BANT, CHAMP, and MEDDIC – What are the Best Sales Methodologies?

In  Sales Qualification, especially when selling enterprise Software, there are a few Sales Methodologies that are best represented by their acronyms –  BANT, CHAMP, & MEDDIC. There are other methodologies, and probably many more that will be created in the future as well. Since I’ve personally only dealt with the above few, that is what I can speak about, and what this post will focus on. The below three sales methodologies can be summed up easily. In essence, all Sales Methodologies basically focus on finding out the below information from a prospect:

1. Does your prospect have money or a budget to pay for your product or service?
2. What is the business pain the prospect is experiencing that your service can solve?
3. Does your prospect have the authority to make the decision to purchase your product or service?

The first Sales Qualification Methodology that I’m most familiar is BANT. This Sales Methodology was developed internally at IBM, and is used in specific Sales Opportunities to qualify a prospect through the opportunity’s stages.

BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)

BANT stands for:

1. Budget: Does the prospect have the money to pay for your software?
2. Authority:  Does the prospect have authority to make the purchasing decision?
3. Need: Does your software solve a business pain?
4. Timing: When will the prospect buy (ASAP, next month, in a year)?

In each of the above sales qualifications components, you can associate a score based off of the picklist value in Salesforce, to end up with a BANT Score. From there, you can restrict the movement through the opportunity sales process until the decided upon score has been reached.

When selling to enterprise companies, BANT may fall short in a few areas. Specifically, the Authority qualification of BANT may have multiple people or a committee that will need to sign off of the purchase. For example, a User (possibly an internal champion) may have both the Need and Budget, however internally, the prospective company requires sign off from an executive sponsor and legal team to procure your solution. Another shortcoming in BANT, the location of where the Qualification stages fall in the BANT word – first the Budget, and then the Need qualification – does not accurately portray what is a priority to a company, and why they have become a prospect in the first place – which is typically solving a business pain,  or in BANT, represented by the Need.

CHAMP (CHallenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization)

To solve one of the above issues in BANT, the next Sales Qualification Methodology, CHAMP, was created.  CHAMP stands for:

1. CHallenges: What is the business pain?
2. Authority: Can the prospect sign off on the purchasing decision?
3. Money: Do they have a budget?
4. Prioritization: Is this a top priority that needs to get solved now?

The entire reason that a prospect can be qualified initially is that they have a problem or business pain that needs to be solved. What are the prospect’s specific business challenges? In an effort to not waste your sales team time and get bad prospects into the sales cycle, the first disqualifying questions that need to be asked would focus around the prospect’s environment, and the challenges that they are experiencing. CHAMP, in essence, is very similar to BANT, but differs on where to place the emphasis falls in the sales cycle in qualifying a prospect. Like BANT, you can easily create a CHAMP Score for the above picklist values, and restriction through a validation rule how your sales team and users are able to move through the sales cycle. However, similar to BANT, CHAMP lacks the granularity of selling to enterprise organizations, where decisions need to be sent up the chain, and ROI, or return on investment, needs to be identified and correctly measured.

MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion)

MEDDIC is the last Sales Qualification Methodology that solves the above issues that BANT & CHAMP both have. MEDDIC stands for:

1. Metrics: What is the key performance indicators, and the return on investment for the prospect?
2. Economic Buyer: Who at the prospect’s organization will commit their budget to acquire your product or service?
3. Decision Criteria: What are the specific criteria to purchase?
4. Decision Process: Who needs to approve the decision to purchase?
5. Identify Pain: What is the business pain, and objectives to purchase?
6. Champion: Within the prospect’s organization, who will be the person that fights the internal battles on your company’s behalf?

If your business is selling software to enterprise companies, typically this may cause a shift in the way companies process their mode of business. For example, if the prospect used spreadsheets (Excel) or paper-based system to track inventory at a warehouse, moving them onto an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system would be a huge paradigm shift requiring changing roles, processes, and responsibilities across many cross-functional teams at the organization. What sort of metrics does the prospect want to improve – Could it be order shipping times or reducing lost merchandise? Who in the organization will allocate and spend their budget?

Another key thing that MEDDIC differs from the other sales methodologies, is that it includes a Champion in the qualification of a prospect. Typically, a champion is an internal person or people, sometimes a user of the product/service, or a manager overseeing them, that will push forward within the prospect’s organization to acquire your product or service. The best way to leverage a champion is to arm them with as much information as needed to get the ball going.

Some companies may not necessarily have these exact processes outlined to follow these methodologies strictly.  When improving a sales process, you’ll want to take the above methodologies and mold them as you see fit. You could have a champion field required at a certain sales stage, however, use the BANT (and not MEDDIC) Sales Methodology to score your opportunity. To be honest, there is probably no “best” sales methodology. Each company and industry is unique, and what may work for one organization will not work as good in another.