You are a software publisher, stressed out morning, noon, and night because sales aren't taking off, even though your LeadGen campaigns are executed flawlessly. You feel like you're pouring water into a strainer—lots of phone calls, qualified leads, but the conversion rate remains low.
What's going on? Why are my telemarketers booking so few appointments, and why do prospects fail to show up? Why are the salespeople struggling to close deals?
Questions that keep you up at night.
You then try to find solutions, adding features to your product and continuing to allocate funds to hire developers (or interns because you're out of money).
You need cash, so you start jumping from one fundraising round to another just to cover salaries, but the no-show rate remains high, and sales still aren't taking off!
This is a scenario that many startup and IT services company leaders are all too familiar with.
In this article, we are going to reveal a secret known only to a select few insiders: how to successfully run your lead generation campaigns and boost your software sales when everything is going wrong?
The approach we're about to reveal won't cost you a penny and, as a bonus, it's very simple to implement. It involves eliminating the two mistakes that are dulling your sales approach, undermining your sales team's motivation, and causing you to miss out on sales.
How to fail at your lead generation campaign?
After several years of experience in software sales, we can confirm that most lead generation campaigns fail due to two major mistakes made in the call script when scheduling appointments.
- Error # 1 : Booking demo appointments with prospects. All software publishers do it and require their telemarketers to do the same, from SAP to machin-ware in the provinces. It’s a significant blunder and simply unbearable for prospects.
- Error # 2 : Forcing your prospectors to use BANT to qualify their leads. What’s that, you ask?
Let’s delve into it…
Error # 1: You ask your telemarketers to schedule demo appointments
Offering demo appointments to prospects is a relatively recent approach. In the prospecting phase, software publishers offer demos left and right.
Except that your prospects are IT decision-makers, business leaders of all sizes—essentially, very busy people. They have problems and want solutions. That's all they care about. During the conversation, two questions loop in their minds: Can this solution solve my problem? And how?
The pitch should be concise and address your prospect's difficulties.
Asking your target client to dedicate an hour, thirty minutes, or even fifteen minutes, to click a link, connect, and watch a demo of your product simply doesn’t interest them.
Instead, ask calibrated questions and gather information to identify their pain points and tailor your pitch so they think, "Ah, we see the world the same way." Minimize the demos as much as possible. They should be almost nonexistent, serving merely as a formality before your prospect becomes a client, since, most of the time, the decision has already been made…
Schedule appointments based on the obstacles encountered by your prospect.
Error # 2: To BANT or not to BANT, that is the question
BANT is a qualification framework created by IBM in the 1950s and used in B2B and complex sales. Practically all salespeople use or have used it, from fresh graduates in trendy ad agencies to seasoned professionals in corporate environments.
For the uninitiated, here’s a definition of this English acronym:
- B: Budget (what is the prospect's budget?)
- A: Authority (Is the prospect a decision-maker or a prescriber/influencer?)
- N: Need (What are their needs?)
- T: Timing (How soon will they implement the solution?)
In the early days of selling intangible products, particularly software, it was a practical method for qualifying prospects, filtering out those who wouldn’t be interested, and helping salespeople avoid wasting valuable time.
Note that we take full responsibility for the following statement: BANT is the worst approach that has ever happened to sales prospecting and the best way to undermine your sales team's motivation. Why? Because it involves tracking 4 parameters that are vague, approximate, or even imaginary.
What presumption!
But how can one discard an approach invented by IBM and used since the 1950s?
Allow us to support this assertion. Here’s a question for the experts: How many times have you experienced significant discrepancies between the information your prospect provided during your BANT qualification and the actual information you ended up with at the end of the nurturing campaign process?
Why this discrepancy?
Well, whether we like it or not, there’s a universal rule of human nature: across all cultures, out of pride or caution, people—prospects in this case—won’t give you precise information until they get what they want, such as your pricing. On the other hand, in large companies, it's quite common to encounter IT managers who lack decision-making power and, therefore, simply don’t have the information. Out of pride, they let their imagination run wild. The result? Distorted information that doesn’t align with reality.
Let’s break down BANT qualification and the reasons why it no longer works:
B – Budget. How can you obtain this information if your product is a new, innovative, and disruptive technology? You can't ask someone for their budget for a need that isn't yet known or expressed. The prospect has never purchased a product like yours. In this case, if your nurturing campaign and informational efforts are done correctly, the prospect will seek out the necessary budget to acquire your technology.
A – Authority. Here, one must suspend disbelief. Prospects embellish the reality during BANT qualification, and some claim decision-making authority they don’t actually have! Be aware that, particularly in complex sales, there are multiple stakeholders, not just a single decision-maker. You need to engage and influence all stakeholders during the lead campaign.
N – Need. Needs are, by definition, very subjective. Just like priorities in large companies, they are often quite volatile. A prospect might present a need as a top priority during BANT qualification and then go silent a few days later. On your end, the deal was at a very advanced stage in your sales pipeline, and you even shared the good news with your management. You start to stress and try to get the deal back on track, reaching out to the prospect via email, phone, and LinkedIn messages. The silence continues… You eventually receive an apologetic response, informing you that the project is no longer a top priority due to an urgent unforeseen issue the company must address.
T – Timing. Like needs and priorities, deadlines, especially in mid-sized and large companies, are constantly changing. After several years of experience in selling new technologies and numerous lead campaigns, we’ve observed that decision-making timelines are generally doubled or even tripled compared to the deadlines stated during BANT qualification.
BANT as a qualification and sales method no longer works. It has served thousands, even millions, of salespeople since the 1950s. But it's time to move on to more modern discovery and sales solutions that are in tune with our times.
The method to succeed in your lead generation campaigns?
At Leads Provider, particularly in complex sales and disruptive solutions, our salespeople are trained in the "The Challenger Sale" method developed by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. This method emerged during the global economic crisis of 2009, considered the worst since the Great Depression. With businesses deserted and clients no longer buying, it was a nightmare for B2B sales professionals. Yet, a small group of salespeople continued to diligently work through qualified leads on the phone, selling in large quantities! It was a real mystery.
Were they lucky or blessed by the gods? These two authors decided to dissect the approach of these salespeople, who far outperformed their peers, to identify the common denominator of their success.
It is undeniably one of the most important books on sales techniques in decades. They identified three attributes that explain their superpower:
- Teach : Their ability to educate their prospects with new perspectives. They guide them to significantly improve their performance.
- Tailor : Their ability to tailor their nurturing campaign messages according to different personas. These personas think, “This is for me. We see the world the same way.”
- Take control : Due to their deep understanding of their prospects and their needs, they are able to take control of the sales process from the very first phase of lead campaigns and avoid dragging things out.
In a forthcoming article, we will elaborate on the combination of these three skills and the steps Leads Provider has taken to implement this approach. We will also provide details on the results achieved in our lead campaigns.