19
Mar 2016
0
Buyer journey enablement

Why BANT no longer works for today’s better informed customers

BANT does not work when dealing with Buyer 2.0. Is there an alternative that works in today’s environment?

Why BANT no longer works for today’s better informed customers

Pascal Persyn Pascal Persyn  |    Sales Performance

BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Time) has been used by salespeople to qualify opportunities for several decades. I still come across it to this day, even as part of the lead management process between sales and marketing. But the tool is no longer as relevant as it once was, especially for complex buying processes. Now, why is that? And is there an alternative that works today?

Budget

We know that buyers use the internet to find information. This means they only tend to involve salespeople later in the process. By that time, they’ll have already formed a clear opinion, and are just seeking confirmation before actually making a buying decision. But there’s a lot of information available, and much of it can be conflicting. The role of the salesperson has therefore shifted to influencing the customer in a way that validates their information.

This requires commercial insights into the customer situation. Business acumen will help the salesperson find solutions for possibly latent requirements, for which the budget (Bant) mostly isn’t known or allocated yet. In short: taking budget allocation into account means your salespeople are joining the buying process too late. And that results in a lower hit rate and tighter margins.

Authority

Validation based on the authority (bAnt) to make a decision was intended to ‘not waste any time’. It would help sales to not sell to people who couldn’t make a purchase. Unfortunately, most B2B decisions aren’t taken by one person these days. Buying decisions have evolved into being a consensus which also takes users’ opinions into account. I can give examples of customer situations where there are more than ten people in a meeting. Each one can veto a decision, but also not be prepared to advocate a supplier until a consensus is reached.

Need

Focusing on people who already have a problem (the need in baNt) sounds logical. Like a great way to increase a salesperson’s productivity. But the reality is quite different. Research shows that up to 60% of opportunities ultimately disappear without the customer buying anything or changing supplier. We see this on a daily basis with our customers. And it was also the outcome of a survey we took together with Vlerick Business School.

Salespeople need to increase the customer’s willingness to change more now than ever. They need to convince the buyer to change, rather than convincing them to choose us. Because a customer isn’t open to hearing this message if they’re not planning to change. This is why traditional prospection methods are becoming less effective. The message and how it’s conveyed no longer correspond with the customer’s expectation.

Time

In light of the above, qualification based on when the decision is made (the time in banT) has become irrelevant. These days it comes down to marketing and sales doing the right thing at the right time with the right message, to facilitate the customer’s buying process. So the question’s no longer about when the customer’s going to make a decision, but about how willing they are to change. Sales needs to combine the answer to this question with the potential, to decide when to engage with what message. It’s also their task to keep marketing informed. Because marketing can help influence the customer with digital interactions, increasing the probability of a sale for the lowest possible cost.

Conclusion: from BANT to JIT

BANT doesn’t work anymore.
The concept of just-in-time has been around for quite a while in logistics and now we also need to have just-in-time commercial approach. By qualifying the potential and the role of people involved, sales can make sure that all commercial efforts, including marketing, are resulting in doing the right thing at the right time with the right message.

Thanks to the digital revolution, marketing also has a major role to play. Depending on the size, complexity and importance of our products and services in the perception of the customer, we need to find the right balance between digital touchpoints and human interactions.

Download our eBook to find out what process your salespeople need to follow to keep improving results.

  buyer alignmentbuyer journeybuying cyclebuying processdemand generationreadiness to buy
18
Mar 2016
1
3 answers that every Sales rep needs to know

3 answers that every Sales rep needs to know

Avoid increasing sales costs and margins under pressure

3 answers that every Sales rep needs to know

Pascal Persyn Pascal Persyn  |    Customer Journey, Sales Performance

Every day we’re being confronted with increasing sales costs and margins under greater and greater pressure. In this blog, we explain why this is happening and look at the solution in detail.

Increasing sales costs and greater pressure on margins are usually the result of inadequate or non-existent internal sales training and supervision. There are also a few die-hard habits that many companies and sales reps cling on to which can cause even bigger problems for sales performance.

Watch Webinar – How to Support Sales in Today’s Market?

Directors will already be familiar with the changed buying behaviour and understand the impact it has on their sales and marketing organisation. The fact that up to 75% of decision-making criteria are influenced online means it’s important for us to allow sales to start a dialogue with customers at different times and with different messages.

If sales is forced to wait until customers are ‘ready-to-buy’ or in the quotation stage before they spring into action, it’s impossible to sell customer value, so:

  • Margins continue to fall
  • Products and services are experienced as commodities

This habit comes from:

  • Managers being mainly interested in the time frame that deals are agreed in
  • Sales who think it’s a waste of time to enter into a buying process early, and prefer to wait for ready-to-buy leads from marketing
  • Sales who are willing to start the buying process early and influence the customer, but don’t have the necessary skills and messages to appeal to customers in this early stage

The solution: do the right thing at the right time with the right person

Management behaviour and how to direct sales teams is crucial here, although that’s a separate topic just in itself. But how can we arm sales to face these new challenges?

The buying process in figure 1 shows the complete customer journey. Whether it’s for existing or new customers determines how sales deals with it.

For existing customers, sales mainly need to convey ‘why customers need to stay’

Combined with behaviour that we label as ‘account development’ rather than ‘account management’. With existing relationships, detailed knowledge of the customer and their environment provides a great opportunity for increasing the value perception, and so embedding the relationship more deeply.

For non-customers, the first question is: ‘Has the customer already decided to change?’

Has the customer not decided to change yet? Then it’s best to base your messages and interactions on breaking the status quo, and so increasing the willingness to change. Customers aren’t usually aware of what improvements are possible. Or the customer thinks the risks that come with the change look too big. Or they’re not familiar enough with exactly what’s required.

These ‘why change’ messages assume the customer’s point of view and are the best way of developing prospects. And this is where the biggest challenge is identified in terms of sales performance. Various studies and analyses of our customers show that up to 60% of opportunities simply disappear from the forecast without any decision being made by the customer. The biggest competitor isn’t another supplier, but the customers themselves simply not deciding to buy anything. So messages about how good your company and its solutions are, or the extra benefits that you can offer, won’t help stimulate the buying process.

Has the customer already decided to buy?

Then the next question is of course: who should I buy what from, and how much for? Sales responds to this with messages that underline why the customer should choose them. These ‘why us’ messages are most effective at this point in time. Most companies and a large proportion of sales reps score quite to very highly in this area.

Video shows when these three types of messages are most effective from a sales perspective

In summary, we therefore need to enable sales to convey three different types of messages convincingly according to the situation and depending on the product-market combination:

  • Why change
  • Why choose us
  • Why stay with us
Sales Performance Benchmark

Sales Performance Benchmark

How much do your sales convey these three sets of messages?
And to what extent can they discuss them with the customer at the right time?
Compare your sales performance and customer orientation with best in class companies.

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  buyer alignmentbuyer journeybuying cyclebuying processcustomer expectationscustomer experiencedemand generationproductivityquotareadiness to buysales enablementsales processsell valueWhy changeWhy us
09
Sep 2014
0
Buying cycle insights improve sales performance

Buying cycle insights improve sales performance

Do you realise that every individual goes through the same mental stages before making a decision to buy?

Buying cycle insights improve sales performance

Pascal Persyn Pascal Persyn  |    Sales and Marketing Alignment, Sales Performance

Suppose your company is ready to make its next investment. You might be planning to change your ERP system, start e-commerce, re-do the website or even buy new office premises.

eBook 7 Criteria for a Sales Process your Sales Team will actually use

There are various milestones to take into account when considering where you are in your buying process:

  • Are you 100% sure you want to change the existing situation?
  • What will your new purchase enable you to do?
  • Have you already calculated the costs and ROI?
  • What criteria will you use to compare suppliers?
  • Have you compared the differences and benefits of the various options?
  • How can you guarantee that your future supplier will not disappoint you in the long run?
  • Have you checked if the new solution will cause any new problems?

You’re probably not the only person involved in this buying process: do you think your CFO and other colleagues will give the same answers to the questions above?

Everyone goes through the same mental stages in the buying process

Keep the future investment in mind for a moment. Do you realise that all your colleagues, like any individual, go through the same mental stages before making a decision to buy? Scientific research shows that every buying process follows the same sequence of mental stages. This ‘buying clock’ is a good tool for working out the readiness to buy of everyone involved in the decision-making process.

This doesn’t mean that everyone’s buying clocks are synchronised, however; the speed at which people go through the various stages depends on various factors:

  1. Experience of buying a similar solution
  2. The extent to which we can differentiate the impact of the various options
  3. The importance and impact of the decision on ourselves and/or the organisation

The mental journey through the whole buying cycle can take seconds, months or even years before all relevant decision-makers have completed it at their own pace and a contract can be signed.

Increase your company profits with these insights

The next stage: apply the ‘buying clock’ to the sales process in your company. Are your sales and marketing personnel aware of clients’ mental buying clocks? Wouldn’t it be great if your team could detect your clients’ readiness to buy correctly, and then act accordingly? For example: no sales person with good knowledge of the buying cycle will talk about a product’s specific features until the client is convinced they need something even similar to your solution. The client will feel better understood if you address them in a language that matches where they are in the buying process.

More sales with higher margins at a lower cost

At an organisational level, your company will develop a common language that helps to align sales activities and vastly increase efficiency and effectiveness. If you want to be able to achieve the following, consider making the readiness to buy the reference point for every action you undertake for individual clients. You will gain various benefits from applying these insights:

  • A common language to improve the sharing of experiences and improving team performance
  • Accurate timing of actions, resulting in a lower cost of sales and higher ROI on marketing
  • Higher conversion rates
  • Less margin erosion
  • Predictable, objective forecasts
  buying cyclebuying processconversion ratehigher readiness to buysales cycleselling cycle
25
Jul 2014
0
Is Solution Selling outdated?

Is Solution Selling outdated?

It’s no longer the sales process that counts. Say hello to the Empowered Customer.

Is Solution Selling outdated?

Pascal Persyn Pascal Persyn  |    Sales Content, Sales Performance

Solution Selling is very common jargon used in many sales organisations. Companies that have introduced this method have gained a competitive advantage as a result of the way in which their sales people are successful in formulating the value for their customers.

Watch Webinar – How to Move Stalled Sales Opportunities?

This is how you sell solutions:

  • Discuss client needs using open questions, creating a vision and a solution together with the client. This gives the seller the greatest possible impact on what the client will ultimately buy.
  • The packaging of products and services in such a way that a total solution is created to satisfy client needs. A classic example was Apple with iPod and iTunes in contrast to a normal MP3 player.

Trend reversal: more power for the customer

The internet and social media have brought about an important shift in the way people are informed and how they make their purchase decisions. Since a a couple of years we have seen a trend reversal which has undermined the impact of Solution Selling. The customer now has the power. It’s no longer the sales process that counts; the purchasing process (customer journey) now has the upper hand. Welcome to the Digital Era. Customer interaction and sales discussions have to be different now to achieve good results.

Not just information, but conversation

You can still achieve a sustainable and competitive advantage in this new digital era. But now your customer knowledge forms the basis for the development of new products and services to satisfy the increased needs of better informed customers. Your marketing and sales don’t provide information so much anymore; instead they go into a conversation to improve the customer relationship with more engagement. A better experience and the proven impact of your solution will result in a higher margin and lower sales cost.

3 answers that every Sales rep needs to know

Blog & Benchmark

Difference between Solution Selling and Buyer-Aligned Selling

SOLUTION SELLINGBUYER-ALIGNED SELLING

What is the starting point?

As a ‘consultant’, make it possible to discuss requirements and guide the customer in their thought process until the specific solution is bought.Ability to question the customer’s beliefs and provide new insights to complete the picture.

Which process is required?

Your entire sales organisation using a proven sales process. All your activities and measurement systems must chart and improve its effectiveness and application.A dynamic buying process based on customer experience. Enable sales & marketing to adapt to the buyer’s mental phase of purchasing at any moment. Internal processes and measurement systems are designed to take the right action, at the right time and involving the right people.

What’s important?

Ask the right questions to discuss the challenges that can be resolved by the solution you are offering. The strengths must be explicit and demonstrable from the structure of the approach.Empathy with the customer situation and for everyone involved the use of language specific and adapted to the role and industry. This demonstrates an attitude which shows that helping the customer is the highest priority.

What knowledge is crucial?

Knowing the relationship between the customer’s challenge and the strengths of your products and services.Broad understanding of the customer situation: environment, challenges, aspirations and requirements.

What skills are crucial?

Prospecting, questioning techniques, listening skills, diagnosis, and persuasiveness.Customer focus, relationship-building, ability for concrete visualisation of your offer’s value and impact as well as the capacity to influence the willingness to change. Social Selling and the right mix of digital and human touch points are crucial elements in this.

What is the relationship between sales and marketing?

Marketing supports sales, and the two are aligned. Marketing ensures that both the customer and the seller are informed. Marketing generates leads for sales.Both are integrated and fully designed to match the customer’s buying process. As well as generating leads for sales, marketing is also responsible for the conversation with the customer and increasing engagement with the customer target audience.
Perpetos WebinarHow to Move Stalled Sales Opportunities?

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  buyer alignedbuyer journeybuying processconsultative sellingsales processsolution selling
21
Feb 2014
0
Improve your sales with a better understanding of the buying cycle

Improve your sales with a better understanding of the buying cycle

Meet a powerful tool to help you detect the readiness to buy of your prospective customers.

Improve your sales with a better understanding of the buying cycle

Pascal Persyn Pascal Persyn  |    Sales and Marketing Alignment, Sales Performance

Scientific research has shown that every buying cycle is a sequence of the same mental processes; almost as certain as a law of nature. Our Buying Clock is an easy way to see the willingness to buy of everyone involved in a potential sale.

eBook 7 Criteria for a Sales Process your Sales Team will actually use

You can work out where the client is on Buying Clock by asking questions such as:

  • Are you 100% sure that the current situation has to change?
  • What will the impact be of the new solution?
  • Have you calculated the cost and ROI?
  • What criteria will you use to compare suppliers?
  • Are you trying to understand the differences and benefits of the various options?
  • How do you guarantee your future supplier won’t eventually fail on your expectations?
  • Have you checked whether the new solution won’t bring new problems?
Perpetos Buying Clock

The buying cycles are far from always synchronized

You know ‘what time it is’ in the buying cycle when you’ve got answers from everyone who is influencing the decision. Everyone goes through the same mental processes in a purchase, and it’s very plausible that different people are in different stages.

The speed at which we go through the various stages of the buying cycle depends on various factors: experience of buying similar products or services, understanding the various options’ impacts, the decision’s importance and impact on us and our organization. A buying cycle can last from a few seconds to months or even years depending on these factors. Being able to detect and influence buying readiness and helping to synchronize the buying clocks will not only shorten the buying cycle. It will also improve conversion rates and decrease discounts.

Understanding the buying cycle leads to better results

Do your sales and marketing teams know what time it is on every client’s Buying Clock®? Wouldn’t it be great for your team to discover how ready your client is to buy, so they could approach them in the right way? Then sales would never start talking about product features before the client is ready to even consider buying that type of product. And marketing wouldn’t overload anyone with too much information about all the benefits. Clients will feel better understood, and make a decision faster, when approached with messages that match their buyer readiness.

When everyone in your organization can detect the client’s buying cycle, you can develop shared terminology to align your sales and marketing activities and increase your efficiency and effectiveness. To maximize your organization’s potential, make your client’s readiness to buy the reference point of your sales strategy and process. This can lead to the following impact:

  • Shared terminology for sharing experiences will improve the whole team’s performance
  • Precise timing of your actions, resulting in lower cost of sales
  • Higher conversion
  • Less margin erosion and discounts
  • Objective, predictable forecasts
  • In summary: more sales with higher margins at a lower cost

Curious how to prepare your commercial team for the empowered customer?

  buyer alignmentbuying cyclebuying processmore salesreadiness to buysales marketing alignment
09
Feb 2014
0
Boosting Core Sales Skills

Dump your sales process. Focus on the buying cycle

Get rid of your sales process asap and sell more at a lower sales cost.

Dump your sales process. Focus on the buying cycle

Pascal Persyn Pascal Persyn  |    Sales Performance

Does this sound familiar?

  • The customer is interested but the criteria for making decisions keep changing.
  • You sound out prospective customers for information – such as their current way of working and associated challenges – so that you can design your sales pitches accordingly, but they don’t bite.
  • You work with the same contact person throughout the entire sales process, and they are really interested, but suddenly replaced by a reluctant colleague in the final stage.
  • You have to send several quotes for the same sales opportunity
  • A deal gets called off just before it’s concluded. Subsequent inquiries show that the customer never even made a purchase order request.
Watch Webinar – How to acquire new customers today

Perhaps in all the above cases you are the victim of your own sales processes, which don’t take the customers’ readiness to buy into account. Too many companies fall into this trap, often lured by companies selling marketing techniques, training courses, CRM and marketing automation, consultants and software suppliers. They did a one-off analysis of a buying cycle, which was then converted into a sales process and uniformly applied to all customers and sales opportunities.

Navel-gazing leads you down a dead end

People who use sales processes as their guide instead of the customer’s buying cycle often find themselves down a dead end. This is just plain logic, because you are ignoring the customer’s reality in favour of your own reality. But it’s the customer who ultimately decides if and how much to buy.
You’re also asking your sales and marketing departments to convert all their external interactions into a linear and company-internal process. This never corresponds with the customer’s situation, by definition.

Briefly consider the following (and perhaps decide to get rid of the sales process):

  • There’s no such thing as one sales process for every sales opportunity. Each individual has their own dynamics and insights.
  • A sales process shifts the focus from the customer to the seller. A lack of focus on the customer leads to the right actions being taken, but at the wrong time.
  • Sales-oriented processes don’t offer any scope for sales to adapt their speed and communications to the customer, or to coach the customer according to their situation.
  • Someone who assumes their own processes can rarely make an accurate forecast: they only consider their own logic, and not the customer’s readiness to buy.

Copernican revolution

Another way is possible. There are models and tools that focus on the customer’s buying cycle rather than the sales cycle. Scientific research has shown that everyone goes through the same mental phases for every decision we make. It’s a mental phase that is not related to gender, age, job or nationality. Placing these mental phases in a model enables us to make this buying cycle predictable and so design a company’s actions to match it.

Sellers more important than ever

In this new model the role of the seller is more important than ever before. Every customer has their own way of indicating which phase they are currently in. The more important the purchase for the company, the longer the decision-making process can be expected to last. Only sellers who can correctly detect the buyer readiness of everyone in the buying cycle will conclude the majority of sales opportunities successfully. Because they are keeping their finger on the pulse, everything will run smoothly, as long as the customer allows. This doesn’t just improve your win ratio; it also keeps the buying cycle as short as possible.

Lower sales costs

So get rid of your sales process as quickly as possible and change your way of working, reporting and coaching to match the individual buyer readiness of all concerned. And sell more at a lower sales cost.

Perpetos Webinar How to acquire new customers today

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  What are customers open to? How to find out and create sufficient trust to discuss?
  Which mix of digital, virtual and physical conversations work best?

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  buying processlinear processlower cost of salessales opportunitysales processsell more