I had the same issue with the BFA style banana plugs. I was able to squeeze them slightly with my fingers and with the posts unscrewed slightly they went in. Ideally I would use spades.
@onehorsepony If you like Quadlink you will love the Parsec. The stuff is smooth and not expensive! In a similar price range, the Q10 that david keeps suggesting is hard to beat, transparent but not bright and good bass. You can stop here and be happy for decades… After that you’ll have to jump all the way to Clear Reflection as Cardas suggested.
My final speaker cable setup is GR Research 24 strand diy speaker cable. When terminiting the copper strands merging is too large to completely fit into anything, but at Moon Audio I found Cardas CGMS 9R M Spade and still had strands that I soldered to the outer body of the connector because I didn’t want to cut any strands of CU.