Time is one of an industrial sales engineer’s most precious asset. Specifically, we need more selling time with customers who want and need to buy. We have found sales engineers often spend time following up with customers who have not been qualified adequately and this robs them of time they could have closed sales with customers ready to buy. We also see most sales engineers today only spend 22%-28% of their sellable time with customers. Inside Sales shared 37% of sales rep’s activities are revenue generating. What are they doing when they are not selling? We find them in internal meetings, project managing installations they sold, and communicating shipment updates pulling them away from closing sales. In this article we will discuss how to spend more time with customers who are qualified and will place orders by improving your qualifying skills.
Our data from the sales effectiveness and improvement assessment instrument we use that has assessed over 3 million salespeople globally shows that only 27% of salespeople can determine a closeable sale from a never-ending conversation that takes time but does not deliver revenue. There are several qualifying frameworks I train sales engineers to use. In our industry the most popular qualifying framework I have taught sales engineers is BANT.
When we train salespeople, we have found that if a sales engineer professionally asks the below questions they can determine if they have an opportunity that is qualified and likely to close or not. These four questions, it significantly improves sales forecasting and closing and helps them have healthy optimism about each sales opportunity.
What does BANT stand for?
B – Budget: Has the customer allocated money to solve the issue?
A – Authority: Are you speaking with the decision-maker?
N – Need: Is there a clear business problem or opportunity and we clearly understand the desired outcome?
T – Timeline: When are they planning to buy? When do they need the equipment installed or serviced?
What makes BANT a good choice?
First, we find salespeople remember the four letters and easily apply them to qualify sales opportunities after training. They also help weed out opportunities that are not ready or we discover we are not speaking with someone who can make a purchase decision, or the budget for purchase is not available for two months. When sales engineers ask these four questions, we have seen close rates and total revenue significantly increase.
Salespeople trained in qualifying skills outperform transactional salespeople, who are quick to quote and overly optimistic that every quote in their pipeline will close.
We assessed an industrial manufacture’s sales team’s qualifying skills, and they shared over 60 quotes in the sales pipeline they felt would close with 100% certainty in the next few months. After training this team in qualifying skills and having them call every deal in their sales pipeline and use qualifying skills, we found only just under 20 quotes had enough information to positively predict sales that would close.
Below are some questions I have used and trained sales engineers to use, and I hope they help you qualify opportunities and increase your close rates and revenue.
BANT
Budget
Do you have a budget for this project or am I helping you build one?
Authority
Working with others in the ___industry we have found there is often several people involved in the purchase decision. Is that the case with your company or is this your decision alone?
Need
Based on our discussions you said you want our solution to __________. Is there anything I missed?
Timeline
I believe we have designed the perfect solution for what we have discussed. When do you need this installed and running?
We recommend your team write their questions in their own language, so the conversations are authentic and not scripted.
Asking qualifying questions helps sales engineers allocate their time on closeable opportunities.
How healthy is your sales pipeline?
Do your salespeople have strong qualifying skills?
Has your CFO shared frustration that the sales forecast the CRO gives them is rarely accurate?
How many sales in your sales pipeline today are qualified? ( Are you sure?)
If one of your goals is to increase your close rates and forecast accuracy, implement the BANT qualifying framework, and train your salespeople to use it.
Before your next quote goes out, let’s ensure your salespeople have qualified the opportunity as closeable.
Let’s schedule a call if you want to learn more about the impact qualifying skills has on sales close rates.
Author:
Mark Roberts is a senior-level sales and marketing leader with over 38 years of experience driving profitable sales growth in market-leading organizations.
He has done so at Timken Bearings, Alpha Enterprises, Vantage Mobility, Gardner Denver, and Frito-Lay. Mark is an author, public speaker, Scaling-Up coach, sales skills trainer, and sales acceleration coach. He has helped scale several manufacturing companies.
In 2018, he received the Business Excellence Award from NSME, and in 2019, he received the Highspot Sales Enablement Award. Sales Hacker Inc. also recognized him in the Sales Enablement Category. He was recently recognized in Soar to Success Magazine for his data-driven approach to growing sales and profits and for his human-to-human sales training and coaching in Top Sales Magazine.
Mark is the founder of OTB Solutions, LLC, and the popular business development blog www.nosmokeandmirrors.com, which is ranked #1 in fixing sales problems. As founder and president of OTB Sales, he helps clients diagnose and improve revenue, profits, and shareholder value. His new book, Driving Explosive Growth, is a no-nonsense approach to growing your business profitably. It was released in 2023, along with his book Voice of Customer which shares how to gain actionable strategic insights from your customers to drive revenue and profit growth.
