Forecasting

Explained / Other / 26 September 2026

BANT in 2026: still useful, or obsolete?

BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) is the original qualification framework, developed at IBM in the 1960s. In 2026 it is widely derided as obsolete and widely used in practice. The right reading: BANT is a useful starting framework that needs adaptation for modern UK B2B buying processes; the underlying concerns are still the right concerns.

BANT is too thin for enterprise B2B and is genuinely obsolete for that segment. For SMB and mid-market with shorter cycles and simpler buying structures, BANT-with-adaptation is still functional. The honest answer is contextual: BANT for SMB short-cycle, MEDDPICC or equivalent for enterprise.

Explained / SaaS / 18 July 2026

Account expansion as a sales discipline in UK SaaS in 2026

Net retention is the single most-watched SaaS metric for growth-stage and public companies, and yet account expansion sits in an organisational no-man's-land at most UK SaaS firms: too commercial for CS, too relationship-led for AE, structurally under-invested in. The case for treating expansion as its own sales discipline with dedicated headcount, comp design, and process.

Net retention above 110 percent typically requires an explicit Account Manager / Expansion AE function with quota tied to expansion ARR. Bolt-on responsibilities given to CS or land-AEs without comp realignment produce flat NRR. The dedicated function pays back within 12-18 months at most UK SaaS scales above 100 customers.

Snapshot / Retail / 16 July 2026

The UK retail SaaS sales motion in 2026

Selling SaaS to UK retailers operates on retail-specific cycles: trading-calendar-driven, margin-pressure-shaped, and increasingly fragmented across digital and store-based motion. Cycle length, deal-size patterns, and the structural shift towards GMROI-tied commercial framing.

Retail SaaS deals close on trading-calendar timelines (Feb-Apr or Sep-Oct windows) regardless of commercial readiness. GMROI-tied commercial framing increasingly preferred over per-seat pricing. Retail buyer veto from any cross-functional stakeholder kills deals; map the buying centre comprehensively.

Explained / Retail / 14 July 2026

Selling B2B into UK retail: the Q4 freeze and the seasonal procurement calendar

UK retailers operate on a procurement calendar driven by trading seasons, not by the buyer's fiscal year. The 'peak trading' window roughly covering November through January is a code freeze for any operational change; the 'post-peak review' window in February through April is when most B2B procurement decisions get made. Vendors who don't read the calendar lose 6 months on every deal that hits the freeze.

Retail B2B sales cycles must be planned against the trading calendar. Aim for contract signature by end of October or after end of January; deals that hit the November-January window stall regardless of commercial readiness. February-April is the procurement push window; September-October is the secondary window before peak.

Signal / SaaS / 18 June 2026

No-decision is the largest UK B2B SaaS loss category in 2026

Teams that disaggregate no-decision typically find it accounts for 30-50 percent of total losses by deal count, materially exceeding competitive losses and budget losses.

Explained / SaaS / 17 June 2026

Attacking no-decision losses with critical-event discovery

Surfacing existing critical events. When no critical event exists: accept long-term pipeline or help the buyer build one. Why manufactured deadlines fail and the forecast hygiene that follows.

Test for critical event at MEDDPICC stage 3+. 30-50 percent of typical UK SaaS stage 3+ pipeline is no-decision risk. The discipline of surfacing this is uncomfortable but the pipeline that survives is much more accurate.

Explained / SaaS / 16 June 2026

Why no-decision is the real losing competitor in UK B2B SaaS

No-decision is consistently the largest single loss category - 30-50 percent of total losses by deal count, materially exceeding competitive losses. Three patterns and why no-decision warning signs get missed.

Disaggregate no-decision in CRM. Surface no-decision risk at stage 3 with the critical-event question. Treat no-decision risk as a different motion.

Explained / SaaS / 27 May 2026

Where MEDDIC fails on inbound deals - and what to do instead

MEDDIC works on outbound deals because the AE has done the upstream qualification work. It works less well on inbound because the AE inherits a lead with no upstream context. Three places inbound-MEDDIC fails predictably: champion identification, critical event surfacing, and decision process discovery.

Inbound-MEDDIC works when the AE explicitly compresses discovery into the first meeting and tests for the three weakest dimensions: champion behaviour, critical event, decision process.

Signal / SaaS / 25 May 2026

The Slack-as-CRM problem in growth-stage UK SaaS - why it's a structural risk

Growth-stage UK SaaS sales teams routinely use Slack as an informal CRM: deal updates in #pipeline, forecast commits as emojis, lost-deal post-mortems as long-form threads. The pattern is everywhere at 50-300 person scale. Three failure modes (signal loss, accountability drift, manager-overhead amplification) make it a structural risk, not a quirk.

Explained / SaaS / 21 May 2026

UK enterprise procurement patterns for SaaS sales in 2026

UK enterprise procurement is the most-underestimated workstream in B2B SaaS sales. Sales cycles that look 90 days from a commercial perspective routinely run 150-200 days because procurement, legal, and information security gates run in series. A practitioner walkthrough of the five gates, total elapsed time, what to do early, and four patterns that derail deals at the last minute.

Best-case UK enterprise SaaS deal: 60-90 days from commercial alignment. Typical: 90-150 days. Worst: 180-300 days. Compress the timeline by starting vendor onboarding and security questionnaire response early, and by running a redline-clean MSA template. Procurement gate-state should be discoverable alongside Champion, Economic Buyer, Critical Event.

Explained / SaaS / 17 May 2026

Quota design: top-down vs bottom-up methodologies in UK SaaS

Quota design is the most political exercise in a UK SaaS sales operation. Done well it lines up rep incentive with company target. Done poorly it produces sandbagging, demotivation, and a 12-month argument every January. A practitioner walkthrough of top-down and bottom-up methodologies, the reconciliation, and two patterns that fail predictably.

Use both top-down and bottom-up; document the gap between them; the gap is the conversation. Productivity-adjusted quota math should assume 60-80 percent average attainment, not 100 percent. Quota-to-OTE ratio under 3x or over 8x deserves a closer look. Avoid the 'stretch' quota that nobody believes and the annual mid-year rebase.

Explained / SaaS / 11 May 2026

Pipeline coverage and what 3x actually buys you

'You need 3x pipeline coverage' is the most-repeated heuristic in UK B2B sales. It works under specific assumptions and fails predictably when those assumptions don't hold. A practitioner walkthrough of the math, when 3x is the wrong target, and how to compute the coverage ratio your team actually needs from two quarters of historical data.

Coverage = 1 / realised close rate. Most UK SaaS teams should compute their actual ratio from CRM data rather than default to 3x. Adding low-quality SDR volume to fix under-coverage usually makes it worse. Use coverage as a leading indicator on Q+1 and Q+2; do not use it as a current-quarter forecast.