NEWSLETTER
Ask any salesperson and they will tell you that their biggest problem is trying to get more high-quality leads. The problem can be broken down into getting more leads and focusing on the highest quality ones when you get them. The winning sales team must constantly prioritize which leads to focus on and invest their time wisely. Having a clear framework for qualifying leads can go a long way toward identifying the most promising leads, having personalized conversations, and faster conversions.
BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Schedule) is the most widely used framework for lead qualification. Help answer: Budget: Is the prospect financially capable of making a purchase? Authority: Do they have the power to make decisions or influence? Need: Do they have a genuine requirement that the product or service can satisfy? Timeline: What is the urgency or deadline for the prospect to make a decision?
The BANT rating is not simply a checkpoint; It is the foundation on which we build a channel rich in quality leads, which increases the probability of successful closings. Beyond its strategic value, BANT serves as a structured means to capture and understand the unique needs of each potential customer.
Helps account executives (AEs) prioritize their time and focus on the deals that are most likely to close. It also helps sales leaders get better estimates of what realistic process they are working with to provide projections to the CEO and board of directors.
However, conventional lead scoring methods, such as sales calls, surveys, and emails, are riddled with inefficiencies.
- Waste of time: It takes away valuable time from the EA that could have been spent on other important tasks.
- Incomplete information: Manually collected data is often incomplete with missing fields, making decision making less robust.
- Subjectivity: Lead scoring is prone to subjectivity, as the criteria for each EA can differ and be influenced by biases or emotions.
- Scalability: Once businesses start scaling exponentially, the manual process becomes a limiting factor that prevents the business from reaching its potential.
<h2 id="how-ai-is-transforming-sales-lead-scoring”>How ai is transforming sales lead scoring?
ai integration has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping traditional approaches and increasing the capabilities of sales teams. ai has become the cornerstone of sales with automated lead scoring, personalization at scale, real-time decision support, and integrations with CRM systems.
At Nanonets, ai is an integral part of day-to-day operations and decision-making. With a rapidly growing customer base around the world, teams are heavily leveraging ai tools to meet customer requests at scale. The ai-BANT qualification tool helps the sales team efficiently capture information during customer discovery calls, assign lead qualification scores, generate alerts, and integrate into CRM.
The ai-BANT Qualification tool integrates seamlessly with existing platforms such as Zoom, Slack, and HubSpot without disrupting existing workflows. Below is a step-by-step breakdown of the ai-BANT qualification workflow:
- Call transcription: The ai tool runs in the background during a Zoom call, transcribing the conversation and sending it directly to the Nanonets app.
- Data extraction: The call summary is analyzed and the BANT criteria are collected and classified using relevant tags, such as available budget, decision-making authority, product usefulness, and implementation time.
- Prospect evaluation: The tool assigns a trust score to the lead based on meeting BANT criteria and accepts or rejects based on pre-set thresholds.
- Send alerts: The tool can be easily integrated into Slack, where an established template highlighting the lead's personal details, BANT details, and scoring is sent as an alert to Slack channels where account executives can approve deal creation.
- CRM Integration: And finally, once the deal is approved, it is added to the CRM with a single click for further tracking.
But it works? Can it do a better job than an AE?
To understand the impact of the BANT Qualification tool on sales efficiency, we conducted a study that delves into the critical metric of lead closure. We analyzed over 1,500 sales calls made by EAs and compared their qualification and deal closing rates with the ai-BANT scoring tool. Here are the results:
When AEs flagged BANT details for a lead, here's how it correlates to closing the lead:
When our ai flagged a lead's BANT details, here's how it correlated to the lead's close:
Precision and recovery
This shows that when an AE or ai flagged a BANT deal, it was equally likely to close. Both had a ~25% accuracy or 1/4 chance of closing a deal if they were marked BANT. Which is in line with industry benchmarks of winning 1/4 of deals.
The place where ai really outperformed and blew away manual review was in its Recall. If a deal was to be closed, manual review could only accurately flag 41% of those deals as BANT from the start (as authority and timeline may not always be obvious from the start). But the ai was able to guess this at 81%, meaning that of all the deals that were going to be closed it was able to accurately mark 81% of them as BANT.
Cycle time
Of the deals that were ultimately closed, another key metric to watch is cycle time. It is the time from the first contact with the client to the closing date. A faster cycle time indicates competitiveness in the market and directly impacts revenue potential. We found that deals with a qualification score of 80+ (on a scale of 1 to 100) assigned by ai have shorter cycle times by 5% to 10%. This can have a significant impact on how the sales team prioritizes their pipeline and focuses on the most promising leads!
diffuse BANT
Furthermore, the BANT rating performed by AEs is a binary criterion: the deal is either BANT or not. However, this doesn't capture the nuances of which deals have a stronger BANT rating than others. Since ai analyzes every detail and then assigns a qualification score on a scale of 1 to 100, it gives the sales team much more flexibility to tailor their approach to each specific deal.
Dog food
To capture the experience of internal testing of this product, we asked some EAs to share their experience using this tool. These are some of the benefits that stood out:
- The direct integration with Zoom ensured that none of the important details discussed on the call were left out. Regardless of the call flow, BANT information is captured succinctly and comprehensively.
- The “Approval” phase allows AEs to review the ai-generated report before publishing it to the CRM. While the work is largely automated, it is nice to have the option to manually review and edit the BANT summary when necessary.
- A standardized lead qualification process ensures consistency in the classification of different EAs across the organization. There is much less variation in lead scoring criteria across the board.
- The speed of completion of BANT lead scoring is phenomenal compared to manual scoring. Problems related to missing fields and incomplete data no longer exist.
- The time saved by automating this task is now spent on higher-quality conversations with customers and exploring opportunities to develop better products.
The integration of ai into the BANT qualification process has revolutionized the sales landscape, addressing long-standing inefficiencies and unlocking new levels of accuracy. Traditional challenges associated with BANT qualification, such as time-consuming manual processes, incomplete data, and subjective lead scoring, find compelling solutions in the capabilities of ai.
The seamless integration of the Nanonets ai-BANT qualification tool with platforms such as Zoom, Slack and HubSpot shows its adaptability and compatibility with existing workflows, from call transcription to CRM integration. It will be interesting to see what innovative possibilities and untapped potential await us as we continue to combine human intuition with the precision of ai in our quest for more efficient, effective and customer-centric sales strategies.
If you would like to use this tool yourself, schedule a call with us here:
