Your sales team is making more calls and sending more proposals than last year. The revenue line has not moved. If that sounds familiar, effort may not be the issue. Look at the plan your team is working inside.
This issue looks at what buyers now do before they ever speak to your team, why deals stall even after a buyer has said yes, and what Indian founders and boards can check this quarter. Every number has a dated source at the bottom.
By Gaurav Bhatnagar, Independent GTM & Growth Consultant · Sources checked 25 October 2026
About 10 minutes to read.
The sales team is making more calls and sending more proposals than last year. The revenue line is flat.
A pilot went well. The customer said good things. Then nothing happened for months.
Funds came in, a sales head was hired, and the board still asks why growth is slow.
These look like sales problems. Most of the time they are not. They are go-to-market problems, and more effort on the sales side does not fix them.
Gartner surveyed 646 B2B buyers in August and September 2025 and published the results on 9 March 2026.
Simply put, the buyer has done their homework by the time your rep arrives. If your website, your content and your proof do not answer their questions, your rep starts from behind.
The research is moving to AI tools too. G2's 2026 report says eight out of ten buyers now use AI search to be more efficient in buying. Visionary Marketing's survey of 900 buyers (April 2026) puts it at 67% using ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude during research, up from 23% in 2024. My reading: if an AI tool cannot find your company and describe it clearly, you may not reach the shortlist at all.
Gartner's May 2026 release, from the same survey period, found that 69% of buyers prefer to check AI-generated insights with a sales rep. So buyers use AI to research, and then want a person to confirm. That changes the rep's job. It is now about helping them decide, and less about introducing the product.
Benchmarkit's 2025 report covers 563 SaaS companies, with 2024 data, and was published in June 2025.
Benchmarkit 2025 SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmarks Report, via SaaS Barometer, June 2025.
The new-customer CAC ratio is what a company spends on sales and marketing to win a dollar of new customer revenue. So winning a customer costs more than it did, and plans written on last year's numbers miss. Hiring more salespeople will not bring that cost down. A sharper plan can. Growth is also leaning more on customers you already have.
A 2026 study by Visionary Marketing of 184 of its own B2B client deals found an average of 14.4 people involved in a net-new deal of $100,000 to $500,000. That is one agency's data, weighted towards agency-supported accounts, so take it as a signal, not a rule.
G2's 2026 Buyer Behavior Report surveyed 1,038 B2B decision-makers in June 2026. 39% said IT security review is the single biggest source of delay between selecting a vendor and completing the purchase. Among enterprise buyers it was 50%. Budget approval came next at 32%. Money decisions come late too. 49% said their CFO had reversed a purchase that the buying team had already approved in the last 12 months. Finance involvement in software decisions rose from 31% to 46% in one year. So a deal is not closed when the champion says yes.
LinkedIn, citing research with Bain, says 40% of deals stall because the buying group cannot agree, and that finance, legal and procurement hold about half of the decision influence. The page I read does not give the sample size or method, so treat it as a pointer, not an exact count.
Inside the committee, Visionary's data shows where deals are won or lost. Deals with an active detractor, someone on the buying side who opposes the purchase, closed at 17%. Deals with no detractor closed at 41%. Where a security or finance veto-holder was brought in early, the win rate was 44%. Where that person was found late, it was 19%. Only 32% of vendor sales teams said they map detractors in a systematic way. Security review alone added 27 days to the cycle on average. Visionary also found that 87% of buyers want pricing visible before they contact sales, up from 64% in 2022.
Growth is happening in Indian tech. Inc42's FY26 tracker, published on 24 October 2026, covers 106 new-age tech companies.
Revenue is growing, yet 40 of the 106 companies still made a loss.
What I can share is a practitioner's view on selling to US enterprises from India (GTM Unbound, read on 25 October 2026). It is not research, but the problems it lists are the ones founders talk about:
If you run a profitable business that has been going for ten years or more, the picture is a little different. The first customers usually came through people you knew. That route has a ceiling, and growth flattens when you reach it. This is my view and not a survey finding.
| Parameter | Global | India |
|---|---|---|
| What is changing | Buyers research alone and use AI before they speak to a rep | Deals stall without warning, and several reviews run beside the sales talks |
| Evidence | Gartner, Aug to Sep 2025 survey: 67% prefer rep-free, 45% used AI, 69% check AI findings with a rep | A practitioner write-up (GTM Unbound, read 25 Oct 2026). No survey figure found |
| Cost signal | Benchmarkit, 563 companies, 2024 data: new-customer CAC ratio $2.00, up from $1.76 | No sourced Indian figure found |
| Where it goes wrong | The rep arrives late, and 40% of deals stall because the buying group cannot agree (LinkedIn, citing Bain) | Pilots without scope, and too many target accounts |
| Fix first | Make the buyer's own research easy | Narrow the account list and write each pilot as a small contract |
Tick the questions you can answer today, clearly, without asking anyone. The ones you cannot tick are where to look first.
List your last ten customers and your last five stalled or lost deals. Note where each came from and where each got stuck.
Cut the target list down to named accounts that fit, with an owner for each.
Rewrite your pilot terms, and fix the pages a buyer reads before they talk to anyone.
Fix three numbers to track every quarter, and decide who reports them.
I have spent 24 years in marketing and growth for B2B companies, and I have advised more than 20 founders on go-to-market. My way of working is simple. I come in, find what is actually stuck, fix it with your team, and hand it over so that you do not need me.
Related reading
Think of the deal that has been quiet the longest. Is there someone in that buying group you have never spoken to? Start with that person. A bigger sales team will not reach them for you.
Sources
Before You Go
If this matches a stalled deal you have actually lived through, or if it does not, I would like to know. Just a straight line to my inbox.