What is the Qualification Stage?
What is a S1. Qualification Opportunity?
The interested prospect booked & accepted a call to meet with you. During the Qualification Stage, you are securing BANT to understand intent of the 'interested prospect'.
Exit Criteria:
Use 📧 BANT Discovery Questions to uncover the following before moving to the next stage of 2. Discovery:
Buyer Activities in Stage 1:
Research: Looking at our website, researching solutions on G2
Seller Activities:
What you are doing in this stage:
BANT Qualifying Process Overview
- The BDR will own the account and opportunity during stage 1
- When there is a value in all of the BANT fields, a notification will be sent to the respective AE
- If everything is approved, the AE will move the opp to stage 2
- If not approved, then the BDR will work to get missing or clarification on BANT fields
- When moved to Stage 2, the Account/Opp will be reassigned to the AE and the BDR will receive a new account from the pool
Once you’ve identified BANT, and added thorough notes in SFDC, you’re ready to schedule the discovery call. This is now a qualified meeting and a qualified lead, and moves into the 2. DISCOVERY.
New Lead/Qualification Statuses
Here are the top 5 things you need to know about our new lead/prospecting statuses
1 Why we made the Changes
- We streamlined lead qualification to save time and focus on high-potential prospects. The previous system required too much manual work and didn’t clearly identify sales-ready leads.
- The new statuses ensure better alignment between sales and marketing, automate more steps, and prioritize prospects based on engagement and scoring, helping you act faster on qualified leads.
2️ Your workflow will largely remain the same
- Movement between these stages is all automated (except for recycling/disqualifying a prospect)
- Instead of working Status = New prospects, you now should focus on Status = MQL and MQL+ prospects. Your individual dashboards have been updated to reflect this.
- 🚩 We will track a 6-hour SLA for MQLs - You should contact MQLs within 6 business hours of them being routed to you
- Instead of all prospects starting in Status = New, they will start in Status = Known. So you won't need to spend time manually moving them back to Nurturing like you have in the past.
3️ Prospects reach MQL status via HubSpot Score
- Prospects will reach the MQL status when they reach a HubSpot Score of 25+. The score takes into account a prospect's account score, title, persona, web analytics, astrological sign, form submissions, ebook downloads, etc.
4️ The Difference between Recycled and Disqualified
- Recycling a prospect implies that they are a valid prospect, but the timing isn't right for whatever reason. When a prospect is recycled, they won't be able to become an MQL again for 90 days
- Disqualifying a prospect implies that they will never be a good prospect for us. When a prospect is disqualified it will be put in a queue to be deleted from our database.
5️ What Each of the New Statuses are
- You can review what each of the new statuses is in Speks or in this executive overview doc [link to document].
⚙️ Process Speks here (link)
🚨 Action Item: Please mark this Spek as read upon reading.
Uncover BANT | Email Flow
Between the cold call answer & the "meeting booked" call you schedule with the prospect, try to secure BANT via email.
Based on your 1st interaction, see below flow chart of how to integrate BANT into your email follow-ups.
Post Cold Call Connect + Meeting Set | Follow-up Email Template
CHALLENGE: Keeping the momentum of interest from the prospect + YOU WANT a BANT or NO BANT quickly.
GOALS: As soon as you make a connection [cold call, email response, LinkedIn] you are starting or continuing BANT.
- Sent SAME DAY you set the meeting
- Confirm Date/Time/Attendance of the meeting
- Offers a teaser or small valuable insight (include a resource for them to pre-read or watch)
- Sets/Reframes expectations
HI <INSERT NAME>,
Looking forward to our conversation on <DATE AND TIME>. I wanted to share this agenda and a few questions for you to answer prior to ensuring we're aligned with the proper context for our call.
Agenda:
- Learn more about some of your challenges & priorities over the next 3-6 months:
- What is driving the need for a ‘XXX’ solution? (specific project rollout, poor tool adoption, etc)
- Is there a specific timeline you are looking to implement a solution to this need or are you in the exploratory phase?
- Do you have a specific budget amount set aside to fund this project, or would that need to be requested based on the vendor's solution?
- Quick Overview of 'XXX’ & Company
- Next Steps in Your Evaluation
Please let me know if you want to add anything or anything specific you would like to cover. In the meantime, Here is agreat video resource [link to video]for you to review ahead of our call to give you context as to what [Company Name] solves for.
If you feel anyone [Authority] else should be invited to this call, feel free to add them! I look forward to connecting.
[Signature]
24+ Hour Prior to Meeting | BANT Pre-Meeting Email Template
CHALLENGE: Buyers come unprepared. Can change the agenda and we are not prepared = wasted meeting.
GOALS: What BANT criteria do you have left to uncover? How responsive have they been (watching videos, answering via email, webinar signups?, etc). Based on their level of activeness, craft your pre-condition email to set yourself up
- Sent 24+ hours before meeting
- Confirms Date/Time/Attendance of meeting
- Offers a teaser or small valuable insight (include a resource for them to pre-read or watch)
- Sets/Reframes expectations
- Builds confidence in partnering with you
HI <INSERT NAME>,
Looking forward to our conversation on <DATE AND TIME>. When you have a chance, here are a few question I'll cover or you can send back prior to ensure we're aligned on our call. [Insert BANT Questions that you still need to capture]
- Learn more about some of your challenges & top priorities:
- What is driving the need for a ‘XXX’ solution? (specific project rollout, poor tool adoption, etc)
- Is there a specific timeline you are looking to implement a solution to this need or are you in the exploratory phase?
- Do you have a specific budget amount set aside to fund this project, or would that need to be requested based on vendor's solution?
- Overview of ‘XXX’ & Company
- Next Steps in your evaluation
Here is a great resource for you to review ahead of our call: <INSERT RESOURCE>.
Look forward to connecting.
[Signature]
BANT Discovery Questions | Cold Call
Use these questions to uncover an opportunity and ask 'Why' or 'Tell me more' to dig further into their responses...
💵 Questions to uncover 'Budget'
- Is this a problem you've budgeted to solve this year? Why? Tell me more...
- Are you looking to buy, or build a solution?
- Is a budget set aside for solving this issue, or are you looking to request a budget based on the vendor?
- A solution like this (company aside) would typically cost between $X, and $Y for the number of users that you have, is that what you were expecting?
- Are you able to spend the budget freely, or are there additional budget approvals needed?
- Have you bought a tool to solve this issue before? How long ago and what was the result?
- What is the process to purchase software in your organization?
- Who needs to be involved in the evaluation to sign off on the budget?
👤Questions to uncover 'Authority'
- Who is typically involved in the purchase of tools at your company?
- Most of our customers have X,Y, and Z person involved in the discussion to determine if our solution is a fit. Is it possible to involve those individuals at your company?
- What's your usual procurement process and timeline?
- Are you looking to buy this tool for yourself, your team,
