The Long Game of B2B Sales

Here’s something most B2B/tech companies don’t understand, or don’t want to admit.

B2B sales is a long game. Expecting an inflow of leads after a month, or even a quarter is wishful thinking. Especially if your product or service is not solving a critical problem that your prospect is currently dealing with, or is not that different from the other solutions available.

I never used Dreamdata but I like their content, especially the Benchmarks Report. Love a good benchmark.

According to their 2026 report, the standard B2B customer journey has grown from 211 days (7 months) to 272 days (9 months).

81% of the B2B customer journey happens before the sales pipeline even starts. Last year that number was 70%.

That’s A LOT of nurture, education, thought leadership, and content, before the prospect says “I’m interested.” On average, it takes 88 touch-points, 10 stakeholders, and 4 channels to capture attention and educate prospects, with 95% not even looking to buy in a year.

And yet, companies expect leads to magically appear in a month, and sales to close them.

This delusion gets exacerbated by VC’s and leadership expecting 10x growth in 12 months and making it seem like that’s the norm.

The report was based on aggregate data from thousands of Dreamdata customers covering +66 million sessions across +3.5 million customer journeys, which is a pretty significant sample size.

B2B and tech companies need to zoom out and look at the customer journey as it is in reality, not as they wish it to be.

And the ones that get it will succeed. In the long run.