Fall officially starts tomorrow, but in my trip to Vermont house last weekend, it was obvious that the rhythm of the seasons was in full cycle which is great since the fall season provides 25% of the tourist income for the state. Vermont is absolutely in full rhythm for the fall:
As a salesguy, heavily steeped in funnel process, I grew up in a BANT world of Budget, Authority, Need and Time. Invented in the 1950's, by what was then termed as "the most successful sales company in the world", IBM coined the acronym in the same way they demanded that their salespeople needed to wear dark suits, white shirts, bland ties, and, yes, it is true that they did enforce the wearing of a hat on sales calls. I never worked for IBM but had the experience of working for a very large medtech company, where BANT was the law of the land, although I could never figure out why we would begin a discussion with what I thought was the affrontive "B" word in asking about budget first.
At Tufts, where I've now been teaching for 20 years, I have the privilege of bringing back to campus, a number of my best alums as Sales and Marketing instructors for specific segments of these very unique courses where we work with semester-long projects brought to us from real companies.
James was correct since he brought with him to his lectures, and more importantly to his success at Hubspot, the rhythm of "The Hubspot Way of Discovery", and I simply had not made the change. That change occurred that day, and I have never looked back at my old friend, BANT. I became Hubspot Certified in Inbound Sales the next day requiring my students to do the same, and the world of Sales and teaching about Sales quickly became easier, faster and much more productive in its simplicity of a rhythm.
Or you can just email me, and I'll send you a free copy. Connect with me at any time for some quick ideas and feedback. There's never a cost for a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about Sales & Marketing.
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Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.