BANT, MEDDIC or your own questions: which qualifying framework to use

A consultant has told your three-person team to adopt MEDDIC, and the spreadsheet that came with it has more columns than you have deals. Do not adopt it whole. Use your own four or five questions, borrowed from BANT, and add one or two from MEDDIC only when several people decide an order. BANT asks about budget, authority, need and timing. MEDDIC adds how the buyer measures success, who holds the money and how the decision is made. It also needs a record of every deal, which many small teams do not keep. A framework helps only if you fill it in.

What do BANT and MEDDIC actually ask?

BANT is four questions. Does the buyer have money for this? Does the person you are speaking to have the authority to decide? Is the need real? Is there a time by which they want it? It suits short, simple sales and is easy to remember. A qualifying framework for a small team: BANT in plain words goes through the four in detail, so this post keeps to the choice between frameworks.

MEDDIC is longer. It was built for big business deals with committees. Its letters stand for the measurable result the buyer wants and the economic buyer who signs the cheque. They go on to the criteria used to decide, the decision process and the problem that hurts, called the pain. Last comes a champion: someone inside the buyer's firm who argues for you.

How do they compare for a small firm?

The row that matters is "Needs from you". A tool that demands a record is worth nothing if the record is empty. If your team's notes are the owner's memory and a few WhatsApp threads, MEDDIC will be half-filled within a week.

What does a home-made list look like?

Build it from your lost deals. Take the last ten enquiries you lost or wasted time on and write, beside each, what you wish you had known on day one. The same four or five items will recur.

For example, an invented three-person team in Vapi sells printed laminate rolls to small food-packing units. They kept chasing enquiries where the caller was a purchase clerk who could only collect rates, and where nobody knew the print repeat or the film width. After going through ten wasted enquiries, their list became:

1. What is the pack, and how many kilograms of film a month? (need and size)
2. Who approves a new film supplier, and has that person seen our sample? (authority)
3. What is wrong with the current film or the current supplier? (pain, in the buyer's words)
4. When is the next run planned, and when does the old stock finish? (timing)
5. Has anyone else sent a sample? (competition)

It is close to BANT with the budget question replaced by a size question, since the team found owners readier to say their monthly film use than the price they paid. Add budget only if a figure came up unprompted. The list is not a cure. Of the next six enquiries the team still lost two to a rival with ready stock, which no question would have caught. Two other losses traced back to unfinished artwork, so a sixth item went on the card: is the artwork approved?

When should I borrow from MEDDIC?

When one order is large enough that several people will argue about it. Two parts are worth taking early.

The economic buyer. Find out who signs the payment, not who sends the enquiry. Ask, "Who else will want to see this before it is approved?" and write the name.

The decision process. Ask, "What happens after you receive the quote?" The answer tells you whether there are three signatures, a trial period or a board meeting on a fixed date. Without it you cannot guess when to call.

A buyer may answer both with a shrug. Then offer a choice: "Some firms send the quote to the owner, some run a trial first. Which is closer to yours?" People find it easier to pick than to explain.

Leave the rest until you sell to buyers who write formal criteria. Do not attempt to score a champion if you have never met anyone inside the buyer's firm.

How do I make sure the questions get asked?

Three small steps.

• Put them in the order of a normal conversation: need first, then the situation, then who decides, then timing. Money last.
• Put them on a single card beside the phone or in the first template message.
• Enter the answers the same day in the sheet. A blank cell is information: it says you have not asked.

Review the sheet when you lose a deal. Ask which cell was empty. If it is always the same one, move that question earlier, or ask it differently.

What can go wrong?

The usual mistake is to treat the framework as a gate. A buyer who does not give a budget is marked unqualified and dropped, although many buyers genuinely do not know a figure until they see options. The remedy is to treat missing answers as things to learn, and to disqualify only on a clear no, such as no authority and no route to the person who has it.

The other mistake is interrogating. A buyer asked five questions in a row feels like a form. Spread them across two calls, and trade each one for something useful: give a rough range, then ask about the size.

Skip heavy frameworks altogether if you sell low-value items quickly. There, the buyer's speed of reply tells you a good deal.

Testing your five questions

Write them on a card now. Use them on the next ten enquiries and mark each as answered, refused or not asked. When a question is refused by most buyers, reword it. When one is never asked, the team finds it awkward, so practise the sentence aloud. The sales process hub shows where qualification sits between enquiry and quote. For help choosing questions that fit your trade, see lead qualification or tell us what you need.