Buying groups are bigger, budgets are fluid, and “authority” is a maze of gates—not a single signer. PIBAT gives revenue teams a shared, evidence-led way to qualify and advance deals: Problem, Impact, Budgetability, Approval Architecture, Trigger & Timing. The rule is simple—raise the lowest score within 14 days—and the result is cleaner forecasts, fewer stalls, and faster decisions.

The buying reality (and why old playbooks stall)

Enterprise and upper mid-market decisions rarely hinge on one executive. Security, networking, compliance, procurement, finance, legal, and IT each need a “yes,” often in a specific order. Meanwhile, funds aren’t always a line item—they’re a reallocation, a consolidation, or an OpEx/CapEx fit timed to a fiscal window. Traditional qualification frameworks tell you to find pain, metrics, and a buyer; PIBAT goes further by hard-wiring how deals actually move across functions and budgets.

Meet PIBAT

• P — Problem: the concrete pain, risk, or constraint as the customer experiences it.

• I — Impact: the quantified business consequence (revenue, cost, risk/compliance, CX) with named KPI owners.

• B — Budgetability: how fundable the initiative is—GL path, reallocation options, fiscal timing, OpEx/CapEx fit.

• A — Approval Architecture: who signs, who influences, who can veto—and the gate order (security → networking → compliance → procurement → finance → legal/IT), with pre-reads and dry-runs scheduled.

• T — Trigger & Timing: the forcing function (audit, renewal, launch, incident, board) and its proximity, plus a latest no-go date and dependencies (freezes, maintenance, cutovers).

Operating rule: raise the lowest PIBAT subscore by one within 14 days. That cadence keeps momentum and focuses effort where the deal is truly weak.

How it works (anchored, not opinion-based)

PIBAT uses a 0–3 rubric for each dimension:

• 0 = not established

• 1 = directional only

• 2 = defined with named owners and a credible path

• 3 = validated with artifacts (e.g., finance-signed model, scheduled gate pre-reads, dated trigger <30 days)

Evidence beats opinion.

Every score is anchored to artifacts (verbatims, ticket IDs, baseline metrics, GL codes, scheduled pre-reads, calendar invites). If your evidence is >21 days old, downgrade the subscore by 1.

Stage gates you can enforce in CRM:

• Discovery → Validate: P≥2 and I≥2

• Validate → Proposal: A≥2 and B≥2

• Proposal → Commit: T≥2 and Total≥10, with A=3 or T=3

This removes “stage creep” and ties progression to proof instead of optimism.

What “good” looks like (the Definition of Done)

• P — Problem: customer verbatim + incident/ticket or risk-register ID + baseline metric.

• I — Impact: 12-month value model with assumptions, named KPI owner, and cost of delay (CoD) per week.

• B — Budgetability: GL/budget code or reallocation source; OpEx/CapEx classification; fiscal window mapped to procurement lead times.

• A — Approval Architecture: signer + ≥3 influencers across ≥2 functions; gate order with pre-reads and one dry-run scheduled; champion and blocker stances documented.

• T — Trigger & Timing: dated trigger, latest no-go, and a dependency calendar (freezes, maintenance, board cycles).

Triggers > timelines: make urgency real

Timelines slip; triggers don’t. PIBAT treats urgency as event-driven:

• Hard (<30 days), Firm (30–90), Plausible (>90).

• If the trigger is below Firm, cap T at 2 and plan an access move or a new forcing function.

Cost of Delay (fast math):

CoD per week = (ΔKPI × $ per KPI unit) ÷ 52

Add risk-adjusted impact for outages or compliance exposures. Put the CoD number on your 1-pager and reference it in executive emails.

Buyer-centric momentum: the Mutual Action Plan (MAP)

A good MAP is co-owned with the buyer and mirrors their gate order:

• Skeleton: Objectives → Milestones (aligned to gates) → Owners (Buyer/Seller) → Artifacts (pre-reads, control evidence, PoC plan) → Dates → Risks → Backstops.

• Quality bar: Buyer owns ≥50% of milestones; each milestone ties to a gate and has a dated artifact; risky steps include backstops.

MAPs remove ambiguity, keep calendars honest, and make forecasting saner.