1950s and lastly the timeline and this could be the timeline for you to implement a new solution but it doesn't always work that way in terms of the timeliness of your outreach they may not have budgeted any time to implement a solution like yours so in this case timeline you might want to look more at the overall length of time it may take to implement who's going to be involved do they have the internal capacity and and initiatives in place to be able to sustain the timeline that works for you and if not what does that timeline look like if it needs to be three months down the road or six months down the road that's perfect it just needs to be qualified and discussed and makes sense for both parties so that's how we would modernize bant again bad rap in terms of the sales leaders and some of the other sales organizations around north america but we truly feel that it is still the uh the definitive sales qualifying framework for an early stage sales opportunity uh it just takes a little bit of modernization have fun with it play around with it with your team make sure it makes sense for you and your prospects you