The Future of Sales Is No Quota with Jacco @ WinningByDesign.com - Escape Velocity Show #36

About this video

Martell interviews Jacco of Winning By Design, who argues ‘BANT is dead’ and that BANT — Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline, an outdated IBM-era qualification process — is killing SAS sales. If a prospect already has budget, Jacco says, you are too late; what sellers can create is priority, driven by impact. He distinguishes rational impact (business metrics, e.g. saving the company a million dollars, which the buyer does not personally keep) from emotional impact (a headache, Sunday reporting, 12-hour days). Buyers, he says, buy on emotional impact but must pitch internally on rational impact, so sellers must arm their internal buyer with content, charts and visual diagrams — for example a PDF with a highlighted section — and third-party, preferably academic, material carries more weight than seller-branded content. Qualification should therefore track impact and a critical event continuously across sales, onboarding and customer success, not as a one-time gate, and onboarding should proactively send impact reports a buyer can copy into executive meetings. Great salespeople, he argues, are not necessarily extrovert superstars but people who can execute a process — needed once a company reaches 30-40 clients — and he stresses note-taking, shared team learning instead of individual-contributor hoarding, and working smarter not harder. He also questions pay disparity, citing a customer success person responsible for $9 million in recurring revenue on average pay of $110,000 versus a salesperson at $180,000, and says Winning By Design publishes its core principles in over 100 videos, seven books, and Lucidchart designs because clients buy help and accountability, not just content.

Key takeaways

• Jacco says BANT — Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline — is dead in SaaS; if they have budget you are too late, and priority, which sellers can create through impact, is what matters.
• He distinguishes rational impact (business metrics) from emotional impact (personal pain like headaches and Sunday reporting): buyers buy on emotional impact but pitch internally on rational impact.
• Sellers must arm their internal buyer to sell internally with assets such as highlighted PDFs, charts and diagrams, and Jacco says third-party, preferably academic, content is perceived as more valuable than seller-branded content.
• Great salespeople, Jacco argues, are process executors who can follow instructions and improve — not dependent superstars — and process becomes essential at 30-40 clients in platform sales.
• Qualifying on impact and a critical event, Jacco says, should continue across the whole journey into onboarding and customer success, with proactive impact reports, rather than being a one-time BANT gate.

Episode details: published September 10, 2020 · 43:15 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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