Sales enablement statistics for 2026: 50+ numbers with sources
Key takeaways
- Gartner's 2026 buyer survey found 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, up from 61% a year earlier.
- Forrester counts 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers in a typical B2B buying decision.
- Average account executive ramp reached 6.2 months in The Bridge Group's 2026 study, the longest in its history.
- In an SBI and Revenue Enablement Society survey, the median enablement person supports 41 to 84 sellers, depending on team size.
- Gartner found AI saves sellers 4.8 hours a week, yet 72% of sales organizations do not reinvest the time in high-value work.
This page collects 83 sales enablement statistics, each checked against a public source on 6 November 2026. Each row names the source, links to it and gives the year it was published. Research from companies that sell sales or enablement software or services is marked "(vendor survey)". Predictions are marked as predictions.
Buying groups and buyer behavior
B2B buying is a group decision, and most of it happens before a seller is involved. Gartner, Forrester and 6sense all find large buying groups, long self-directed research and a growing preference for buying without a rep.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience (survey of 646 buyers, August to September 2025). | >Gartner sales survey | 2026 |
| 61% of B2B buyers preferred a rep-free buying experience in the previous survey (632 buyers, August to September 2024). | >Gartner sales survey | 2025 |
| 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. | >Gartner sales survey | 2025 |
| 74% of B2B buying teams show "unhealthy conflict" during the decision process (632 buyers). | >Gartner sales survey | 2025 |
| Buying groups that reach consensus are 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal. | >Gartner sales survey | 2025 |
| 69% of B2B buyers prefer to validate AI-generated insights with a sales rep (645 buyers). | >Gartner survey via Business Wire | 2026 |
| Buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase. | >Gartner survey via Business Wire | 2026 |
| On average, 13 people inside the buying organization are involved in a purchase decision. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2024 | 2024 |
| 89% of B2B purchases involve two or more departments. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2024 | 2024 |
| 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2024 | 2024 |
| 81% of buyers are dissatisfied with the provider they chose. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2024 | 2024 |
| A typical buying decision involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2026 | 2026 |
| Procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of business buying cycles. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2026 | 2026 |
| More than 60% of business buyers use a trial; 78% of buyers making purchases of $10 million or more run a trial first. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2026 | 2026 |
| B2B buyers are nearly 70% through their purchasing process before they engage sellers. (vendor survey) | >6sense Buyer Experience Report | 2024 |
| Buyers initiate first contact with sellers more than 80% of the time. (vendor survey) | >6sense Buyer Experience Report | 2024 |
| 81% of buyers have a preferred vendor at the time of first contact. (vendor survey) | >6sense Buyer Experience Report | 2024 |
| B2B decision makers use about 10 channels to interact with suppliers, up from five in 2016 (nearly 4,000 decision makers). | >McKinsey B2B Pulse | 2024 |
| B2B buyer interactions split roughly in thirds: in person, remote with a person, and digital self-service. | >McKinsey B2B Pulse | 2024 |
For what these numbers mean for deal strategy, see selling to buying groups.
Sales training and forgetting
People forget training unless they practice and use it soon. The strongest evidence here is peer-reviewed learning research, not sales surveys, and it favors spaced practice and testing over re-reading.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Training professionals in 150 organizations estimated that 62% of employees apply training on the job immediately, 44% after six months and 34% after one year. | >Saks and Belcourt, Human Resource Management | 2006 |
| One week after reading a passage, people who had taken a recall test remembered 56% of it; people who restudied it remembered 42%. | >Roediger and Karpicke, Psychological Science | 2006 |
| With repeated testing, recall after one week was 61%, against 40% with repeated study, although the tested group read the passage 3.4 times and the study group 14.2 times. | >Roediger and Karpicke, Psychological Science | 2006 |
| Over one week, the study-only group forgot 52% of what it first recalled; the repeated-testing group forgot 14%. | >Roediger and Karpicke, Psychological Science | 2006 |
| A review of 839 assessments in 317 experiments found that the best gap between study sessions grows as the time until the test grows. | >Cepeda et al., Psychological Bulletin | 2006 |
| The best gap between study sessions was about 20% to 40% of the test delay for a test one week away, and about 5% to 10% for a test one year away (more than 1,350 learners). | >Cepeda et al., Psychological Science | 2008 |
| Organizational training has a medium-to-large effect on behavior on the job (mean effect size d = 0.62, meta-analysis). | >Arthur et al., Journal of Applied Psychology | 2003 |
| 47% of sellers do not get enough roleplay practice before customer calls. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
| 51% of enablement teams trained all of their sellers in the previous 12 months (134 companies). (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| US employees received 40 hours of training a year in 2025, down from 47 hours the year before. | >Training magazine, Training Industry Report | 2025 |
The often-quoted claim that "reps forget 70% of training within a week" has no primary source we could find, so it is not on this page.
Onboarding and ramp
New account executives now take longer to reach full productivity than at any point in The Bridge Group's research. SDR ramp has moved the other way.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Average account executive ramp time to full productivity is 6.2 months, the highest in the study's history (158 companies). (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, AE Models, Motions and Metrics | 2026 |
| Account executives are hired with 3.7 years of experience on average, up from 2.7 years in 2022. (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, AE Models, Motions and Metrics | 2026 |
| 48% of account executives are at quota, down from 51% in 2024. (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, AE Models, Motions and Metrics | 2026 |
| Average SDR ramp time is 3.0 months, the lowest since 2010 (351 companies). (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, SDR Models and Metrics | 2025 |
| Average SDR tenure is 1.9 years. (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, SDR Models and Metrics | 2025 |
| Median annual SDR attrition is 40%. (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, SDR Models and Metrics | 2025 |
| The median expected seller ramp time is 3 months (mean 3.5 months); 24% of companies expect 6 months or more. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 54% of companies use time to productivity to judge enablement, and 54% use time to first sale. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
Ramp time is worth tracking per cohort. A six-month ramp means half a year of salary before full quota.
Coaching and managers
Managers say they coach. Sellers say they rarely get feedback. The gap shows up in every recent survey.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 46% of sellers rarely get feedback on their sales conversations. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
| 94% of sales managers say regular coaching is part of their process, but 53% of sellers say they get coaching quarterly or less (100 sellers and managers). (vendor survey) | >Salesloft Sales Skills Gap research | 2025 |
| 37% of sellers rarely or never receive personalized feedback. (vendor survey) | >Salesloft Sales Skills Gap research | 2025 |
| 62% of sales organizations have a dedicated sales manager training program; of those, 34% trained all managers in the previous 12 months. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| Sales coaching is a top-three manager training priority for 72% of teams with a manager program. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 60% of sales organizations have no sales manager playbook. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 46% of commercial leaders rate their sales managers as effective at managing sales performance. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| Sellers talk 57% of the time on calls in won deals and 62% in lost deals (326,000 recorded calls). (vendor survey) | >Gong, talk-to-listen ratio analysis | 2025 |
Survey answers about coaching frequency are self-reported. A measured version is coaching coverage: the share of reps with at least one documented coaching conversation in the last 30 days.
Enablement teams and budgets
Most enablement teams are small, and each person supports dozens of sellers. Teams carry a wide scope but rate themselves weakest at measurement.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| The most common enablement team size is 2 to 4 people (33.8% of teams), followed by one-person teams (31%) (150 respondents). (community survey) | >Sales Enablement Collective, Landscape Report | 2023 |
| The median number of quota-carrying sellers per enablement FTE is 41 on teams of 2 to 4, 53 on teams of 5 to 9 and 84 on teams of 10 or more (118 companies). (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 89% of enablement teams have measurement and analytics in scope, but only 44% rate their proficiency at it as high or very high. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| Quota attainment is the most used measure of enablement (78% of companies), followed by sales activity KPIs (77%) and training completion rates (74%). (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 96% of enablement professionals receive performance-based variable pay. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 84% of enablement professionals have quota-carrying sales experience. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 41.9% of enablement teams reported increased budgets in 2025 (more than 100 enablement professionals). (vendor survey) | >Spekit and Sales Enablement Collective, Impact of Enablement | 2025 |
| Fewer than one in four companies invest in enablement or alignment systems (463 sales and revenue leaders). (vendor survey) | >Highspot, GTM Performance Gap Report | 2025 |
| US training expenditure rose 4.9% to $102.8 billion in 2025; spend per learner was $874, up from $774. | >Training magazine, Training Industry Report | 2025 |
Our own rule of thumb is one enablement person per 25 to 50 reps. The team size guide shows how to size it against your plan.
Tools and adoption
Sellers have more tools than they use, and tool overload is linked to missed quota. Low adoption usually means nobody had time to fill and run the tool.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 50% of sellers feel overwhelmed by the amount of technology their job requires; these sellers are 45% less likely to attain quota (1,026 sellers). | >Gartner sales survey | 2024 |
| 72% of sellers feel overwhelmed by the number of skills their job requires. | >Gartner sales survey | 2024 |
| 80% of enablement professionals say reps do not use at least 40% of their platform's features. (vendor survey) | >Spekit and Sales Enablement Collective, Impact of Enablement | 2025 |
| Fewer than 23% of enablement teams use a platform that supports just-in-time content delivery. (vendor survey) | >Spekit and Sales Enablement Collective, Impact of Enablement | 2025 |
| Reps spend 70% of their time on non-selling tasks (5,500 sales professionals). (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 6th edition | 2024 |
| The average seller spends 40% of their time selling; Gen Z reps spend 35% (4,050 sales professionals). (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
| Only 35% of sales professionals completely trust the accuracy of their organization's data. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 6th edition | 2024 |
| 51% of sales leaders with AI say disconnected systems are slowing their AI initiatives. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
To test your own tools, divide annual license cost by reps active in the last 30 days. The cost per active user calculator does the arithmetic.
AI in sales
Nearly every sales organization now uses AI, and agents are spreading fast. The evidence that AI improves revenue is weaker, and most of it is correlational.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 87% of sales organizations use some form of AI. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
| 54% of sellers have used AI agents, and nearly 9 in 10 plan to by 2027. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
| Sellers expect AI agents to cut prospect research time by 34% and email drafting time by 36%. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 7th edition | 2026 |
| 83% of sales teams with AI saw revenue growth, against 66% of teams without AI. (vendor survey) | >Salesforce State of Sales, 6th edition | 2024 |
| Sellers who effectively partner with AI tools are 3.7 times more likely to meet quota. | >Gartner sales survey | 2024 |
| AI tools save sellers an average of 4.8 hours a week (210 sales leaders, January to February 2026). | >Gartner survey | 2026 |
| 72% of sales organizations fail to reinvest AI time savings in high-value activities. | >Gartner survey | 2026 |
| Organizations that upskill sellers on AI are 2.4 times more likely to achieve strong revenue growth (227 chief sales officers). | >Gartner survey | 2026 |
| Prediction: by 2027, 95% of sellers' research workflows will begin with AI, up from less than 20% in 2024. | >Gartner | 2026 |
| Prediction: by 2028, AI agents will outnumber sellers ten to one, yet fewer than 40% of sellers will report that agents improved their productivity. | >Gartner | 2025 |
| Prediction: by 2029, sales organizations with AI-driven enablement will achieve 40% faster sales stage velocity than those using traditional enablement. | >Gartner | 2026 |
| Only 28% of sales and revenue leaders say AI is improving revenue-driving sales performance (463 leaders, June 2025). (vendor survey) | >Highspot, GTM Performance Gap Report | 2025 |
| Account executives in the top third for AI engagement were at quota 57% of the time, against 39% for the bottom third (observational). (vendor survey) | >The Bridge Group, AE Models, Motions and Metrics | 2026 |
| 89% of B2B buyers used generative AI in at least one stage of their purchasing process. | >Forrester, Buyers' Journey Survey 2024 | 2024 |
| Almost 95% of buyers expect to use generative AI to support their purchase decisions within 12 months. | >Forrester, State of Business Buying 2024 | 2024 |
For where AI pays in enablement work, and where it does not, see AI in sales enablement.
Content
Buyers notice when supplier content and seller messages disagree, and consistency pays. Inside the company, much of what enablement teams produce is out of date or unused.
| Statistic | Source (linked) | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 69% of B2B buyers report inconsistencies between a supplier's website and what its sellers tell them. | >Gartner sales survey | 2025 |
| Buyers who encounter consistent information from supplier sources are 2.89 times more likely to complete a high-quality, low-regret deal. | >Gartner | 2023 |
| 24.2% of enablement professionals say more than 80% of the content they create goes unused. (vendor survey) | >Spekit and Sales Enablement Collective, Impact of Enablement | 2025 |
| 48.8% of enablement professionals say at least 40% of their collateral is out of date. (vendor survey) | >Spekit and Sales Enablement Collective, Impact of Enablement | 2025 |
| 90% of enablement teams are responsible for content creation and curation. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
| 57% of companies use content utilization rates to judge enablement. (vendor survey) | >SBI and Revenue Enablement Society benchmarks | 2025 |
How to use these numbers
Use external statistics to frame a decision, then replace them with your own data. A benchmark tells a CRO the problem is common. Only your numbers tell them it is yours.
- Pick one number per argument. One clear statistic with its source beats five stacked ones. Name the publisher and year in the sentence, for example "Gartner's 2026 buyer survey found…".
- Check the base. "67% of buyers" and "67% of sales organizations" are different claims. Read the sample size and who answered before you quote.
- Separate surveys from measurements. Most rows here are self-reported. Time-saved and quota-attainment figures are what people said, not what a system recorded.
- Treat "X times more likely" as correlation. Gartner's 3.7 times figure for AI and quota does not prove AI caused the result. Top sellers may simply adopt tools sooner.
- Label predictions. A forecast for 2028 is not a finding. Say "Gartner predicts", not "Gartner found".
- Build your own baseline next. Measure ramp, coaching coverage and completion before a program starts. The four levels of evidence show what to measure at each stage.
If you want to see how your team's capacity compares with what your sales plan needs, the free Capacity Check takes 20 minutes.
Methodology
We checked every statistic on 6 November 2026. Each number was confirmed in the linked source, or in the publisher's own press release or announcement for that research, before it was added. We dropped any number we could not trace to a primary or publisher source, including several widely repeated sales statistics.
- Year is the year the source was published. Survey fieldwork is often the year before.
- (vendor survey) marks research published by a company that sells sales or enablement software or services. (community survey) marks research from a practitioner membership group. Unmarked rows come from analyst firms, an industry publication or peer-reviewed journals.
- Where a source gives a sample size, we include it. Percentages are as published; we have not recalculated them.
- Gartner and Forrester full reports are paywalled. For those rows we rely on the publisher's public press release.
- We will review this page each quarter and replace figures when newer editions are published.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience?
Gartner's survey of 646 B2B buyers, run in August and September 2025, found 67% prefer a rep-free experience. The year before, the figure was 61%. The same research found 69% of buyers still prefer to check AI-generated insights with a sales rep.
How many people are in a B2B buying group?
Forrester's State of Business Buying 2024 found an average of 13 people inside the buying organization, with 89% of purchases involving two or more departments. Its 2026 report adds nine external influencers to the 13 internal stakeholders. 6sense's 2024 vendor survey reported an average of 11.
How long does it take a new sales rep to ramp?
The Bridge Group's 2026 study puts average account executive ramp at 6.2 months, the longest in its history. Its 2025 study puts SDR ramp at 3.0 months. In an SBI survey of 134 companies, the median expected seller ramp was 3 months, and 24% expected 6 months or more.
How many sellers does one enablement person support?
An SBI and Revenue Enablement Society survey from 2025 found a median of 41 sellers per enablement FTE on teams of 2 to 4 people, 53 on teams of 5 to 9, and 84 on teams of 10 or more. Our own rule of thumb is one enablement person per 25 to 50 reps, depending on how much onboarding, launch and coaching work the plan needs.
How quickly do salespeople forget training?
There is no reliable sales-specific forgetting rate, so treat claims like '70% forgotten in a week' with care. Peer-reviewed research is clearer: in Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 study, people who restudied material recalled 42% a week later, against 56% for people who took a practice test. Training professionals in a 2006 study estimated only 34% of employees still apply training a year later.
How much time does AI save salespeople?
Gartner's 2026 survey of 210 sales leaders found AI tools save sellers an average of 4.8 hours a week. It also found 72% of sales organizations fail to reinvest that time in high-value activities. Salesforce's 2026 research found sellers expect AI agents to cut prospect research time by 34%.
Sources
- Gartner: Sales survey finds 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience (2026)
- Gartner: Sales survey finds 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience (2025)
- Gartner: Sales survey finds 74% of B2B buyer teams demonstrate unhealthy conflict (2025)
- Gartner via Business Wire: 69% of B2B buyers turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights (2026)
- Gartner: Sellers who partner with AI are 3.7 times more likely to meet quota (2024)
- Gartner: By 2028 AI agents will outnumber sellers by 10x (2025)
- Gartner: AI saves sellers nearly five hours per week, yet 72% fail to reinvest (2026)
- Gartner: AI-enabled next best actions and commercial growth (2026)
- Gartner: AI-driven sales enablement and sales stage velocity by 2029 (2026)
- Gartner: How revenue enablement helps sales organizations exceed performance targets (2023)
- Forrester: The State of Business Buying, 2024 (press release)
- Forrester: The State of Business Buying, 2026 (press release)
- Forrester: The future of B2B buying will come slowly, and then all at once (2024)
- McKinsey: Five fundamental truths: How B2B winners keep growing (2024)
- 6sense: 2024 Buyer Experience Report (Business Wire)
- Salesforce: State of Sales, 6th edition, AI statistics (2024)
- Salesforce: State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
- The Bridge Group: 2026 AE Models, Motions and Metrics
- The Bridge Group: 2025 SDR Models and Metrics Report
- SBI and Revenue Enablement Society: Modern Enablement Benchmarks Report (2025)
- Sales Enablement Collective: Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023
- Spekit and Sales Enablement Collective: The Impact of Enablement 2025 (press release)
- Highspot: 2025 Go-To-Market Performance Gap Report announcement
- Salesloft: 2025 Sales Skills Gap research
- Gong: Mastering the talk-to-listen ratio in sales calls (2025)
- Training magazine: 2025 Training Industry Report
- Saks and Belcourt (2006), Human Resource Management: An investigation of training activities and transfer of training
- Roediger and Karpicke (2006), Psychological Science: Test-enhanced learning
- Cepeda et al. (2006), Psychological Bulletin: Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks
- Cepeda et al. (2008), Psychological Science: Spacing effects in learning
- Arthur et al. (2003), Journal of Applied Psychology: Effectiveness of training in organizations
