Episode 32: BANT and MEDDIC

Alex: 0:04

Welcome to Decoding Sales. A podcast Where An engineer. That's me, Alex, and a salesperson.

Peter: 0:10

That's me, Peter.

Alex: 0:11

talk about the art and science of sales as it relates to life and business. In this episode, we are gonna do a deep dive into two popular sales methodologies, BANT and MEDDIC. We're gonna cover, what are they, how do you use them? you come outta this episode excited, what would it actually take to go and implement them in your own sales organization? Before we get started, I wanna give a special shout out and thank you to our episode. Salesroom. Salesroom is a video conferencing platform built for both buyers and sellers. Every feature of the product is designed to help both the buyer and the seller build strong rapport as part of the sales process. Peter has used them at, uh, at Twingate, really excited about the product. Peter, do you wanna say a little bit about your experience?

Peter: 0:56

I'm personally excited about it. In fact, related to our episode topic, BANT and MEDDIC Salesroom allows you to tee up those topics virtually within the context of the video meeting, and allows sales people to keep track of qualification criteria for the deal, all while still being able to brand your own room with your own individual personality as well as your company. So we're very excited about it, and for folks who want to try it out, they're accepting signups at Salesroom dot com. So I would urge folks to look at it, evaluate it, and test drive it.

Alex: 1:28

Thanks Peter. And again, thank you Salesroom. Uh, they are the only video conferencing solution that's really been built from the ground up for you as a salesperson to break through. So, Peter, let's talk BANT, MEDDIC and sales methodologies. Uh, just to get us started, what are BANT and MEDDIC?

Peter: 1:49

There there's sales frameworks and methodologies for you to be able to qualify deals to understand the quality of a lead coming in and whether or not they have high propensity or low propensity to buy. Beyond that, I would say with, with BANT and MEDDiC it's also a way for you to be able to go through the sales process in a methodical way. So that you're understanding what to ask the buyer, not only in the first call, but also as you're about to close the deal, right? And, and to help you gain confidence in the decision making criteria of the companies that you're trying to sell to.

Alex: 2:24

Okay, and let's get this outta the way early there. These are acronyms, right? What, What do BANT and MEDDIC stand for?

Peter: 2:30

Yeah. So BANT stands for budget. Does the company have the money and the funds to pay you? Um, a in BANT stands for authority. So are you talking to a decision maker or somebody that can sign the contract? Write the checks. N stands for need. So does the company actually have a need for your solution? Is there an urgent pain point you're trying to solve? And t is timing. So in what timeframe is this particular project slotted for the company you're trying to sell to? Whether that's three months, six months, or nine months. So that's what BANT stands for. Any questions about bant before I go over to MEDDIC?

Alex: 3:06

Just budget, authority, need timing. That's the thing

Peter: 3:09

That's right. Yep. So, so for me, for MEDDIC, the M stands for metrics. So what are some of the quantifiable um, ROI metrics that make this particular product. You're selling an economic win. Um, e stands for economic buyer. So this is somebody, you know, similar to a and, and BANT, somebody who can write the check, somebody who can approve the spend, but also somebody who can reject the spend. Um, D the first D in medic, there's two Ds. Actually, the first D is decision criteria. So what is the company actually looking at in terms of making a decision. It's not always metrics driven, all the criteria. Sometimes it could be ease of use, it could be, you know, how it makes the end users feel, how, how, um, seamless the setup is. Does it integrate with your other tech stack? Things like that can be decision making criteria. The second D is decision process, right? So how does the company actually go through the buying process? Do they first send you a mutual NDA and then they put out an RFP, which stands for request for proposal, or are they more, more so, you know, a, a company that allows two or three people to do a POC and then, and buy the product at the end of it, if it all goes well, according to those two or three people. I and MEDDIC is identifying pain. So similar to N and BANT, um, identifying pain mean is important. Without pain, without something that's a problem or a gap. Selling your solution can be very hard. And then the last, um, the last acronym in medic is C, which is champion. So this, um, the reason why C is there is a lot of, um, a lot of software, a lot of SaaS products don't get through in terms of the sales process without a champion that's separate from the economic buyer, right? Somebody who's actually passionate about the product because it's gonna help their day to day, and that doesn't always align with somebody who's signing the check.

Alex: 5:05

All right, so there's a lot of letters there, but metrics. Economic buyer. Decision criteria. Decision process. Uh, something about

Peter: 5:15

Yep. Identifying

Alex: 5:16

identifying pain, and then your champion.

Peter: 5:19

that's right. Yep.

Alex: 5:20

Okay. I understand why BANT would be more popular than MEDDIC. MEDDIC is really complicated to remember. There's like identifying pain. The abuse acronyms.

Peter: 5:29

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And MEDDIC. Yeah, it's a lot of letters and it goes very deep on purpose. Right. But it's also like a very popular methodology too because it's allows you to be really surgical throughout the sales process.

Alex: 5:42

Well, I was gonna say like BANT to me, just when I hear it, it's easy to remember. It's the, the highest level stuff. But when you talk about MEDDIC, I'm like, Yes, we've talked about all of these concepts in our other episodes, having a deal champion, you know, understanding the process of a deal and what it takes to get to Yes. Which is all about the decision criteria, the decision process. it, it feels like there's good and bad in both of these. One is a little too simple. One's a, too complex to to remember. So how, Talk a little bit more, how are these get, how do these get used and which one do you use.

Peter: 6:22

Yeah, so I, I think there's a couple distinctions in how they're used right now. We use BANT at Twingate. Um, we're still a growing company. We're still a growing team, so we're proponents of keeping it simple in the beginning and then iterating upon that. BANT is really great for qualifying top of funnel leads because, like you said, it's very simple and it's easy to ask, you know, four questions compared to seven or eight right, that you need to get to in, in a MEDDIC framework. And oftentimes we use BANT for our SDR team that's going outbound to be able to quickly say, Okay, this lead actually hits two out four BANT criteria. Because I ask these two or three questions. It's also helpful from a um, framing perspective on first calls. We have first call templates. So we actually lay out budget, authority, need and timing, and then various questions to be able to get to those top level, um, outcomes in terms of the quality of the lead. And so it's helpful to be able to enable and also hold people accountable on, on four clear and, and, and really impactful, um, criteria when it comes to beats. Now MEDDIC, I think going, going to MEDDIC, it's really helpful in a POC process. You know, once you actually get beyond the top of funnel and you start to actually seriously evaluate a product, MEDDIC becomes really relevant because at that point you're probably not sitting down for a 15 minute chat to grab somebody's attention. They're probably invested in at least evaluating your product, and at that point, it's important to go deeper rather than be surface level, right with the, with the nuances of how a specific company or, or buyer buys your product. So those are like some of the differences to start off with.

Alex: 8:08

So, couple directions I want to take this, uh, but maybe just one basic question to start with. The way you described it, you could actually deploy them side by side at different stages. Is that something that, that people do where they, they actually use two methodologies like this at

Peter: 8:21

Yeah.

Alex: 8:22

parts of their

Peter: 8:23

Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely possible in different stages of the sales process too, right? So for our SDR team, we'll likely always keep BANT, you know, because it's, it's a good qualification criteria for, like I said, top of funnel, and early interest. And then I would love to start implementing MEDDIC. We do have a POC framework right now, obviously where we walk the buyers through a specific framework. It's more based off of milestones, use cases, pain points, and timelines. But I think MEDDIC would be a great one to incorporate because it takes into consideration the E and the C, the economic buyer and the champion. It takes into consideration the stakeholder buying process versus like an individual buying process. Right. So it brings.

Alex: 9:10

back to that idea of sales as a

Peter: 9:12

team sport. Yeah, exactly. It brings in that layered sales approach that also incorporates the hierarchy of the organization, not just the, um, the metrics and not just the decision criteria. Right. It, it, it actually like, tells you that there's people involved with the process.

Alex: 9:29

So I think, you know, for our listeners, they probably now understand, okay, what these things are, they might have forgotten what the second D in MEDDIC stands for:

Peter: 9:40

That's right. There you go. You catch on quickly.

Alex: 9:42

but I think what I'm wondering about now, it seems like there's multiple ways in which this can be deployed, both as a, uh, lead scoring mechanism, as a system that more details actually recorded in your crm. Um, so in lead scoring, you're just like, Is there, this, is there, this, is there this, In the crm, you're writing down the specifics, I assume, and then there's also a way that it influences the shape of a sales call. And finally, I imagine that individual salespeople could kind of just fall back to this to guide themselves in their, in any sales process. it. Am I thinking about this, right? Like, is there canonical, like ways in which you roll this out, if you're rolling it out into an organization? Uh, can, can you talk a little bit more about what it actually looks like to, to use

Peter: 10:28

this? Yeah, I think you, you hit the main points, right? The first point is making sure you have data to look back on, right? So that's where the CRM tracking is important, right? Where you can say, Okay, if you have 500 leads, X number hit the B in band, right? So I think that's something that's really, really impactful and something that my sales operations leader is, is working on getting a little bit more tight on in terms of the hygiene portion of it. And then the other, and I'd say as important or even more important aspect of BANT is actually how you execute on it in a call or when you're actually engaging with the prospect. Because if you just go through BANT like a script and you're just checking the boxes, the prospect will understand that and and feel that. So a lot of it is enabling on phraseology. And how do you ask about budget? Because oftentimes it not, it's not just what's your budget? It's, you know, is this a scoped out project for you already? Right? That's another way of asking about budget without sounding salesy. Did you already plan for this in your roadmap? Oh, okay. Great. So is there budget for it? Already spoken for? You know, even though I mention budget, I kind of warm up to the fact that I'm not just going through a checklist, but it's a more nuanced, like multilayered type of question. So I think the ways in which you ask. About these different qualifying criteria, I think is, is as important because as you know, like rapport building and gaining trust is, is all about making the conversation feel natural. Not like the, not, not having the prospect feel like they're going through a meat factory.

Alex: 12:02

Right. So maybe one way to think about this is, it's a good way to remember there, there are touchstones that you can fall back to and say, I need to make sure I cover these things in this conversation. They're not scripts.

Peter: 12:15

Exactly. They're not scripts. Yeah. And not to say you can't use the acronyms, right? You can still ask what is your decision making process. But I think there's really advanced and nuanced ways where you can soften that a little bit and you can also use your own personality to mix up the way in which you execute these frameworks, and I think that's where the art of sales comes in and where it gets really fun. Right. So as an example, instead of asking what's your decision making process, I would say, you know, from your perspective, how do you see the next steps going? Right? And overall, like what are some landmines that you've experienced when you're going through buying software that we can be aware of? Right. That is actually like asking about the decision process, but you've asked it in a very different way. Instead of asking what's the process, I've asked actually, what are the landmines, right? Because maybe they've already told me like the high level process. It's not anything interesting because it sounds like any other buyer, but you can actually turn it on its head and say throughout the process, what are some gotchas that we should be aware of? You know, is it the legal portion? Is it when it gets to your cio? You know, like, so calling out the elephant in the room. I think it's really fun within the context of this framework, because that's where like good is differentiated from great or great is differentiated from good, I should say, right? The great folks can really off-road and use this framework in a way where it doesn't feel like a framework almost.

Alex: 13:40

Right. they're thinking back to it and saying, Okay, I got this information, but they have this whole repertoire of questions that will get them that information. I'm almost imagining like, you know, the beginner sales person who's just starting out here's BANT and they're like, I have four questions now and I'm gonna ask them all the time. And then like the master sales person who aces the sales process has a hundred questions for every one of those four in and knows when to deploy them and what order to deploy them. Maybe it becomes. You know, NABT sometimes, and sometimes it's, you even probably know when to leave off some of them if you're, you've made enough progress in that call and it, you don't wanna

Peter: 14:25

overwhelm somebody. Yeah, that's important too. You don't want to ask everything at once, and sometimes you might even the most advanced salespeople make up questions on the spot, you know, depending on the mood of the of the room. So yeah, I think, I think that's where it gets really fun. Now where, where it's good to be kind of cut and dry is for internal conversations, like with management and reports. It's nice to say, Okay, like, did you, Who is the E at this company? You know, who's the economic buyer? Right. So in the context of internal conversations, you can be as straightforward as possible, obviously, because for internal forecasting and looking at the deal pipeline, it's not important how you, It's not as important, I should say, how you make the other side feel. It's more important to get to the answer as to whether or not you're fitting the criteria for a hot deal or a warm deal, or a cold deal, right?

Alex: 15:16

In, in engineering terms, you're the salesperson is providing a, a map or a, a translation between many, many different inputs into a, a simple output on the other side for the process to operate on. And, and that's part of the magic. So I, I, we've talked a, a good bit about how a salesperson. Theoretically ought to deploy this on a call, and we've done something like 29 episodes that cover the various skills that you would deploy to ask questions in different ways. Our conversation about navigating stakeholders is a great one. Our conversation about the price. It was a great opportunity for talking about budget and, and how you think about pricing. You know, we covered a lot of that. Um, but I love how this gives a framework for our listeners to just hold it all and then go and sort of think about each of the episodes in context in terms of these different tools or, or questions and, and then they can go and, and, and level up their skill in that. So that's my sales pitch for anyone out there. Uh, if your need is to give yourself a little bit more structure and you've got, you know, a few hours, that's your timeframe, uh, you probably have the authority to do it. So, and it, and it's free.

Peter: 16:32

Exactly,

Alex: 16:33

So if you've got the budget.

Peter: 16:35

Wow. That was, That was pretty good. You implemented those frameworks quickly.

Alex: 16:41

Well, you know, I don't know what people's decision process is on whether they're listening to all those old episodes of the podcast. Um, but, uh, I, I'm sure that they have some criteria, like how excited they are to hear, hear them. Um, anyway, digress. So let's, let's, let's turn to the internal side of this, cuz I think it's really interesting you're talking about. You know, shooting straight with your team. About, about where, where these, uh, question, you know, where these rubrics lie, you know, where, where prospect falls in each of these, what does that really look like? Are you talk about how you're using this when you're using it, Like what meetings you're in, what conversations you're in,

Peter: 17:22

Yeah.

Alex: 17:23

how does it come into play?

Peter: 17:25

Yeah, I think, um, let's, let's maybe focus on MEDDIC and then we can also talk about BANT as well. Um, I do find that MEDDIC has a lot of richness to it. So internally, how this works is if you know who your economic buyer is and you know who your champion is as, as an example, you're gonna deploy different tactics to sell each of those constituents, right? So an economic buyer, you know, the, the discussion might be, Okay, how do we get Peter convinced to sign the contract. And the answer to that is different from how do we get Alex, who's the champion to deploy the product, Right? And the way that this helps is not only in pipeline conversations, does it help around strategy, around how are you gonna email, what language are you gonna use, But it also helps cross-functionally with marketing to say, Hey, listen, for an economic buyer, we need a one pager that looks really polished because this person's probably gonna look at it for two minutes and make a determination on the brand quality of our platform, right? For a champion who's actually implementing the product, we need a lot of architecture diagrams. We need documentations that's very verbose because they're probably gonna be pouring over the documentation and we need to make sure all the use cases are laid out very clearly. So you can start to see how the conversation not only within the sales team, but also cross-functionally starts to change. And then this goes for all the other, um, all the other acronyms. Let's go to BANT. You know, for example, with, with need you know, if somebody says, Okay, my need is to make sure IT support tickets are reduced because I have 50 of'em a day related to VPN as an example. To address that need, you know, the conversation is gonna be how do we actually like tee up the the right metrics? How do we tee up the right again, like marketing collateral to say, Hey, with Twingate we have these five customers who have addressed that need, and here they are. Or if that's, if, if the need is different, let's say instead of IT support tickets, it's being able to use Terraform to deploy network access controls, then we need to look at another set of collateral or we need to look at another set of customers to say, Hey, this is a DevOps engineer who fulfilled the need that you're looking for. So it just really helps, I think, to create alignment across what you're gonna actually convey throughout the sales process to convince the buyers to buy right across all levels.

Alex: 19:47

S so like, put, put another way. It gives you, uh, an ontology or a vocabulary that you can use internally that everyone knows these concepts cause they're part of the core acronyms. Everyone knows economic buyer, decision maker or um, economic buyer champion. Uh, decision process, decision criteria. They, they know those things and so you can, they not only do they know to ask about them, but now you, you start to attach to these concepts a certain set of

Peter: 20:18

exactly.

Alex: 20:19

you would

Peter: 20:19

take. Yeah. Actions collateral, you know, support mechanism to be able to address each of the qualifying criteria of a deal so that you're improving your chances of closing a deal. Right.

Alex: 20:34

As an individual salesperson listening to this call, you know, that's not something that they necessarily have control over, but for a founder or a sales leader, they might like, Let's say that you wanna bring this to an organization. What do you need to do? What are the key steps?

Peter: 20:48

Yeah, I, I, I think the first step is just to be simple and write it down on a piece of paper. Or, you know, on a virtual Google Doc or Notion page and write down, you know, the reason why we need to bring in qualifying criteria, what they are, examples of questions to ask for each of these, um, for each of these, uh, decision making or qualifying criteria I should say, for leads and socialize it and make sure the CEO makes sure the cpo, everybody that's involved with the go to market process agrees with the framework first. right? Once everybody agrees with it, it's all about executing it and making sure it's documented within your crm, also within your call note templates, et cetera, et cetera. And then at that point, once you have alignment at the leadership level and cross-functionally, then you need to hold your team accountable to actually asking the questions and using the call templates you created or the note taking templates that you created. And then, um, as you, as you actually implement, you're gonna have different versions of BANT and MEDDIC too, by the way, right? You might initially say, We need two out of four BANT to take a call from an SDR, and that CRS might say, Hey, that's too stringent because even if I just get you somebody who can make the decision, as long as we're looking at this cut of company that's done well for us in the past, I should still get credit. Right? So you see how that works. It starts to like, the execution of it starts to happen and you start to iterate on the on the edge cases of how it's, how it's implemented.

Alex: 22:22

Right. Got it. So you're sort of get alignment at the leadership level that we want to use this to score leads because that has a really big effect on obviously the flow of possible deals and influences a lot of people's comp too. Um, like the SDR

Peter: 22:37

team Yeah.

Alex: 22:37

like. And then you roll it out to the whole team and really put it in place as like, we need this information. You have to get this information. Either as an SDR or as a, you know, a sales rep who's taking the deal further through the process.

Peter: 22:52

Yeah.

Alex: 22:53

what kind of resistance did you know? I'm sure that like every salesperson has heard these acronyms and it's kind of like in, in software, you know, somebody says Agile or waterfall, people have immediate reactions.

Peter: 23:03

Mm-hmm.

Alex: 23:04

What, what's the halo or the horns sticking out of like these acronyms for people?

Peter: 23:10

Yeah. I think, I think the major one is, it's really hard to ask all four or all seven or how, however many letters there are in MEDDIC. I think they're six. Okay. So, um, it's hard to get all of that immediately. And as a manager or leader, your instinct is to ask about all of them all the time. you know, So if a rep gets off a call and you ask, Okay, what's their budget? Is it, is it an authority figure? Do they have a need and what's their timeline? It's really hard for a rep to answer all of them. And oftentimes folks get defensive just by being asked the question. You know, and they say, uh, well, there was an authority. I don't know about need yet. I need to find out on a following follow up call. I also don't know about timeline and budget. We ran outta time to ask. You know, that's like a really difficult situation to be in because against every single thing you didn't ask, there's an excuse. So I think like the, the trick becomes being able to enable on the phraseology. Again, I know I use that word a lot, but it's really important because you have to, you have to allow the reps to understand that there are ways to ask all these things or most of these things in ways that doesn't feel like are over overwhelming the prospect. Right. And if I hear this a lot, I hear like, Oh, we ran out time, or it wasn't the right time for asking that question. It just wasn't appropriate. And I think reps should challenge themselves to push the envelope a little bit. If you're running outta time make sure on the next call you leave 10 minutes to ask some of these questions. If you don't feel like it's an appropriate, um, question just say, Hey, I'm not sure if this is appropriate at this stage, but I'm just curious, do you have a budget? You know, like, so there's always ways to, there's always ways to soften the blow is my, is my, uh, message to, if you're a rep, um, there's really no excuse for not at least trying to ask these questions. A better, I think like a better answer for me, for my reps is when I ask, is there budget? And they say it wasn't appropriate to ask, I'd rather hear, Oh, I asked. But they said it's not appropriate at this stage for them to divulge that information because they didn't want to divulge it. Right. Like that, that's a much better conversation internally. But a lot of reps don't go that deep. You know? They just say, I just, I just didn't ask because I didn't think it was appropriate. And that's really hard for a manager because assuming something in any stage of the sales process is really dangerous.

Alex: 25:40

So you, you asked, you answered a very interesting question. It wasn't the one I asked which is, what do sales reps think about these?

Peter: 25:48

Ah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Great question. Great question. So I think what a sales reps can think like the reverse side is that it's too much, sometimes too much framework or too administrative too. It makes them feel too robotic and it makes them feel like they're reading off a manual, which, you know, it's kind of related to the answer I gave you a little bit too, because it's all about in, in that framing.

Alex: 26:10

because they don't have the skill to know how to turn it into the right

Peter: 26:13

phrases Yeah, yeah. It feels like handcuffs rather than, um, a set of tools to improve the chance of closing a deal. Right. That's what it is at the end of the day. But some reps, you know, they feel like they're, you know, handcuffed or it's too rigid or, you know, too, it's too much micromanagement, maybe almost in terms of the deal process if we're asking about these things all the time, cuz it can get overwhelming to try and have answers to these all the time.

Alex: 26:43

But it, it feels like if you're using them internally for managing the deal, if you're saying, I, you know, who is the economic buyer? Who is the champion, for example, That's not really micromanaging to say, we need this. Cause it fits into the rest of your system for decision making that we were talking about earlier.

Peter: 26:58

Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think that's where a lot of the selling happens from leadership to the reps too, right? To say like, Hey, like, like exactly what you said, Hey, this is part of the system. This is part of how you're gonna get the most support too cross-functionally. Is if we're understanding of, you know, the, the metrics, the economic buyer decision criteria because there's, you know, things that the organization can support the sales team on every aspect, on every acronym.

Alex: 27:26

I like that. So in some ways, these each, each letter in the acronym becomes a tool for the salesperson to deploy and wield if they have the skill to get the information with the right phrasing.

Peter: 27:41

With the right phrasing and with the right collateral. Right. Um, so yeah.

Alex: 27:45

How do you, like when you're hiring, do you ask people like, Do you know BANT? Do you know MEDDIC? Does everyone know it? Like, how does this play into the selection process?

Peter: 27:54

Yeah. So, um, so we, we don't consistently ask it, but you just made me think of a great idea. I think it, it doesn't hurt to ask, you know, what do you think about MEDDIC and BANT? Or, you know, another thing I think that. I, I have asked is what is, what are your favorite sales methodologies? Right? It doesn't have to be BANT or MEDDIC, just open ended, you know. What is your sales style and your sales philosophy, and what have you used to help close deals, and this is where things like the Sandler methodology, challenger sales, like these things start coming up. Those are more like philosophical views on of sales versus frameworks I would say. I mean, we can cover those in a future episode. Um, but I think it's a great question, you know, because it actually shows, first of all, do they know basic frameworks and then how do they think about the frameworks?

Alex: 28:44

Yeah, I mean, if I were, you and I were interviewing these people, I'd be like, What do you know about BANT? And then like, what questions do you use to get a budget, authority, need and timeline in different ways.

Peter: 28:54

That's a great idea. Um, I might incorporate that into our recruiting process right after this.

Alex: 29:00

Just to sort of sum up, so far, BANT and MEDDIC, they're complimentary sales frameworks. They're good at the qualification stage. They're useful at the POC stage. They create a common language. They ensure that sales reps are getting key information that your team is gonna need to wield tools during the sales process. They support sales teams in thinking about: have I covered all the key stuff? But they do require a set of skills from your salespeople in order to deploy them, in order to deploy these phrases and tactics effectively and not sound like robots. My next question is, well, like what else is there, like, this sounds very straightforward and useful. Um, why wouldn't anyone, why wouldn't somebody do this?

Peter: 29:41

You know, there's still a lot of overhead to operationalizing, even something as simple as BANT, right? So, you know, why wouldn't you do it? It's if probably your one person sales team and you're, you know, that you're self-managing yourself and you don't have a team of folks where your consistency is important, right? But I think you should always at least have it as a mental framework and always have it as a reference. You know, even in the early days, but I think operationalizing it, you probably, you know, don't have a need to do until you have like two or three reps. Right? Um, but for those like startup founders and CEOs, I think it's still helpful to have it like laminated posted up somewhere so it's always in the back of your mind. Um, so, so yeah, that, that's what I would say. There's definitely no reason not to, it's just there is some overhead to executing and implement.

Alex: 30:31

And is this something that, like you would say, roll out as soon as you kind of have your first few salespeople, or is there a reason to wait until you're a little bigger?

Peter: 30:39

I think you should roll it out as soon as you have your first sales people. You know, I think there's never too early for this type of thing when you have sales because consistency can scale, um, from the early days and you know, once you hire more sales it goes really fast. Hiring and having people on board and it gets really hectic really fast. And if you don't take the time to find a great sales ops person who can help you execute on this, it becomes tough you know, when you're seven or eight salespeople.

Alex: 31:11

Is this sort of like the thing that you would roll out? We talked before about rolling out a CRM and talking about doing that like pretty early and it, it sounds like this would be like the next kind of piece or in your sales infrastructure.

Peter: 31:24

Definitely at Twingate when, when I rolled out the crm, I was the only salesperson, right? So I didn't roll out BANT when I rolled out the crm cuz it was all about what are the deals, are they gonna close? And we had a very tight feedback loop with myself, ceo, cfo, cpo, um, and we're talking about the pipeline pretty much every day. Um, but yeah, as soon as we hired reps, I saw the need to have some framing and, um, my CEO, I started to like, talk about it before I started to talk about it, which was great. And I think it, it's, um, you know, there's a long ways we need to go by the way, in, in terms of iterating and making sure it's operationalized, but it, there's definitely a common language around it now, right? Both around pipeline discussions as well as discussions with SDRs and, and cross-functionally.

Alex: 32:11

Yeah, I mean, you, you've covered like, I think the biggest challenge is, is sort of the skill required and, and mapping between the, the letters to like the set of questions. Are there any other pitfalls that, you know, founders particularly or sales leaders should be aware of as they're thinking about rolling something like this out the first time?

Peter: 32:28

Yeah, I think the, my main advice is don't overthink it. You know, you're gonna have five to six versions of it, even though BANT is BANT and MEDDIC is MEDDIC and it seems pretty straightforward. Um, you can, I think, overspend on, on these things as well. Just put it in place, get feedback from the reps who are actually executing on it and implementing it. You know, don't overthink it is my main advice. Right? Because you're never gonna have it perfect even the first time around.

Alex: 32:54

Peter, that's like saying Don't panic. Like of course you should never panic or overthink it. Like can you make that a little bit more specific for us?

Peter: 33:00

Yeah, I mean, for example, don't, um, you know, when I said like, go through the process of getting alignment with leadership and writing down what BANT is and some questions, right? Don't make that like a two week process. That could be like you do it like in an evening, spend like two hours creating that doc, run it by folks and say you're gonna try it, and just do it. Right. Um, that's what I mean is just it, It doesn't have to be, even though you're building consensus, it doesn't have to be this heavyweight thing. Right. Especially if you're in a startup.

Alex: 33:30

Got it. And you're saying like, Yeah, you do that and maybe you're gonna like iterate on it a few more times,

Peter: 33:35

Yeah. And also with like MEDDIC for example, try it out and your reps might tell you, Hey, out of all the MEDDICs, like I'm gonna, we're gonna, we should drop a D or like, we should change the i, you know, like, cuz it doesn't make sense. And so like, use your sales force also for as, as a feedback mechanism and as a way to improve the, the product, which is the BANT or MEDDIC framework, right. It's a product you're trying to implement right? Throughout your, your teams.

Alex: 34:04

All right, Peter. I think we are gonna wrap up our exploration of BANT and MEDDIC for our listeners. Again, BANT: budget, authority, need, and time frame or timeline and MEDDIC is, I I, I'm gonna get this. Don't tell me I'm gonna get this. Um, Uh, yes. Medic is metric. Economic buyer decision criteria decision process. Identify pain and champion.

Peter: 34:33

Wow, that was impressive.

Alex: 34:35

These are two frameworks that you can use to coordinate and align your sales team around a common language, a common set of questions you wanna get asked, and information from prospects that you can make better choices on the back end: who to prioritize, how to tackle each portion of the sales process, how to influence effectively. And as part of doing this, you'll probably wanna roll it out pretty early in your organization's life cycle, cuz it will start to form the backbone of a lot of your core processes and communication, uh, within the sales team and inform how you're actually approaching prospects. So, With that, we wanna say a final thank you to our sponsor, Salesroom. Remember, they actually build into their product tools to help you use frameworks like BANT. And again, it is the only platform that is built from the ground up to help sellers break through. So go check them out at Salesroom.com. They are signing people up now. Finally, this is the end of this episode of Decoding Sales. Hopefully continuing our relationship with you as a listener. We would love to hear from you. And you can reach U.S at podcasters@decodingsalespodcast.com. Give us a like a subscribe. Share us with your friends. Don't be strangers. We wanna know what you think.