5 Questions You Should Ask Before Your Next Sales Meeting – BANTS

Picture this: you’ve got an NHS contact who’s enthusiastic, always happy to meet, but somehow never says yes. You’ve presented your deck, sent over case studies, maybe even drafted a business case. Every meeting ends with a smile and the promise of “let’s catch up again soon.”

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. It’s one of the most common traps early-stage medtech founders fall into.

In this week’s Monday Masterclass we discuss a conversation we had with a founder asked us how to prepare for yet another meeting with a local NHS team. The founder was buzzing with excitement, “This could be the one!” but when we dug into the details, it quickly became clear: this was a dead-end lead.

They didn’t have a budget. They weren’t the decision-maker. They weren’t working to any timeframe. In short, there was no sale to be had.

It reminded us of the best piece of sales advice we’ve heard. It came from a seasoned industry veteran years ago, and it’s one we’ve carried into every sales conversation since. A simple framework that cuts through the noise and helps you decide whether a lead is worth your time.

It’s called BANTS.

The NHS Sales Trap

Before we dive into the framework, let’s talk about why people getting trapped in an endless sales cycle happens so often in healthcare.

The people who run healthcare systems like the NHS are often polite. People rarely say no. Instead, they keep you in the loop with meetings, email threads, and “could you just put together one more document?” They mean well, but the reality is they may have no power, no budget, or no real intent to buy.

We’ve seen founders spend months, even years, chasing these mirages. Every coffee, every Teams call, every draft proposal feels like progress. But when you zoom out, you realise you’ve invested hundreds of hours in an opportunity that was never real to begin with.

That’s where BANTS comes in.

Introducing BANTS: The Five Questions

BANTS stands for Budget, Authority, Need, Timing, and Size.

It’s a way of qualifying leads so you only pursue opportunities that have a fighting chance of closing. Each of the five factors is a question you should politely and consistently ask in your early sales conversations. If you can score three out of five, it’s usually worth pursuing. Anything less? Park it and move on.

Let’s break them down in more detail, we’ll focus on the NHS but this approach works in any sales setting.

1. Budget

Question: Do they actually have money to spend on this?

In the NHS, budget is often the first stumbling block. A department may love your idea but be under a spending freeze. Or funds might be tied up until the next financial year.

Don’t be afraid to ask early: “Do you have budget allocated for this kind of solution this year?”

If the answer is no, it doesn’t mean the door is closed forever. But it tells you this is not an active lead. You can stay in touch, but don’t hinge your runway on it.

2. Authority

Question: Am I talking to the person who can actually make this decision?

It’s common to start with a doctor, project manager, or innovation lead who’s enthusiastic about your product. That’s great, but enthusiasm isn’t the same as authority.

The real decision might sit with a procurement officer, finance director, or clinical board. You need to map the organisation and work out who holds the pen on the contract.

A polite way to uncover this is: “Who else needs to be involved in making this decision?”

3. Need

Question: Is this solving a problem they truly care about?

We talked about this in more detail in previous blog posts here and here. Every founder believes their product solves a big problem. But what matters is whether the customer sees it the same way.

In our mentoring conversation, the founder was convinced the hospital needed their solution. But when we asked what evidence they had that it was a priority for the hospital, or that they had confirmed that there was a business need for the hospital they had nothing. That’s a red flag.

The quickest way to test this is to flip the conversation: instead of pitching, ask, “What’s the biggest challenge your team is facing right now?” If your solution fits into their answer, great. If not, you may be pushing a rock uphill.

4. Timing

Question: Are they ready to act now, or is this “maybe someday”?

Healthcare runs on cycles; budget cycles, planning cycles, procurement cycles. A team might genuinely want your product, but if they can’t do anything until next April, that’s not a live opportunity today.

Try asking: “When do you expect to make a decision on this?” The answer will tell you if there’s urgency, or if you’re about to get strung along for the next year.

5. Size

Question: Is the opportunity big enough to matter?

For startups, even a small pilot can be valuable. But you should still ask: if this goes well, what’s the scale of the rollout? Does it open the door to a meaningful contract, or is it destined to stay a side project?

Conversely some opportunities may just be too big for you to deliver, if you’re a small team trying to service a £100m opportunity maybe too challenging, don’t bite off more than you can chew…

Think about strategic value as well as revenue. A pilot in a teaching hospital may not make you rich, but it could become a powerful reference site for other trusts.

How to Use BANTS in Practice

The power of BANTS isn’t just in knowing the questions, it’s in using them consistently. Every lead and every opportunity should be run through this filter. Score each one out of five.

High scores (4–5): These deserve your full attention. Prioritise them, invest your time, and move them forward.
Medium scores (3): Worth pursuing, but be realistic — you’ll need to work hard to close.
Low scores (0–2): These should receive little to no active attention. Keep them warm with the occasional check-in, but don’t build your pipeline around them.

This triage helps you focus energy where it matters most.

If you review your pipeline and find everything is scoring low, don’t despair. That’s a signal. It means your next job is either to generate new leads, or to take the most promising ones and deliberately improve their score. For example:

Can you get an introduction to someone with more authority?
Can you clarify whether there’s budget in this cycle?
Can you reframe your value proposition to highlight a pressing need?

The point isn’t to abandon every low-scoring lead forever. It’s to make sure your time is spent on opportunities that are capable of becoming real sales, and to have a strategy for nudging borderline leads into stronger territory.

Get Comfortable Asking Difficult Questions

Here’s the hard truth: if you don’t qualify your leads, you’ll waste your most precious resource — time.

And yet, many founders hesitate to ask these questions. They worry it sounds rude, or that it might scare off a potential buyer. In reality, asking these questions shows respect. It shows you value both their time and yours.

Most NHS stakeholders appreciate clarity. They don’t want to waste months on conversations that can’t go anywhere either. If there’s no budget, authority, or timing, it’s better for everyone to acknowledge that upfront.

Think of it less as interrogation and more as partnership. You’re working together to see if there’s a real fit. Win-win, or no deal.

Beyond BANTS: Practical Tips for Early Medtech Sales

While BANTS is the core technique we wanted to talk about in this article, here are a few other lessons we share with founders (we might do further pieces on each of these – drop us a line here if you would be interested in these):

Build relationships, not transactions. A clinician champion or executive sponsor who believes in you can open doors you’d never reach alone.
Evidence is currency. Collect data from every pilot, and every engagement, however small, and turn it into a case study. Get testimonials, written or video, ask people if they will refer you onwards to their contacts. The NHS trusts its peers more than any sales deck.
Balance outbound and inbound. Yes, you’ll need to hustle with cold outreach — but also build credibility through content, speaking at events, and being visible in the ecosystem.
Beware pilot purgatory. Pilots are important, but define success metrics upfront and link them to a clear path to procurement.

Closing the Loop

Back to the founder we spoke with. When we ran their situation through BANTS, the truth became obvious: no budget, no authority, no timing. Just enthusiasm.

That’s not a sale. It’s a distraction.

By learning to qualify leads early, that founder can now save themselves months of chasing and hundreds of hours of wasted prep. They redirected that energy into a different opportunity, one that ticked the boxes, had a clear champion, and we think may ultimately turn into a real contract.

Your time is your most valuable asset as a founder. Guard it fiercely. Before your next sales meeting, run through these five questions. If the lead doesn’t score at least three out of five, don’t be afraid to politely step back.

You’ll thank yourself later, and so will your investors.

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