Glossary
What is BANT?
The fast qualification checklist, and its limits.
BANT is a qualification framework asking four questions about a prospect: do they have Budget, does your contact have Authority to buy, is there a real Need, and is there a Timeline for deciding. Originating at IBM, it remains the fastest way to disqualify a weak opportunity.
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Budget
Is money allocated, or would it have to be found? An unfunded need is a project, not a deal.
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Authority
Can this person approve the purchase, or are they a researcher reporting upward?
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Need
Is there a problem worth paying to solve, or is this a comparison exercise?
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Timeline
Is there a date driving the decision? Without one, deals drift indefinitely.
How this works in Axelize
Axelize tracks these four across a live discovery call and prompts the follow-up question when one is still unresolved, the layer underneath an answer that sounded complete but wasn't.
Frequently asked questions
- Is BANT outdated?
- For complex, multi-stakeholder B2B deals it is too shallow, because buying committees break the single-Authority assumption. For short sales cycles with one decision maker it is still an efficient filter.