You’ve had four calls with Dana, the VP of operations at a freight company, and the deal is in your commit for this quarter. You built the business case, rewrote the proposal twice and set up a custom demo for her. She told you it was the best pitch she had seen all year, and then her replies stopped.
Your manager wants to know on Monday’s forecast call why the deal slipped. You can’t tell him, since Dana was the one person you knew at her company. The commission on that deal is gone for this quarter, and so is a little of your standing on the call.
You did the hard part of the work. The State of B2B Sales 2026 shows why deals like Dana’s slip, using the newest numbers from Gong, The Bridge Group, Ebsta, Salesforce, Gartner and LinkedIn.
What percentage of B2B sales reps hit quota in 2026?
Fewer than half of B2B sales reps hit quota.Gong’s State of Revenue AI 2026 puts it at 46%, and The Bridge Group’s 2026 survey of B2B companies puts it at 48%. Two separate datasets landed below half, and both are lower than in their last edition.
Buyers moved too. In Gartner’s surveys, 67% of B2B buyers say they would prefer to buy without a rep, a stated preference. Yet 6sense’s 2025 buyer report finds buyers still bring sellers in, and they choose which ones.
Our read: the reps buyers choose to bring in are the reps who close. Who gets chosen, and what those reps do that the rest don’t, is not on this page. It is in the full report.
Do multithreaded deals close more often?
Yes.Gong Labs studied 1.8 million new-business deals closed in 2024, and won deals had twice as many buyer contacts as lost deals. Multithreading means building a relationship with several people on the buying side, so a deal never rests on one person’s inbox, budget or job.
2x
the buyer contacts on won deals, against lost deals
Gong Labs, 1.8 million new-business deals closed in 2024Think back to Dana. One contact, one quiet inbox, one lost commission. The 2x held across 1.8 million of them.
Our read: your deal is as safe as the number of people who would speak up for it when you’re not in the room. Two numbers are still missing here: the lift Gong measured on deals over $50,000, and how many stakeholders the typical new-business deal now has. Both are in the full report.
How much time do sales reps spend with customers?
About a fifth of the day.Ebsta’s 2025 benchmarks found the typical seller spends 21% of the day engaging customers, and Salesforce’s State of Sales lands in the same place. Top performers at AI-enabled companies spend 43%, about twice as much, though that figure comes from Ebsta’s data alone.
43%
of the day top performers at AI-enabled companies spend with customers
Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM BenchmarksYou already work long days. At 21%, most of each one goes to work no buyer ever sees. Top performers book about twice the hours with buyers, and every one of those hours is a chance to meet the second and third person a big deal needs.
Our read: the gap is in where the hours go. What’s missing is your own number beside theirs. The tool shows it in 90 seconds, and the full report shows what top reps protect first.
What makes B2B buyers trust a sales rep?
Expertise about their business.In a 2025 LinkedIn Sales Navigator study run by Ipsos with 887 B2B buyers, 86% said seller expertise is the top driver of trust, yet only 45% said they trust the sellers they deal with. Professional insight, like a case study or a benchmark, builds trust for 46% to 52% of buyers.
86%
of B2B buyers say seller expertise is the top driver of trust, yet only 45% trust the sellers they deal with
LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Ipsos, 2025Read that gap again. Nearly nine in ten buyers know what earns their trust, and fewer than half trust the sellers they meet.
Our read: your research takes real hours, and the rep who opens with something useful about the buyer’s business steps into that gap first. What top reps open the first call with is in the full report.
See where your hours with buyers and your deal contacts stand against top reps, in 90 seconds.
See how your numbers compareHow much is the gap worth to a rep’s commission?
More than most reps expect.Commission tracks win rate, and the typical new-business win rate sits at 19% in both The Bridge Group’s 2024 data and Ebsta’s 2025 data. A small lift in that rate grows on itself each year, since every year starts from a higher base.
You carry a bigger quota than you did two years ago, and a 19% win rate means you need more pipeline to hit it than reps did when win rates were higher (The Bridge Group).
Our read: the full report works that gap out in dollars, over three years, with every input sourced. The total is bigger than one good year suggests, and it is not on this page.
What do top B2B sales reps do differently?
Top performers win more of what they work.In Ebsta’s 2025 data, their win rates are 43% higher than other sellers’, and they are 24% more likely to drop poor-fit deals early, both relative figures. Behind those results sit three habits, each one tied to a finding in this report.
Top reps do 3 things differently, and two things are still missing from this page: where you stand on each number, and the three habits themselves. Both are in the full report, along with the gap worked out in dollars for a rep at the median quota.
You already do the hard part of the job. The habits decide how much of that work turns into closed deals in 2027.
Sources
Every number above comes from these published reports. Links open the original.
- The Bridge Group, AE Models, Motions & Metrics 2026
- The Bridge Group, SaaS AE Metrics & Compensation 2024
- Gong Labs, State of Revenue AI 2026 and 1.8M-deal study 2025
- Ebsta x Pavilion, GTM Benchmarks 2025
- Salesforce, State of Sales 7th edition 2026
- Gartner, B2B buyer survey releases 2025 and 2026
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Ipsos, The Trust Advantage 2025
- 6sense, B2B Buyer Experience Report 2025