What Tech/SaaS Leaders Are Talking About
The market is sending mixed signals. While Growth remains the highest-priority factor at 4.90/5, Technology appetite has dropped 0.14 points this period—even as leaders grapple with how to sell increasingly complex products. The dominant tension? Companies are running out of room to grow, yet the playbook still demands differentiation in markets that feel saturated.
Priorities & Pain Points
Three new priorities have surged to the top this period: educating customers on pricing models, prioritizing people over results, and evaluating market size for growth potential. That last one deserves attention—it's not just a planning exercise. Leaders are explicitly worried about "running out of market to grow a business," which now ranks as the top pain point.
The differentiation crisis is real. "Lack of product differentiation in the market" sits just behind market exhaustion as a core concern, followed by difficulty finding leads when distributors are committed to competitors. One leader described this as "the desert"—a market where every channel partner was already locked in elsewhere. The old playbook of channel-led growth isn't working when everyone's already picked sides.
There's also frustration with feature-focused selling. Sales reps who only talk technology specs—not business outcomes—are a recurring pain point. Leaders want their teams connecting technical capabilities to value for different stakeholders, but that skill remains scarce.
The Stakeholder factor jumped +0.16 this period, now sitting at 4.85/5. That's not coincidental—navigating internal politics at customer organizations has become table stakes for complex B2B deals.
Buying Signals & Red Flags
Investment decision frameworks have crystallized around three non-negotiables: big market, differentiated product, competent and scalable team. All three are new to the top decision frameworks this period, and they map directly to the red flags that kill deals.
Market size is the first gate. If the total addressable market can't support sustained growth, leaders walk—no exceptions. One executive framed it bluntly: "A market that is not large enough is a trigger to not invest, as the business will run out of growth potential."
Differentiation is the second gate. Products that can't articulate clear competitive advantage get passed over. The bar isn't just "better"—it's "differentiated enough to win more than fair share."
Team scalability is the third gate. Leaders are evaluating whether your people can grow with complexity. The evaluation criteria focus on "sophisticated sales reps who can handle complex selling environments" and "make a complex product simple enough for customers to understand its business terms."
Positive signals? A complex selling environment is actually attractive to experienced operators. If your product requires navigating political complexity and multi-stakeholder value propositions, that's a feature, not a bug. Simple sales environments where deals close on features alone are red flags—they signal commoditization risk.
Language & Jargon Watch
The phrase "great leader" is emerging in power language, alongside "insights" and "exciting." Leaders are talking about leadership itself more explicitly than in previous periods.
Three new analogies are gaining traction: "worst territory" (a story about winning by getting creative in an impossible situation), "needle in the haystack" (describing difficult outbound pipeline generation), and "the desert" (channel markets with no available partners).
On the jargon front, "CTO," "inside sales rep," and "RD (regional director)" are emerging terms. The classic stack—CRO, AI, LLMs, CRM, ROI, SaaS—remains dominant, but role-specific language is becoming more granular.
Success metrics are shifting toward human development. "Growth of a person (not a deal)" now ranks as the top success metric, ahead of revenue milestones. MongoDB's "revenues growing over 100% annually" is cited as a benchmark, but leaders are measuring impact differently.
The Shift
Data orientation is up (+0.13), Stakeholder focus is up significantly (+0.16), but Technology appetite is down (-0.14). That's counterintuitive in an AI-obsessed market—until you realize leaders are tired of tech-for-tech's-sake pitches. They want business value articulation, not feature demos.
The pricing education priority signals confusion in the market about how to structure deals in an era moving from licenses to outcomes. Watch for vendors who can simplify pricing conversations to gain advantage. And if you're selling into this market, lean into complexity—just make sure your team can translate it into stakeholder-specific value. The operators who thrive next period will master political navigation, not just product knowledge.