Most sales leaders treat a shaky forecast as a confidence problem: is the deal real, or isn't it? Kevin Mulrane, revenue leader at BioCentury, says regulated-sales forecasts often break somewhere else. His team can usually tell whether a deal is likely to close. The difficult question is when. A business buyer may already be convinced while legal, procurement, security, and compliance have barely started. Forecast accuracy improves when the sales process treats those as two different clocks.
In this article
- The forecast problem is timing, not confidence
- The Two-Clock Forecast
- Ask the closing question earlier than feels natural
- Build one mutual plan for every stakeholder
- Autonomy discovers the process. Guardrails make it repeatable
- Training teaches a skill. Coaching makes it stick
- Hire behavior, not a familiar resume
- "Pipeline is healthy" is not a forecast
- FAQ
The forecast problem is timing, not confidence
Search for advice on forecast accuracy and most of it starts with qualification: is the champion credible, is budget confirmed, and does the problem matter? Those questions are necessary. They do not explain where Kevin sees timelines fail when selling SaaS to banks, healthcare organizations, and other regulated buyers.
We can have high confidence that the deal is going to close. It's just usually the question is always, when? And that's the hardest part.Kevin Mulrane, BioCentury
The business stakeholder can say yes while a second process starts behind them. Legal reviews the terms. Procurement controls sequencing. Security evaluates the system. Compliance checks the risk. The rep may never have met the people who own those steps, yet their work now determines the close date.
That mismatch is easy to hide inside a linear CRM stage. Gartner maps B2B buying around six jobs that buyers revisit rather than complete in a clean sequence. Regulation adds another internal journey after commercial interest is real. Salesforce's 2026 State of Sales research found that 57% of sellers say customers take longer to decide than they did a year earlier.
A deal can therefore move forward commercially and still be almost stationary operationally. Forecasting only the buyer's conviction turns a likely deal into an unreliable date.
The Two-Clock Forecast
The Two-Clock Forecast
The commercial clock measures whether the business buyer believes the problem is worth solving with you. The approval clock measures whether legal, procurement, security, and compliance can complete the work required to buy. Confidence comes from the first clock. Timing accuracy requires both.
One deal, two clocks
A regulated opportunity can be commercially advanced while the approval process is still early
Illustrative, based on Kevin's description of parallel commercial and approval work. This is a process model, not measured duration data.
The model changes the questions asked in a forecast review. Instead of only asking, "does the buyer want it?" the leader asks, "what has to happen inside the buyer's organization, who owns each step, and what evidence says that work has started?"
Ask the closing question earlier than feels natural
Kevin's team surfaces the approval clock with a question many reps save for the end: if you decided to move forward today, what would that process look like on your side? Which documents would need review? Who would need to approve? What has to happen before another team can begin?
The question is hypothetical on purpose. It does not demand a commitment the buyer has not made. It asks the buyer to reveal the machinery that will matter if the commercial decision becomes real.
If they do start to tell you what that process is, it's a good buying signal. You've got something real here. If they're not ready to talk about it, now you have a better understanding of where you stand.Kevin Mulrane, BioCentury
That second outcome is just as valuable. The buyer who cannot discuss the path may not be as advanced as the CRM stage suggests. Asking early does not kill a deal that was going to close. It kills the illusion that a stalled deal was progressing.
Timing still matters. Kevin does not recommend dropping the question into every first call. Use it after qualification, once the buyer has shown real engagement and can explain how the product would fit. The skill is reading when you have earned the right to ask.
Build one mutual plan for every stakeholder
Once the buyer describes the process, turn it into a shared sequence instead of leaving commercial, legal, procurement, and compliance to operate as separate conversations.
- Confirm the buying signal. Use the process only for a qualified opportunity with credible business engagement.
- Map the approval chain. Name the teams, documents, dependencies, and approval owners.
- Bring both sides together early. Connect the buyer's internal owners with the corresponding people on your team.
- Put dependencies in order. Make it visible when one document must finish before another review can start.
- Assign a person and date to every action. A mutual plan needs owners on both sides, not a seller's private task list.
Kevin's point is operational. The business contact and procurement may not be aligned on sequencing. One team may not know that another cannot start until a document is final. The mutual action plan makes the invisible wait visible early enough to manage.
Autonomy discovers the process. Guardrails make it repeatable
Kevin is wary of imposing a heavy process before the team has learned what works. Early in a sales motion, autonomy creates information. Reps try different questions, messages, and sequences. Leaders watch which behaviors produce consistent movement.
The mistake is leaving every discovery in private practice. Once the team sees a repeatable pattern, codify it. Define the questions that reveal the approval clock, the evidence that supports a stage, and the handoffs that should happen automatically.
Process should therefore arrive in layers. Preserve judgment where buyers differ. Standardize the parts where forgetting creates risk. That balance avoids two familiar failures: improvisation that cannot scale and rigid scripting that ignores the room.
Training teaches a skill. Coaching makes it stick
A training session can introduce the Two-Clock Forecast and show reps how to build a mutual plan. It cannot make the behavior survive a live quarter. That requires coaching inside actual work.
Training transfers knowledge. Coaching changes the operating habit
An illustrative reinforcement curve based on Kevin's distinction
Illustrative. The curve shows the qualitative effect Kevin describes and is not a measured retention study.
Coaching can be simple: inspect one deal, listen for the approval question, compare the plan with what the buyer actually said, and decide what the rep should try next. The lesson becomes durable because it is attached to a real consequence.
Hire behavior, not a familiar resume
A regulated-industry resume can reduce ramp time. It does not guarantee the behavior a complex sale demands. Kevin looks for how candidates learn, respond to coaching, stay organized, and navigate stakeholders they do not control.
The best interview evidence is work. Give a candidate a situation with incomplete information. Ask how they would discover the approval path. Offer feedback and let them try again. A polished answer is less useful than watching whether the person can process a new constraint without losing curiosity or composure.
"Pipeline is healthy" is not a forecast
Kevin names "pipeline is healthy" as one of the most dangerous sentences in sales because it sounds specific while revealing nothing. Healthy by what evidence? Which deals have buyer-owned next steps? Which approval clocks have started? Where are the dependencies? What changed this week?
A forecast becomes useful when every material opportunity can answer those questions. Probability without a process map is confidence dressed as math.
Key takeaways
- Separate buyer conviction from the internal approval work that determines timing.
- Ask the hypothetical closing question once the deal is qualified and engaged.
- Put commercial, legal, procurement, security, and compliance work into one mutual plan.
- Use autonomy to discover repeatable practice, then codify the parts where forgetting creates risk.
- Train the method once and coach it repeatedly inside live deals.
- Demand evidence behind "healthy pipeline," especially buyer-owned next steps and approval progress.
FAQ
How do you improve forecast accuracy in regulated sales?
Track the commercial decision and the buyer's internal approval process as separate clocks. Surface legal, procurement, security, and compliance steps early, assign owners and dates, and include them in a mutual action plan.
When should a rep ask the closing question?
Ask once the opportunity is qualified and the buyer has shown real engagement. Phrase it hypothetically: if you decided to proceed today, what would need to happen on your side? The answer reveals both buying intent and approval work.
What is the difference between sales training and coaching?
Training transfers knowledge in a bounded event. Coaching reinforces behavior inside live work, helps the rep adapt the method to real buyers, and makes the habit durable.
Should sales reps have autonomy or a defined process?
Use autonomy while the team is learning which behaviors work. Once a pattern repeats, codify it and keep room for judgment inside the guardrails. The goal is repeatability without turning the buyer conversation into a script.
Kevin's full conversation with Suresh covers forecast timing, closing questions, sales autonomy, coaching, hiring, and the pipeline language leaders should challenge. Listen to the complete episode of Revenue Under Pressure and subscribe for more practical lessons from regulated revenue teams.