Every qualification framework answers one question: is this worth your next hour. The difference between them is how much work they ask for before they answer, which is why the right one depends on what the deal is worth.
Using a framework built for six-figure enterprise deals on a five-thousand-dollar sale costs more than the deal makes.
The four you will be told to use
| Framework | What it checks | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| BANT | Budget, authority, need, timing | Shorter sales, one or two decision makers |
| CHAMP | Challenges, authority, money, prioritisation | Similar to BANT, led by the problem |
| MEDDIC | Metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identified pain, champion | Long, multi-stakeholder, high value |
| GPCTBA | Goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, authority | Consultative sales where the buyer is still defining the problem |
They overlap heavily. Every one of them is checking some version of: is there a real problem, is there money, is there somebody who can say yes, and is there a reason to act now. The differences are emphasis and depth.
BANT, and the reordering that fixes it
BANT gets criticised for leading with budget, and the criticism is fair when it is applied literally. Opening on money asks the buyer to value something they do not yet understand, and the honest answer at that point is usually "I do not know", which reads as a disqualification when it is actually a sequencing error.
The same four checks in the order need, timing, authority, budget work far better. You establish there is a problem, find out whether it is urgent, learn who decides, and then talk about money with someone who has a reason to care about the answer.
MEDDIC, and when it earns its cost
MEDDIC asks for genuinely more work: a named economic buyer, a documented decision process, quantified pain, and a champion who will argue for you when you are not in the room. Collecting that takes several conversations.
That is worth it when the deal is large, the cycle is months, and losing one is expensive. It is not worth it when the cycle is two weeks, because you will spend the cycle qualifying.
A reasonable rule of thumb: if the deal is worth less than a week of a salesperson's fully loaded cost, use four criteria. If it is worth more than a quarter of one, use MEDDIC or something like it.
What matters more than the choice
Write the criteria down and make them answerable. "Has budget" is a judgement. "Has told us a number, or told us who sets it" is a fact. Facts can be reviewed; judgements cannot.
Make disqualification normal. A framework only pays for itself if people are allowed to say no. If disqualifying a lead is treated as losing one, nobody will do it, and the pipeline fills with deals that are present rather than real. In most teams, the number of leads disqualified for a stated reason is a better health signal than the number qualified.
Keep it where the work happens. Criteria that live in a training deck get used for a month. Criteria that are fields on the record, answered at the moment the conversation happens, survive. The test is whether you could filter the pipeline by them today.
Review the bar against outcomes. Twice a year, look at the deals you lost late and the deals you won easily, and ask which criterion would have told you earlier. That is the only feedback loop that improves a framework, and it is the one almost nobody runs.
The common failure, which is not the framework
Most teams do not have a qualification problem. They have a problem where qualification happens in someone's head, is never written down, and therefore cannot be taught to the next hire or reviewed after a bad quarter. Almost any framework fixes that, which is why arguing about which one is usually a way of avoiding the part that actually matters.
Empiraa Signal is a CRM and more. It is also the B2B prospect database, the enrichment, the email sequences, the booking link and the proposal tool, in one system with unlimited users on every plan, so qualification can sit on the record where the conversation happens rather than in a separate tool nobody opens.
Related reading: sales pipeline stages, and what probability to put on each, and 400 leads, 12 are real.
Marketing qualified lead has a definition on this site.
