The SCOTSMAN vs. BANT for Effective Lead Management

In his recent Blog post on Sales and Marketing Alignment Brian Carroll alluded to sales and marketing collaborating on the definition of a "Sales Ready Lead". This is a really important topic as it is the basis of good lead management. I used to work for a Scotsman named John McAdam (he is now CEO of F5 in Seattle), and perhaps not coincidentally Marketing and Sales at the firm had an agreement called the SCOTSMAN. It is a mnemonic, along the lines of BANT but better. I believe every company needs to come up with their own equivalent of the SCOTSMAN as the basis for agreement between marketing and sales.

We used the Scotsman as a deal qualification sheet. The sales person wasn't going to get help from executives and marketing if they didn't have their Scotsman filled out! And you thought I was going to refer to a document dictating what info marketing had to provide to Sales on a qualified lead? Well it turns out that the Scotsman has something to offer in that department too, so bear with me.

SCOTSMAN Mnemonic

• Solution = Does the firm have the right solution?

• Competition = Who is the competition and can we beat them in this situation?

• Originality = Does the firm have a unique solution and has the prospect bought into it?

• Timescale = What is the timing for the desired solution?

• Size = How large is the opportunity?  Is the desired solution list price of sufficient for our needs?

• Money = Does the client have the money in the budget?

• Authority = Is the sales person talking to the people who have decision/purchase authority

• Need = What does the prospect really need (business problem)

The problem with BANT

When you think about it, the BANT criteria are all in the SCOTSMAN: Budget, Need, Authority and Timeframe but there are 4 additional items!   Solution, Competition, Originality, and Size.

How is marketing supposed to determine any of these things? Isn't that something better done by an ISR or "Outside" Sales Rep?  In my experience Marketing does a poor job of getting BANT. How many forms have you seen filled in with:

• Budget:         0 or other or don't know
• Authority:      Other
• Need:            Don't know
• Timeframe:    >1 year

Putting these questions in a form to propects who is just in the research phase at the time is ineffective. You may as well ask:"Would you like me to set a Sales Rep on your tail like a rottweiler looking for a steak?"

In this situation a large number of people will prevaricate (that sounds so much better than lie) to keep the sales reps at bay. As a marketer I would rather have no data than junk data. And to compound matters some marketers base lead scores off this BANT data. Caveat Venditor.  Putting poor quality data into your database by asking questions which encourage prospects to mislead you is a mistake.

Determining your own SCOTSMAN

As marketers we know that the sales folks want a lead with huge budget, senior role and a clearly defined urgent need for our unique product/service capabilities. Just because that is what they want doesn't make it a good basis for an agreement between Sales and Marketing. If we wait until we find those types of leads, they would be few and far between. Add to that the difficulty in getting honest answers to BANT like questions without using human interaction and you have a recipe for many disgruntled sales people. 

But, short of moving ISRs into marketing (which is the solution many people opt for) there are some ways that marketing can solicit data from prospects that is reasonable and stands a good chance of being accurate. Perhaps you can craft your own SCOTSMAN from these suggestions:

1. Use progressive profiling with dynamic forms - i.e ask one or two incremental questions each time the prospect engages with you, instead of the 40 question form on the first visit.
2. Ask business need related questions - in a pick list - which is most important to your firm, a,b,c, or d  (people are more likely to talk honestly about their firm then they are themselves)
3. Ask them their job function in a pick list but give them the option to say "I don't want to share at this time"
4. Inquire to the number of employees in the firm or division or department - this could be a better indicator of budget
5. Inquire about the likely frequency of usage of your product or service - this will give you an indicator of how much it is worth to them
6. Inquire about how many people work in an area where this product could be used - a roundabout way of getting to potential number of users
7. Inquire if they own or have owned or used other products or services like this - could mean a lot less education required for the sales person
8. Ask them their past experience if the answer to 7 was true - good, bad, indifferent - try to determine if they are a supporter of this class of product or service
9. Ask them if their research is in support of a company or department goal
10. Try to determine their role in the purchase by examining which documents, web pages and offers they pick up on - business vs technical, evaluator, influencer or interested party
11. Try and find out where they are at in the process in a nice way. Are they researching, just curious, looking at all the vendors products so they can educate themselves but it isn't even a project yet, narrowing down the list? Just don't ask the banal timeframe question so bluntly! They don't usually know.
12. Find out if they have a communications preference, are they more visual, or auditory, or do they learn from whitepapers. Do they want snapshots or books?
13. Do they want to feel inspired, protected, relieved, or fulfilled
14. Offer them help in their education/research work, would they like more materials, would they like a template RFP, do they need help selling their bosses on this idea, would they like an ROI model?

When you are done you may have your own mnemonic in marketing for the data needed to certify a lead as Marketing Qualified. Perhaps something like:

• Influence = Is this person in favor of a product or service like this, neutral, or oppose?
• Repeat buyer = Do they have prior experience with this product or service from competitors?
• Interaction = Paint a picture of their interaction level, how much have they educated themselves?
• Stage = Where are they at in their purchase process - what stage?
• Help = How can we help them through this phase - What have they asked us for?
• Money = Does the client have the money in the budget and how much?

• Authority = What level of authority does this person have?

• Need = What does the prospect really need (business problem), how are they going to use it?

Now what sort of mnemonic is that?

-Kevin

Comments

[trish bertuzzi]

LOVE this! I am going to work on a process for my clients but of course it will be the ITALIAN and not the SCOTSMAN. Will keep you posted.

[Brian @ ApexTwo]

Very interesting concept. We help clients with implementing lead scoring in their CRM systems and BANT often comes up short. Although the frugal Scotsman may not be the comparison we're looking for..

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Very Interesting points! Love the Scotsman Mnemonic. As well as your list of suggestions. I will sit down and put one together for my clients.

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