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A sales methodology is a shared set of questions a team agrees to answer about every deal, so that "this one looks good" means the same thing to every rep and every manager. This glossary defines the methodologies and deal-planning terms B2B reps run into most, in one or two plain sentences each, with what each one is actually for. The definitions are written to be quoted. At the end there is a one-page cheat sheet that turns the three most common qualification frameworks into questions you can ask on a first call.

What is BANT?

BANT is a four-part qualification checklist: Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline. It is commonly credited to IBM, and it is the oldest framework most reps will meet.

BANT qualification asks four questions about a prospect. Is there money for this? Is the person you are talking to able to approve it, or close to the person who can? Is there a real problem that what you sell solves? Is there a date by which they need it solved?

BANT is fast, which is why it survives. Its known weakness is that it front-loads budget, and many buyers do not have a budget for a problem until someone has shown them the size of it. Teams that still use BANT often ask the Need question first and treat Budget as something to discover, not a gate.

What is MEDDIC, and what do the extra letters in MEDDPICC mean?

MEDDIC is a qualification framework for complex B2B deals, usually traced to PTC in the 1990s. The letters stand for Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain and Champion.

• Metrics: the measurable result the buyer expects, in their numbers.
• Economic buyer: the person who can release the money, whatever their title.
• Decision criteria: what the buyer will judge the options against.
• Decision process: the steps, people and approvals between today and a signature.
• Identify pain: the problem that makes this worth doing now.
• Champion: someone inside the buyer's organization who wants you to win and has the standing to help.

MEDDPICC adds two letters. P is the paper process: legal, procurement, security review and how the contract actually gets signed. The second C is Competition, which includes a competing vendor, a competing internal project, and the option of doing nothing. MEDDICC is the same idea without the paper process.

MEDDPICC is heavier than BANT, and that is the point. It is built for deals with several stakeholders and a long cycle, where the most common way to lose is to discover the procurement step or the real decision maker in the last week of the quarter.

What is the Sandler Selling System?

The Sandler Selling System is a sales methodology created by David Sandler in the late 1960s and taught today by Sandler Training. Its core idea is that the seller and the buyer should qualify each other openly, and that either side is allowed to say no early.

Sandler lays a sale out as a sequence of steps, often drawn as the compartments of a submarine: bonding and rapport, the up-front contract, pain, budget, decision, fulfillment and the post-sell. You do not move to the next compartment until the current one is sealed.

Two Sandler terms have spread well beyond Sandler teams. An up-front contract is an agreement at the start of a meeting about its purpose, how long it will take, and what happens at the end, including that "no" is an acceptable outcome. The pain funnel is a sequence of questions that moves from a surface complaint to its business and personal cost.

Sandler Training describes all seven steps on its own Sandler Selling System page.

What is SPIN Selling?

SPIN Selling is a questioning method from Neil Rackham's research on large sales, published as a book in 1988. SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-payoff questions.

Situation questions establish facts. Problem questions uncover difficulties. Implication questions explore what those difficulties cost if nothing changes. Need-payoff questions get the buyer to say, in their own words, what solving it would be worth. The finding that made SPIN famous is that in large sales, implication and need-payoff questions predict success far better than situation questions, which are the ones reps ask most.

Huthwaite International, where the research was done, still teaches the method; its SPIN Selling page covers the four question types.

What is the Challenger Sale?

The Challenger Sale is a sales approach from research by CEB, published as a book by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in 2011. It argues that the reps who win complex deals teach the buyer something new about their business, tailor the message to each stakeholder, and take control of the conversation, including about money.

The practical takeaway is the "commercial insight": a point of view about the buyer's business that they had not considered, which leads naturally to what you sell. A Challenger rep opens with that insight instead of with questions about the buyer's situation. The methodology is taught today by Challenger.

What is Force Management's Command of the Message?

Force Management is a sales training company, and Command of the Message is its messaging framework. It asks a team to describe its value in the buyer's terms before it describes its product.

The framework is organized around a few linked ideas. The buyer's current state and the future state they want, often called before-and-after scenarios. The positive business outcomes they are trying to reach. The required capabilities a solution needs to get them there. The metrics that prove it worked. How you are different from the alternatives in ways that matter to those outcomes. The discipline it teaches is that every product claim should trace back to a business outcome the buyer already cares about. Force Management's own explainer, what Command of the Message means, goes further.

What is a Miller Heiman Blue Sheet?

A Miller Heiman Blue Sheet is a one-page opportunity plan from Strategic Selling, the complex-sale methodology Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman published in 1985 and that is now part of Korn Ferry. It forces a rep to write down, for one specific deal, everything they know and everything they do not.

The classic sheet walks through a small set of questions:

• Single sales objective: exactly what you are trying to sell, to whom, by when.
• Buying influences: the economic buyer who gives final approval, the user buyers who will live with the result, the technical buyers who screen options and can say no, and the coach who helps you navigate.
• Each influence's mode: whether that person sees the change as growth, as a fix for trouble, or as unnecessary because things are fine.
• Win-results: what each person gets out of it, personally as well as for the business.
• Red flags and strengths: what you do not know, who you have not met, and where you are strong.
• Possible actions: the next steps that close the gaps.

The Blue Sheet's lasting contribution is the red flag. An empty box on the sheet is information: it is the risk in the deal, written down where your manager can see it. Korn Ferry has since modernized the sheet; its history of the Blue Sheet explains what changed.

What is a mutual action plan?

A mutual action plan is a short, shared document listing every step between today and the day the buyer is live, with a name and a date on each step and with the buyer's steps on it as well as yours. It is written with the buyer, it ends at their outcome instead of your signature, and it turns a vague "let's keep talking" into dated commitments that both sides can see slipping.

It is the buyer-facing cousin of the Blue Sheet and the Decision process letter in MEDDIC. We cover it in full, with a copy-ready template, in the mutual action plan guide.

What is pre-call planning?

Pre-call planning is the work a rep does before a sales call to decide what the call is for, what they already know, and what they need to find out. At a minimum it covers the company, the person, why now, and the one outcome that would make the call a success.

Good pre-call planning is short and specific. It produces a hypothesis about the buyer's problem, two or three questions to test it, and a clear ask for the end of the call. Our sales call prep checklist is a copy-ready version, and how to research a sales prospect covers the research half in fifteen minutes.

What are buying signals?

Buying signals are observable signs that a prospect is moving toward a purchase. They come in two kinds, and it helps to keep them apart.

Conversation signals happen during a sales conversation: questions about price, implementation time, contract terms or references; bringing a new colleague into the next meeting; asking what other customers like them did. Each is a sign the buyer has started picturing life after the purchase.

Account signals happen in public before you ever speak: a funding round, a new executive in the buying role, a job posting for the team that would use what you sell, an expansion, an acquisition. These are sometimes called trigger events. They do not prove intent. They are a reason to believe the timing may be right, and a specific thing to open a first call with.

Other terms you will hear in deal reviews

Champion. A person inside the buyer's organization who wants your solution to win, has influence, and will act on your behalf when you are not in the room. Someone who likes you but has no influence is a friendly contact, not a champion.

Economic buyer. The person who can approve the spend without asking anyone else. Their title varies with the size of the deal.

Decision criteria. The explicit and unwritten tests the buyer will apply to the options. If you do not know them, you are guessing what you are being graded on.

Decision process. The sequence of steps, meetings and approvals that ends in a signature. It is almost always longer than the buyer's first description of it.

Paper process. The legal, procurement and security steps that turn a verbal yes into a signed contract.

Discovery call. A conversation whose purpose is to understand the buyer's situation, problem and process well enough to decide whether there is a deal, not to pitch.

Qualification. Deciding, on evidence, whether an opportunity is worth the time to pursue. Every framework above is a structured way of doing it.

The one-page qualification cheat sheet

Copy this into your notes before a first call. Each line is a question that fills one field in BANT, MEDDPICC or a Blue Sheet, so one conversation covers whichever framework your team reports in.

Why now

• What made this a priority this quarter rather than last year? (Need, Identify pain)
• What happens if nothing changes? (Implication, Pain)

The result

• How will you measure whether this worked? (Metrics, Win-results)
• By when does that need to be true? (Timeline, Single sales objective)

The people

• Who else would be involved in a decision like this? (Authority, Buying influences)
• Who would have final say on the spend? (Economic buyer)
• Who would use it day to day? (User buyers)
• Who would need to review it before it could be approved? (Technical buyers)

The process

• What would have to happen on your side between now and it being live? (Decision process)
• What would you compare the options against? (Decision criteria)
• How do contracts usually get signed here: legal, procurement, security? (Paper process)
• Is there money set aside for this, or would it need to be found? (Budget)

The alternatives

• What else are you considering, including doing nothing or building it yourselves? (Competition)

The gaps

• After the call, mark every question you could not answer. Those are your red flags, and the first steps on your plan.

Which sales methodology should you use?

Use the one your team already reports in, and use it consistently. The frameworks overlap far more than they differ: every one of them asks why now, who decides, how they decide, and what it is worth. The differences are in weight. BANT is quick and fits short cycles. MEDDPICC and the Blue Sheet fit complex deals with many stakeholders. SPIN, Sandler, Challenger and Command of the Message are mostly about how you run the conversation that gets you the answers.

The worst choice is none, or a different one per rep. A shared framework is what lets a manager read ten deals in ten minutes and see which ones are real.

Where the answers come from

Many of the questions above can be partly answered before the first call from public information: the trigger event that makes this the right quarter, what the prospect is likely to be measured on, and who else holds the adjacent roles. That research is what a SalesBriefAI briefing does. You give it a company and a person, pick the methodology your team sells with from more than forty, including MEDDIC, BANT, Miller Heiman's Strategic Selling and Command of the Message, and it hands back a briefing framed in that methodology's language, with an engagement plan and the objections to expect.

See what a briefing looks like, or try it free. Free credits to start, no card needed.

Named methodologies in this glossary are the trademarks and training programs of their owners. SalesBriefAI describes them here for reference and is not affiliated with any of them.