What is the BANT framework and how to automate it using AI

Ask any sales rep, and they might tell you that 24 hours are barely enough in a day. They go from one sales call to another, constantly assessing and understanding buyers’ needs, pitching their solution/service, and working hard to close that quota.

They don't have a lot of time to waste. They want to quickly determine whether a prospect is a good fit and if they should spend more time getting to know them.

The BANT sales framework is the fastest and most effective way to qualify leads as quickly as possible. It’s a structured approach that allows you to gauge a prospect’s potential for conversion so you can spend your time and focus working on those deals. 

In this blog post, we’ll look at:

1. The basics of the BANT framework
2. How to use each BANT component strategically
3. Is BANT still as effective in 2025?
4. The role of AI in making BANT implementation faster and more effective

What is the BANT sales framework?

BANT is a sales qualification framework developed by IBM for sales reps to determine if a lead is qualified and should be prioritized. Reps gather all the information upfront, which allows them to quickly understand whether a prospect is a good fit or not.

BANT is an acronym that stands for:

• Budget: What is the prospect’s budget?
• Authority: Who are the decision-makers?
• Need: What are their current business needs and challenges?
• Timeline: What are the purchase timelines?

Now, let’s look at each component of the BANT sales qualification framework and how you should use them to qualify prospects:

How to use BANT framework to qualify sales opportunities

BANT is a relatively simple and straightforward sales methodology to use, compared to the likes of MEDDIC, MEDDPICC, or SPICED. 

But, since it was developed 75 years ago, certain elements of the methodology don't hold much relevance in the context of modern sales. This isn’t to say that the BANT qualification method isn’t useful or relevant, but it needs to be modified to meet the buyer’s needs today. 

Let’s see how you can apply the BANT framework in the context of modern sales today:

1. Go beyond the prospect’s ‘budget’

When the BANT sales methodology was developed, sales representatives sold products on a license (one-time purchase) model and charged an upfront fee. Thus, qualifying prospects based on budget was easier and more straightforward. 

But with a subscription model and different plans catering to each type of buyer, this approach no longer works. Most B2B SaaS companies offer pricing plans from $10 to potentially $1000 per month, so budget isn’t a serious roadblock as it used to be before. This makes qualifying prospects based on budget both easy and significantly complex. 

But there’s a better way here. You need to flip the script and make the qualifying budget questions about the value rather than the cost of the solution. Ask about your prospect’s expected ROI and understand how your solution capabilities align with their expectations. You need to show the outcomes your solution can generate, whether 10x productivity or 5x revenue, that can outweigh prospect's initial investment. 

But, of course, make sure there isn’t a significant mismatch between the prospect’s budget and the expected ROI. In that case, it’s valid to disqualify the prospect and move forward.

2. Identity the ‘authority’ involved in making the final decision

The BANT qualification framework was created on the assumption that a single person was involved in the final decision-making. Today, an average of 5 decision-makers are involved in the sales process, as per the 2024 Sales Trend Report by HubSpot. Sellers need to touch base with the majority of stakeholders and establish rapport early on to accelerate decision-making in their favor. 

Depending on the industry and business size, here are the common stakeholders involved in the decision-making process today: 

1. Champion: This person is an internal advocate who sees the value in your product and persuades decision-makers to invest in it. They might also use your product personally and encourage other team members to try it out.
2. Leadership team: These are executive group members who have a say in whether to invest in the solution or not but lack the final authority to sign on the deal. 
3. Legal & Compliance team: This person or team members handle the legal or compliance requirements of the deal. 
4. Decision-maker: Though there are many people involved in the decision-making process, this person holds the ultimate authority to sign on the piece of paper or veto the decision. They may not be using the solution themselves and are most likely only interested in knowing how much it costs and the impact that it will generate.

During the discovery, you need to ask questions that point you towards the key stakeholders, how and to what degree they will be involved, and the ways you can get access to them. Some qualifying questions you can consider: 

1. Who decided that you should be investing in our solution?
2. What does your buying committee look like?
3. If you like our solution, what would be the next steps?
4. Who is the final decision-maker in the company?

3. Pinpoint the business ‘needs’ and challenges

What does the buyer say to the reps?

Listen to my needs!

In a study conducted by HubSpot, an overwhelming 69% of customers voted that buyers fail to listen and understand prospect’s needs.

This is because reps only inquire about prospects’ needs and challenges to see how they can match them to their product capabilities and sell based on that. They don’t dig deeper into the underlying impact the challenge has on the prospect’s business and how they can help them solve those larger issues.

Reps can take the leaf out of the ‘I’ component of the SPICED methodology here, which stands for Impact. It involves deeply uncovering the challenges affecting the prospect’s business, highlighting the consequences of not addressing those challenges, and simultaneously demonstrating the positive impact an appropriate solution can make.

Some questions you can ask your prospects at this stage:

1. How are the [specific] issues affecting your team, customers, or business outcomes?
2. What would happen if these challenges were unresolved?
3. Can you estimate the financial or operational impact of these challenges?
4. In what way is this impacting customer retention and satisfaction? 

4. Identify the ‘timeline’ of making the decision

A timeline is a necessary step in the sales qualification process, allowing you to understand when a prospect is ready to buy so you can prioritize the deals in your sales pipeline. Without a clear timeline, you run the risk of a longer sales cycle. Consequently, your prospects drop out, with 28% of reps confirming that a longer sales process is one of the reasons why prospects back out from a deal. 

While you’re trying to gauge the prospect’s timeline for making a decision, it’s important to ask layered questions that allow you to understand what is driving the need for change and why they want to invest in your solution now.

Asking your prospect questions such as “When do you need to make a decision?” may not result in a helpful response but rather an arbitrary one. At the same time, it’s possible they may not know the timeline themselves since they’re not the decision-makers.

Again, you can leverage the ‘CE’ (Critical Event) component of the SPICED methodology here. This component emphasizes on identifying a critical milestone or event that may be driving the need for change or the urgency of adopting a new solution. Once you’ve identified this, you can walk through them with your prospect to not only create urgency but position your solution as THE investment they need to make to hit their business goals.

Is the BANT sales methodology still useful in 2025?

Yes, the BANT sales qualification methodology still has its place, though certain elements need to be modified to fit the needs and mindset of modern buyers.

The problem is that most reps mistake the BANT sales process as a list of questions to ask prospects to qualify them.

But as the IBM clarified in its guidelines, the sales methodology isn’t supposed to be used as a list of static questions. It’s meant to provide a direction on the information sellers should gather to qualify leads faster and more effectively.

Another mistake reps make is use the BANT methodology as a box-ticking exercise, asking prospects one question from each component, such as “What is your budget?” or “Are you the final decision-maker?” These surface-level questions don’t allow reps to deeply uncover the prospect’s goals, needs, challenges, or situation and determine whether they’re the right fit. 

For these reasons, it’s essential to reframe BANT and look at it from a modern sales perspective. 

Rather than asking your prospect about the budget upfront, you need to ask them about their expected ROI and then show the value you can deliver, whether it’s increased revenue or better efficiency. Inquiring about your prospect’s needs/challenges shouldn’t be (solely) about how your product fits in but how solving those can have a larger positive impact on their business. Establishing a timeline isn’t about pushing a sale but about figuring out a key milestone or critical moment driving the need for change and how your solution can be a worthy investment to make in that situation. Remember, there are an average of five decision-makers involved in the sales process, and you need to identify and pursue each stakeholder who can swing the decision-making in your favor. 

How AI automates the BANT sales qualification process

AI can significantly contribute to the BANT sales qualification, allowing you to automate routine tasks, extract real-time insights, track rep’s performance, and much more. Let’s look at how you can use AI to automate nearly all aspects of the BANT sales qualification framework: 

1. Automate account research

BANT sales methodology is about qualifying opportunities as quickly as possible to determine if the prospect is a fit or not. Before you hop on the discovery call, AI can help you gather relevant information so you can prepare for your call strategically. It can scrape through the web to collect and enrich available information on prospects, such as company size, funding status, product offerings, key stakeholders, and more. This enables you to be more targeted and specific in your approach and get pinpointed answers for faster and more effective deal qualification. 

2. Extract buyer insights & generate follow-up emails

AI can record and analyze sales conversations to generate notes based on the BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline) framework. This means reps don’t have to worry about taking notes during the conversation—AI can do that. Once the call is over, reps have access to structured, organized notes, which they can refer to for quick context and to prepare for subsequent calls. 

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Pro tip: Use Avoma to generate AI-powered BANT notes. It can also draft a follow-up email based on your notes and provide action items for each deal. Forgot a key detail related to your sales call? You can use our AI chatbot, Ask Avoma, to extract any insight related to the BANT framework and get relevant answers in seconds. 

3. Automate CRM data management

Do you know that reps still spend ~1 hour in a day on admin tasks?

Most AI-powered tools offer a native integration with CRM, allowing you to sync your call notes and key insights directly to the CRM. This ensures reps no longer spend hours manually updating the data into the CRM, allowing them to focus on qualifying leads faster and spending more time building relationships with prospects.

In Avoma, once you set up custom BANT fields in the CRM, Avoma automatically maps your meeting notes and key insights to the relevant fields. Any changes you make to the deal activity get automatically synced and updated in real-time. This allows both reps and managers to get an instant and complete overview of the sales pipeline, identify trends and patterns, and optimize their strategies in real-time.

4. AI-powered BANT scorecards to track rep’s implementation of the methodology

Managers don’t know if reps are implementing the methodology or asking the right discovery questions on the call. They mostly rely on the rep’s judgment about why a prospect is a better fit than others. But, a rep’s assessment may be biased and based on their subjective knowledge. 

This is where AI-powered BANT scorecards come in. It allows you to objectively track the rep’s implementation of the methodology. You can gauge a rep’s coverage against each BANT criteria—Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline—and track their adherence to the methodology. 

After each call, AI automatically analyzes and scores the call based on your BANT scorecard. Managers can understand the discovery questions reps asked, those they simply touched upon, and those they missed. The best part is that reps can also see their scores, enabling them to understand where they did well and where they can improve.

Master the BANT sales methodology with Avoma

As we saw, BANT is an excellent framework for qualifying prospects and quickly moving them further in the sales process. But how do you know if BANT works for your organization? Do reps use the framework correctly or apply the right best practices? 

This is where Avoma comes in. Avoma helps you automate and streamline the BANT sales qualification, allowing you to gauge and track rep’s adherence and implementation and provide feedback so reps can constantly learn and improve their performance. 

Here’s all Avoma can do:

• It can record and analyze each conversation and generate AI-powered notes following the BANT structure. This ensures reps can focus on discovery rather than being distracted by manual note-taking. 

• Once done with the meeting, Avoma automatically pushes the notes and key insights to the respective BANT fields in your preferred CRM. Any changes you make to the notes get synced and updated in real-time.

• AI-powered BANT scorecards allow managers to track reps' coverage against each BANT component and ensure reps implement the methodology effectively and consistently. 

• Avoma automatically scores each sales call from 1 to 5, telling you how well sales reps implemented the BANT framework during the call. Reps can also check their score after each call and get AI-powered justifications telling them what they covered and where they can improve. 

• You can monitor the individual or team performance on the Avoma dashboard, quickly zero in on low scores, identify relevant trends and patterns, and create customized sales training programs to help reps improve.

Overall, using Avoma for BANT implementation can help managers track rep’s implementation and ensure they’re applying the right practices to qualify a deal. For reps, it can help to automate manual tasks such as note-taking, CRM data entry, follow-up emails, and action items, which leaves them with more time to do what they do best, i.e. sell.  

Interested in knowing how you can automate and successfully implement the BANT framework?

Talk to our product experts. Check out additional features of Avoma here.