B2B Sales 2026 Statistics (Updated September)

How B2B buyers buy

1. 1

   A Gartner survey of 646 B2B buyers in 2025 found 67% prefer a buying experience with no sales rep.

   Source: Gartner press release, March 9, 2026, 2026 ^[1]

2. 2

   A year earlier, a Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers put the share preferring a rep-free buying experience at 61%.

   Source: Gartner press release, June 25, 2025, 2025 ^[2]

3. 3

   Gartner found 74% of B2B buyer teams show unhealthy conflict during the buying decision.

   Source: Gartner press release, May 7, 2025, 2025 ^[3]

4. 4

   Gartner puts B2B buying groups at five to 16 people from as many as four functions.

   Source: Gartner press release, May 7, 2025, 2025 ^[3]

5. 5

   Gartner research has B2B buyers spending 17% of their buying time meeting potential suppliers, which works out to 5% or 6% with any one sales rep when they compare several.

   Source: Gartner, The New B2B Buying Process (web page, archived January 2021), 2021 ^[4]

6. 6

   B2B buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase, according to a Gartner survey of 645 buyers.

   Source: Gartner press release, May 20, 2026, 2026 ^[5]

7. 7

   Forrester's 2026 buyer research found the typical B2B buying decision involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers.

   Source: Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2026 (press release), 2026 ^[6]

8. 8

   Procurement staff are decision-makers in 53% of business buying cycles, according to Forrester's 2026 buyer research.

   Source: Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2026 (press release), 2026 ^[6]

9. 9

   More than 60% of business buyers now use a trial before buying, Forrester's 2026 buyer research found.

   Source: Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2026 (press release), 2026 ^[6]

10. 10

    Forrester's 2024 buyer research found 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process.

    Source: Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2024 (press release), 2024 ^[7]

11. 11

    In Forrester's 2024 State of Business Buying research, 81% of buyers said they were dissatisfied with the provider they chose.

    Source: Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2024 (press release), 2024 ^[7]

12. 12

    Forrester found 89% of B2B purchases involve two or more departments.

    Source: Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2024 (press release), 2024 ^[7]

13. 13

    B2B buyers initiated 79% of first conversations with sellers in 2025, according to 6sense.

    Source: 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 2025 ^[8]

14. 14

    Buyers first contacted a seller 61% of the way through their buying journey in 2025, down from 69% in 2024, 6sense found.

    Source: 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 2025 ^[8]

15. 15

    The vendor a buyer contacts first wins 8 out of 10 deals, according to 6sense's 2025 buyer survey.

    Source: 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 2025 ^[8]

16. 16

    94% of B2B buying groups rank their shortlist in order of preference before they talk to any seller, 6sense found.

    Source: 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 2025 ^[8]

Selling time and productivity

1. 17

   Salesforce's 2026 State of Sales survey of 4,050 sales professionals found the average seller spends 40% of their time selling.

   Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (announcement, February 3, 2026), 2026 ^[9]

2. 18

   48% of sales reps say they lack the bandwidth for adequate cold outreach, even though they spend nearly a full day a week prospecting, Salesforce's 2026 survey found.

   Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (announcement, February 3, 2026), 2026 ^[9]

3. 19

   In Salesforce's 2022 State of Sales survey of 7,700+ sales professionals, reps spent 28% of their week selling, down from 34% in 2018.

   Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 5th edition (blog summary, December 2022), 2022 ^[10]

4. 20

   Ebsta's 2025 benchmark found sellers spend 21% of their day engaging with customers, under two hours a day.

   Source: Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report, 2025 ^[11]

Prospecting: cold calls, email and social

1. 21

   Across 1,288,605 cold emails Sales.co sent between October 2025 and August 2026, one in 421 drew an interested reply (0.24%).

   Source: Sales.co · 2025-10-06 to 2026-08-17 · 1,288,605 sent emails; 3,062 interested replies

2. 22

   A real person replied to 0.70% of the 1,288,605 cold emails Sales.co sent between October 2025 and August 2026; 53.7% of all replies were automated.

   Source: Sales.co · 2025-10-06 to 2026-08-17 · 1,288,605 sent emails; 8,994 human first responses out of 34,269 replies

3. 23

   C-level executives replied positively to 0.27% of Sales.co cold emails, against 0.088% for directors, while total reply rates were nearly the same (1.61% and 1.68%).

   Source: Sales.co · April to October 2025 · About 1 million cold emails, 445,000 of them to C-level contacts

4. 24

   Gartner found 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.

   Source: Gartner press release, June 25, 2025, 2025 ^[2]

5. 25

   RAIN Group's 2018 study of 488 B2B buyers found 82% accepted meetings with sellers who reached out to them first.

   Source: RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, Top Performance in Sales Prospecting (press release, January 31, 2018), 2018 ^[12]

6. 26

   In RAIN Group's 2018 buyer study, 58% of buyers said the seller behind their most recent accepted meeting reached them by email.

   Source: RAIN Group Center for Sales Research (press release, January 31, 2018), 2018 ^[13]

7. 27

   In RAIN Group's 2018 study of 488 B2B buyers, 54% of buyers said the seller reached them by phone for their most recent accepted meeting.

   Source: RAIN Group Center for Sales Research (press release, January 31, 2018), 2018 ^[13]

8. 28

   52% of sellers told RAIN Group it takes five to 10 touches to connect with a new prospect for the first time.

   Source: RAIN Group Center for Sales Research (press release, January 31, 2018), 2018 ^[13]

9. 29

   Across 300 million+ cold calls in Gong's data, the average rep connects with 5.4% of prospects, about one conversation per 19 dials.

   Source: Gong Labs, The hidden power of cold calling (July 2024), 2024 ^[14]

10. 30

    Gong's cold call data shows a cold call lifts the email reply rate from 1.81% to 3.44% even when nobody picks up.

    Source: Gong Labs, The hidden power of cold calling (July 2024), 2024 ^[14]

11. 31

    Gong Labs found opening a cold call with "Did I catch you at a bad time?" makes a meeting 40% less likely.

    Source: Gong Labs, cold call stats (August 2021), 2021 ^[15]

12. 32

    Cognism's 2026 cold calling report puts the industry average cold call success rate at 2.7%, up from 2.3% in 2025.

    Source: Cognism, Cold Calling Report 2026, 2026 ^[16]

13. 33

    Cognism's own SDRs reached a live person on 13.3% of 449,933 cold calls in its 2026 outbound report.

    Source: Cognism, State of Outbound 2026, 2026 ^[17]

14. 34

    42% of sales professionals in HubSpot's 2025 survey said social media gets the highest cold outreach response rate, against 26% for email and 23% for phone.

    Source: HubSpot, 2025 State of Sales Report, 2025 ^[18]

Sales cycles, deals and win rates

1. 35

   6sense's survey of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers found the average buying cycle fell from 11.3 months in 2024 to 10.1 months in 2025.

   Source: 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 2025 ^[8]

2. 36

   49% of B2B software buyers say their CFO reversed a deal the buying team had already approved in the past year, G2's 2026 survey found.

   Source: G2, 2026 Buyer Behavior Report, 2026 ^[19]

3. 37

   IT security review is the biggest single source of delay between choosing a vendor and completing a purchase, cited by 39% of software buyers in G2's 2026 survey.

   Source: G2, 2026 Buyer Behavior Report, 2026 ^[19]

4. 38

   Ebsta and Pavilion's 2025 benchmark of 655,000 opportunities put the average new-logo win rate at 19%.

   Source: Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report, 2025 ^[11]

5. 39

   New-business deals took 91 days to close on average, against 52 days for expansion deals, in Ebsta and Pavilion's 2025 benchmark.

   Source: Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report, 2025 ^[11]

6. 40

   Ebsta's 2025 benchmark counts 8 stakeholders engaged on the average new-business opportunity and 5 on expansion deals.

   Source: Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report, 2025 ^[11]

7. 41

   The top deal-killers in HubSpot's 2025 survey were no product fit, cited by 37% of sales professionals, and poor value for money, cited by 35%.

   Source: HubSpot, 2025 State of Sales Report, 2025 ^[18]

Quota attainment

1. 42

   Salesforce's 2024 State of Sales survey found 84% of sales reps missed quota the previous year.

   Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (Salesforce blog summary), 2024 ^[20]

2. 43

   In Salesforce's 2024 State of Sales survey of 5,500 sales professionals, 67% of sales reps said they did not expect to meet quota that year.

   Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (Salesforce blog summary), 2024 ^[20]

3. 44

   78% of sellers missed quota in 2024, up from 69% the year before, according to Ebsta and Pavilion's 2025 benchmark.

   Source: Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report, 2025 ^[11]

4. 45

   Just 14% of sellers generated 80% of revenue in Ebsta and Pavilion's 2025 benchmark.

   Source: Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report, 2025 ^[11]

5. 46

   Average quota attainment in RepVue's Cloud Sales Index closed Q4 2025 just below 44%, its highest level since Q2 2023.

   Source: RepVue, Cloud Sales Index Q4 2025, 2026 ^[21]

6. 47

   60% of sales professionals in HubSpot's 2025 survey said they were on track to meet or exceed their sales goals.

   Source: HubSpot, 2025 State of Sales Report, 2025 ^[18]

SDR teams: ramp, tenure and quota

1. 48

   Phone-focused SDR teams average 56 dials and 4.6 quality conversations a day, against 28 dials and 3.4 for email-focused teams, the Bridge Group found.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

2. 49

   The average SDR takes 3.0 months to ramp, the lowest since 2010, according to the Bridge Group's 2025 study of 351 companies.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

3. 50

   Average SDR tenure is 1.9 years, the highest since the early 2010s, the Bridge Group found in 2025.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

4. 51

   60% of SDRs hit quota in the Bridge Group's 2025 study, the lowest share in the study's history.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

5. 52

   Median SDR on-target earnings are $80,000, up only 0.56% a year over the past decade, the Bridge Group found.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

6. 53

   Median annual SDR attrition was 40% in 2024, according to the Bridge Group.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

7. 54

   Companies run 2.4 account executives for every SDR, a ratio unchanged since 2018, the Bridge Group found.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

8. 55

   The median monthly SDR quota is 10 held meetings, down 40% since 2018, according to the Bridge Group.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

9. 56

   Each SDR generates a median $3.78 million in pipeline a year, up from $2.83 million, the Bridge Group found in 2025.

   Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025, 2025 ^[22]

Speed to lead and follow-up

1. 57

   The median interested reply to a Sales.co cold email arrived 1.8 hours after the most recent email to that person; 80% arrived within 24 hours and 42% within one hour.

   Source: Sales.co · Replies received 2025-10-06 to 2026-08-31 · 552 interested replies matched to a send, from a random sample of 1,000 interested replies (all sending workspaces) · method

2. 58

   72% of interested replies to Sales.co cold emails came from people who had received only one email from us; 1.1% came after five or more.

   Source: Sales.co · Replies received 2025-10-06 to 2026-08-31 · 552 interested replies matched to a send, from a random sample of 1,000 interested replies (all sending workspaces) · method

3. 59

   69% of all replies to Sales.co's cold email sequences came from the first email; messages four and later produced under 5%.

   Source: Sales.co · Sequences analysed December 2025 · 1.5M+ sent emails; 51,000+ replies

4. 60

   Companies that tried to contact a web lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as those that waited even one more hour, a 2011 Harvard Business Review study of 1.25 million leads found.

   Source: Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011, 2011 ^[23]

5. 61

   A 2011 Harvard Business Review study of 1.25 million leads found contact within an hour made qualifying a lead more than 60 times as likely as waiting 24 hours or longer.

   Source: Harvard Business Review, March 2011, 2011 ^[24]

6. 62

   When HBR's researchers sent test leads to 2,241 US companies in 2011, 23% never responded at all.

   Source: Harvard Business Review, March 2011, 2011 ^[24]

7. 63

   Among companies that did respond to HBR's 2011 test leads within 30 days, the average response time was 42 hours.

   Source: Harvard Business Review, March 2011, 2011 ^[24]

8. 64

   37% of the 2,241 companies in HBR's 2011 audit responded to a web lead within an hour.

   Source: Harvard Business Review, March 2011, 2011 ^[24]

Frequently asked questions

What is the average win rate in B2B sales?

Ebsta and Pavilion's 2025 benchmark of 655,000 opportunities put the average new-logo win rate at 19%. Many roundups still quote 20% to 21%, which comes from the earlier 2024 edition of the same benchmark.

How long is the typical B2B sales cycle?

In Ebsta and Pavilion's 2025 CRM data, new-business deals took 91 days to close and expansion deals 52 days. Buyers count a longer span: 6sense's 2025 survey of nearly 4,000 buyers put the whole buying cycle at 10.1 months, down from 11.3 months in 2024, because it includes research done before any seller is involved.

How many follow-ups does it take to make a sale?

The popular answer, 80% of sales after five or more follow-ups, goes back to a 1942 survey of fewer than 40 members of one sales club chapter. In Sales.co's cold email data, 72% of interested replies came from people who had received only one email, and 1.1% came after five or more. Sellers in RAIN Group's 2018 study said it takes five to 10 touches just to connect with a new prospect.

Does outbound sales still work?

In RAIN Group's 2018 study of 488 buyers, 82% said they had accepted meetings with sellers who reached out first. The volumes are low: the average rep in Gong's data connects on 5.4% of cold calls, and one in 421 Sales.co cold emails gets an interested reply.

What percentage of sales reps hit quota?

Salesforce's 2024 State of Sales survey found 84% of reps missed quota the previous year, and Ebsta and Pavilion counted 78% of sellers missing quota in 2024. RepVue's self-reported data put average quota attainment just below 44% in Q4 2025. Among SDRs, 60% hit quota in the Bridge Group's 2025 study.

How many people are involved in a B2B purchase?

Forrester's 2026 buyer research counts 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers in a typical decision. Gartner puts buying groups at five to 16 people across up to four functions, and Ebsta's CRM data shows sellers engaging 8 stakeholders on an average new-business deal.

Sources

1. [1]Gartner press release, March 9, 2026. 2026.↑1
2. [2]Gartner press release, June 25, 2025. 2025.↑2 ↑24
3. [3]Gartner press release, May 7, 2025. 2025.↑3 ↑4
4. [4]Gartner, The New B2B Buying Process (web page, archived January 2021). 2021.↑5
5. [5]Gartner press release, May 20, 2026. 2026.↑6
6. [6]Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2026 (press release). 2026.↑7 ↑8 ↑9
7. [7]Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2024 (press release). 2024.↑10 ↑11 ↑12
8. [8]6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report. 2025.↑13 ↑14 ↑15 ↑16 ↑35
9. [9]Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (announcement, February 3, 2026). 2026.↑17 ↑18
10. [10]Salesforce, State of Sales, 5th edition (blog summary, December 2022). 2022.↑19
11. [11]Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks Report. 2025.↑20 ↑38 ↑39 ↑40 ↑44 ↑45
12. [12]RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, Top Performance in Sales Prospecting (press release, January 31, 2018). 2018.↑25
13. [13]RAIN Group Center for Sales Research (press release, January 31, 2018). 2018.↑26 ↑27 ↑28
14. [14]Gong Labs, The hidden power of cold calling (July 2024). 2024.↑29 ↑30
15. [15]Gong Labs, cold call stats (August 2021). 2021.↑31
16. [16]Cognism, Cold Calling Report 2026. 2026.↑32
17. [17]Cognism, State of Outbound 2026. 2026.↑33
18. [18]HubSpot, 2025 State of Sales Report. 2025.↑34 ↑41 ↑47
19. [19]G2, 2026 Buyer Behavior Report. 2026.↑36 ↑37
20. [20]Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (Salesforce blog summary). 2024.↑42 ↑43
21. [21]RepVue, Cloud Sales Index Q4 2025. 2026.↑46
22. [22]The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025. 2025.↑48 ↑49 ↑50 ↑51 ↑52 ↑53 ↑54 ↑55 ↑56
23. [23]Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011. 2011.↑60
24. [24]Harvard Business Review, March 2011. 2011.↑61 ↑62 ↑63 ↑64

Method

We searched Google and Perplexity for the questions writers ask about B2B sales, read the top-ranking statistics pages, and ranked every number by how many pages repeat it. Each number on this page was traced to the organisation that produced it and checked against that page on September 23, 2026. Older studies stay only when they are still the standard reference, and the sentence gives the year. Sales.co numbers come from our own sending database and cover every campaign sent through Sales.co.

Sales.co numbers new on this page:

• The median interested reply to a Sales.co cold email arrived 1.8 hours after the most recent email to that person; 80% arrived within 24 hours and 42% within one hour. For each sampled reply we found the most recent email we had sent that address before the reply time and measured the gap. 448 sampled replies had no matching send in the sending log within 120 days and were left out. For comparison, negative replies came faster: median 1.1 hours, 87% within 24 hours (482 matched).
• 72% of interested replies to Sales.co cold emails came from people who had received only one email from us; 1.1% came after five or more. We counted how many emails the replying address had received from us in the 120 days before it replied. Split: one email 72.1%, two 18.3%, three 6.3%, four or more 3.3%, five or more 1.1%. Negative replies: 67.4% after one email (482 matched).

All 64 statistics as a CSV: b2b-sales-statistics.csv.

Cite this page

Sales.co, “B2B Sales 2026 Statistics (Updated September)”, updated September 2026, https://sales.co/research/b2b-sales-statistics

To cite one number, link its anchor: each statistic has one, for example https://sales.co/research/b2b-sales-statistics#stat-1.