My Wedding and BANT
I decided about a year ago that it was time to get hitched. Now we all know it takes more then a decision to get married so I bought a ring and asked a great girl to marry me. She said yes and we moved to the planning stage.
We needed a photographer and received an email so we scheduled the appointment with the photography studio in a big glass building in downtown Salt Lake. There we were sitting across from “Richard” the manager who brought out albums of his work.
The pictures were good but I was not sold. He asked my fiance “what would be your dream wedding photography package?”
She began to tell him all she wanted and he took notes. Then he asked “what would be the maximum you would pay for a package like that”.
I gave him a low ball number.
He slowly smiled “I think I can even do better than that,” and wrote exactly what it would cost.
“I have some marketing budget left over for this month, I think you are both very photogenic and I would love to use your photos for our ad campaigns.”
We couldn’t help blushing a little.
He then asked this question “If I can give you this deal can you write the check today?”
I said “Yes.”
He went on “My wife is the photographer and I think I can get her to sign off on this deal if we can get the money today.”
Of course my first reaction was to say no, but it was such a great deal!! How could we pass it up?
“Can I get a week to think about it?” I asked. “You can, but I can’t guarantee that money will be on the table in a week,” he replied, reaching for the paper.
He left us alone to talk about it and we bought.
A few weeks later I attended training with our President Ken Krogue who taught us about B.A.N.T. and I realized Richard had sold me!
B. A. N. T is an industry term to qualify leads. Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing. Richard used this model to close us on the spot.
We had come to him with NEED.
He asked if we could write the check today so he got BUDGET.
And he immediately focused on my wife and I together so he figured out AUTHORITY.
Then he used TIMING with urgency to offer us a deal we could not refuse right then.
We did not even meet with any other photographers because he didn’t give us a chance.
Ken tells us all the time “delay is decay.” This guy knew it! Instead of letting our motivation cool off by going home and thinking about it or talking to other photographers he closed the sale!
How many times do we do this on our sales calls?
How many times do we let our prospects walk out our doors (hang up the phone) still kicking the tires?
Now I’m looking for BANT everywhere!
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