Know in 2 minutes which deals will close—and which are wasting your time.
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12 Deals Enter
5 Qualified Deals
But somehow, deals keep slipping. Quarter after quarter.
Demos. Proposals. Internal alignment meetings. All for deals that die in legal, or budget, or "we'll revisit next quarter."
It's your qualification discipline.
You're treating hope disguised as a deal the same way you treat a qualified opportunity. The fix isn't more activity. It's better filters.
Every qualified deal should pass through 12 filters before you commit full resources. Here's a preview:
"Is there a budget allocated, or will this require budget creation?"
"Have you identified and engaged the person who can sign?"
"Is there a compelling event driving their timeline?"
"Is this a 'must solve' or a 'nice to have'?"
"Do you have someone inside who wants you to win?"
400+ sales teams use these filters. Get the printable PDF and stop chasing fake opportunities.
The 12 Filters give you the framework. But implementing ruthless qualification across your team takes coaching. Let's make it happen.
15 minutes with Raju. Learn how to qualify ruthlessly.
BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) is 40 years old and covers just 4 criteria. Modern B2B deals involve 6-10 stakeholders, longer sales cycles, and complex buying dynamics. The 12 Filters capture what BANT misses: champion strength, status quo risk, competitive position, and implementation readiness.
Disqualifying more deals leads to closing more revenue. Counterintuitive but true. When you stop spending 30% of your time on deals that will never close, you redirect that time to winnable opportunities. Most reps waste enormous energy on "zombie deals" that were never real.
Rate each filter 1-5. Under 30 total: Walk away or nurture. 30-42: Qualify harder before investing time. 42-50: High-priority deal—pursue aggressively. Above 50: Hot opportunity—prioritize above all else. The numbers don't lie.
When your whole team uses the same qualification framework, forecast accuracy improves, deal reviews become productive, and reps stop arguing about which deals to prioritize. A shared language for qualification transforms pipeline quality across the organization.
The 12 Filters cover four categories: (1) Problem & Need — pain severity, solution fit, status quo risk; (2) Buying Process — decision maker access, champion strength, competition; (3) Resources — budget, timeline; (4) Success Indicators — previous wins, implementation readiness, urgency drivers, executive sponsorship.
BANT has 4 criteria, MEDDIC has 6. The 12 Filters expand to 12 criteria that capture modern B2B complexity—including status quo risk (why change at all?), champion strength (who's selling internally?), and implementation readiness (can they actually deploy?). More criteria = more predictive accuracy.
Out of 60 points maximum: 42+ is high priority (pursue aggressively), 30-42 needs more qualification before investing heavily, under 30 should be moved to nurture or disqualified. But context matters—a 35-point deal worth $500K may be worth pursuing harder than a 45-point deal worth $20K.
Not automatically—but you should deprioritize them. Low-scoring deals belong in "nurture" mode: occasional touches, educational content, no heavy time investment. Focus your selling hours on high-scoring deals. If a low-score deal improves over time (champion emerges, budget approved), reprioritize then.
Three keys: (1) Make it required for deal reviews—no score, no pipeline discussion; (2) Celebrate wins that came from high-scoring deals and losses predicted by low scores; (3) Build it into your CRM as required fields. Consistency matters more than perfection. Start using it and refine over time.