Don’t Faint, Use FAINT to Qualify Leads

Qualification is easy to mess up. One of the trickiest qualifying criteria to tackle is the available budget. The legendary BANT qualifying framework leads with a budget to ensure sellers focus on those companies that can spend the money on proposed solutions. However, what do you do when you sell something companies don’t have set budgets for? Such as an innovation they have not heard about yet.

What to do when you sell something companies don’t have set budgets for?

A lead or prospect without a budget would become unqualified when following BANT, stopping the sales process. However, the company might have had relevant pain to solve and be willing to allocate the money to solve it. In this case, a BANT-led seller lost a sale, and the company must keep going with their pain. It's a loose-loose situation.

What is FAINT?

FAINT is a modern lead qualification framework designed for complex B2B sales where traditional budget-based approaches fall short. Unlike BANT, which assumes prospects have pre-allocated budgets, FAINT focuses first on the prospect's financial capability to purchase, regardless of whether they have an existing budget.

FAINT, which appeared in the early 2000s, acknowledges that companies often create or reallocate budgets for valuable solutions rather than working with pre-set budgets in the modern business environment. Hence, the FAINT framework is particularly effective for innovative solutions or new categories where companies might not have dedicated budget lines. If there is a lack of budget, one should look for signs that the company has the financial potential to invest funds. Such signs can be high-enough revenue, news about new sales records or financing rounds, or the amount of free cash flow.

Instead of starting with budget discussions, FAINT looks at the prospect's overall financial capability (Funds) and their decision-making power (Authority). It then assesses their genuine Interest in solving the problem, validates the actual Need they're trying to address, and confirms the Timing of their decision-making process. With FAINT, sellers can quickly assess whether a prospect has the means and motivation to purchase.

The Components of the FAINT Framework

Funds: Does the prospect have the financial ability to make a purchase?

Example questions to ask:

• Have you ever purchased something similar to this before?
• How do you typically secure a new budget for initiatives like this?
• What financial metrics do you use to evaluate investments?
• How much free cash flow do you usually have available for new investments?
• What's your company's financial growth trajectory?

Authority: Who has the power to make purchasing decisions?

Example questions to ask:

• What is your role in evaluating and selecting solutions?
• Who else needs to be involved in the decision-making process?
• Can you walk me through your typical decision-making process for a purchase like this?
• Can you walk me through your typical purchasing process?
• What’s your internal process for evaluating and approving new vendors?

Interest: How engaged is the prospect in finding a solution?

Example questions to ask:

• What prompted you to look into solutions like ours?
• What specific features or capabilities interest you most?
• What would success look like for you?
• How do you see our solution fitting into your operations?
• How actively are you evaluating different options?

Need: What specific challenges or problems need to be solved?

Example questions to ask:

• Could you describe the specific challenges you’re facing?
• What particular problems are you trying to address?
• How is this challenge impacting your business?
• What solutions have you tried before?
• What objectives or KPIs are you hoping to improve?

Timing: When does the prospect plan to implement a solution?

Example questions to ask:

• How high of a priority is solving this challenge?
• What is your timeline for implementing a solution?
• Are there any specific deadlines or milestones driving your timeline?
• What could impact your implementation timeline?
• How urgent is addressing this challenge?

FAINT empowers sales teams to evaluate prospects efficiently by focusing on their financial capability and motivation to solve pressing challenges. Through thoughtful, open-ended questions across each framework component, sales representatives can uncover the prospect's situation and readiness to move forward. This systematic approach to qualification ensures sales teams invest their energy in promising opportunities that they can close but don’t miss out on opportunities with companies without a dedicated and ready budget.