2026
A new GTM performance index with assessment of the priorities critical to your future, based on market data.
Introducing the Buyer Group Index.
The Buyer Group Index is not a traditional survey report. It is a benchmark built to show how well B2B go-to-market organizations influence complex buying groups. The index evaluates 28 GTM practices and weights them based on their relationship to five business outcomes: pipeline value, pipeline velocity, time to market, spend efficiency, and GTM confidence. The result is a 0-100 score that shows how organizations perform today and where improvement is most likely to matter.
Buying groups are larger, more distributed, and harder to influence. Their vendor research is happening earlier and outside your visibility, and AI is reshaping how those groups discover and evaluate.
At the same time, GTM teams are scrambling to figure out how to use AI, yet not necessarily improving outcomes, creating a growing disconnect between effort and impact.
For most GTM leaders, the challenge is not understanding that things are changing, it’s figuring out what to do about it and whether their current system can keep up.
Where do we go from here? That question is what led to this study.
The 2026 Buyer Group Index (or BGI), revealed 28 GTM practices, correlated to commercial outcomes to show their level of impact. It provides three things:
01.
Industry pulse check
A single, combined score across hundreds of GTM leaders, as a pulse check on how the function is performing overall today.
02.
Prioritized best practices
Results of all 28 best practices, scored and prioritized so you can distinguish which are table stakes from which actually drive growth.
03.
Live assessment
The data for a live assessment tool, allowing you to compare your own performance to the benchmark and, more importantly, identify what to prioritize next.
Across the market, many leaders have a strong sense of how the environment is shifting. But far fewer have translated that awareness into the operational changes required to keep up. Most organizations are responding incrementally, while the environment is changing more fundamentally.
That is what is creating pressure and where performance gaps begin to form. Often, the result is increased activity without a corresponding improvement in growth.
This report is designed to help you figure out what to do next in a structured, data-informed way. Because change is mandatory, but chaos is optional.
Pretzl commissioned this research in partnership with the ANA and conducted by NewtonX. The ANA brings a B2B marketing leadership perspective and NewtonX contributes research expertise in buyer group dynamics and B2B purchasing decisions. Together, the goal is to give GTM leaders clarity, structure, and pragmatic advice.
Executive Summary.
What the score means
The benchmark Buyer Group Index score in this study is 63.2, representing the weighted market average across 200 GTM leaders. Each organization was scored across the 28 GTM practices, which were then weighted based on how strongly they are linked to the five business outcomes in the study. In plain terms: practices with a stronger relationship to business performance count more in the final score, making 63.2 a benchmark that reflects both the breadth of practice implementation and depth of impact.
Higher BGI scores indicate stronger execution of the practices that were statistically associated with better commercial performance across the study.
Overall BGI Score
Urgency is real.
In follow-up qualitative interviews:
Nearly all leaders said transformation is urgent now.
Over half estimated that the buying journey is largely invisible to vendors, meaning discovery is moving out of sight.
Most said AI is influencing how vendors are found and evaluated and they are concerned about AI brand representation.
A minority of organizations are clearly ahead.
These outcomes illustrate how significantly top-performing organizations are pulling ahead of lower-scoring peers. The gap is no longer incremental; it is structural and likely to widen as leaders continue to evolve faster.
A consistent theme across findings is that, while progress is being made, operational underpinnings are lagging. These gaps are not just technical, they also reflect persistent fragmentation between marketing and sales, which continues to limit the ability to orchestrate buyer group journeys effectively. In practice, this often manifests as strong individual capabilities that are not yet connected into a system that consistently drives outcomes.
Leading
25 %
Advancing
34 %
Developing
41 %
higher pipeline velocity
faster time-to-market
Where the market stands today.
The Buyer Group Index provides a snapshot of where GTM performance stands today.
63.2 is the average score across the organizations studied.
The score reflects a market that is progressing, yet still early in fully operationalizing how buying works today. Many organizations are not yet able to effectively coordinate around the buyer group, instead working as individual functions. In other words, it's likely that activity is increasing, but performance gains are not keeping pace.
The next level down of analysis from the overall Index score comprises four capability areas into which we grouped best practices:
Buyer Group Understanding
69
Content and Message Activation
64
Team Structure and Planning
62
Data, Technology and Systems
60
Most GTM organizations in the survey group have adopted modern approaches by investing in buyer understanding and content efforts, among other steps. What they have not yet done is connect these capabilities into a system that operates consistently across the full buying process, which is increasingly where performance breaks down.
The following chart shows a segmentation of organizations by BGI score:
| Leading BGI ≥75 | Advancing BGI 60-74 | Developing BGI < 60 | Gap Leading-Developing | % Increase | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipeline Value | n=50 (25%) BGI 84 | n=68 (34%) BGI 67 | n=82 (41%) BGI 49 | Δ+34 | Not applicable |
| GTM Confidence | 91% | 80% | 55% | 36 | 65% |
| Time to Market (Speed) | 89% | 69% | 56% | 33 | 59% |
| Pipeline Velocity | 78% | 64% | 46% | 32 | 70% |
| Commercial Outcomes | 84% | 79% | 56% | 28 | 50% |
| Spend Efficiency | 91% | 80% | 80% | 11 | 14% |
An eye-opening finding of the research is that the percentage increase in commercial outcomes in leaders vs laggards (the “developing” segment) is quite large. If you prioritize the most important practices that drive performance, you can expect a substantial increase in GTM outcomes.
For example, our analysis showed that organizations in the leading group report up to 70% higher pipeline velocity than those in the developing group compared to the laggards on that outcome, and a 59% increase in time-to-market.
What this means is that the majority of the market is not just behind, but increasingly at risk of falling further behind as these differences compound over time.
of respondents have achieved a score of 75 or above, placing them among the organizations leading GTM transformation.
of respondents fall into the 60-74 range, indicating GTM performance that is advancing.
of respondents score below 60, suggesting GTM performance that is likely behind the market and still in a developing stage.
Navigating B2B buyer groups is extremely tough, but, for 26% of the market who have figured it out, the rewards are significant.
Where GTM teams are strongest and where they're most exposed.
The overall BGI score shows the market’s current level of buyer group readiness. The focus areas below show where improvement is most likely to matter most: practices that are important to commercial outcomes but still underdeveloped across the market.
The five strongest performing practices in the study include:
- “We invest in advanced measurement platforms and data-driven decision-making tied to clear KPIs.”
- “We identify the buyer group with precision.”
- “We anticipate where buyers will encounter challenges and create content to help them overcome them.”
- “We use data to understand individual persona goals and pain points.”
- “We create executive thought-leadership that helps shape buying conversations.”
The five weakest performing practices in the weighted model include:
- “All customer and account data sources are connected to provide insight from a single source of truth and drive decisions.”
- “We have a single, integrated marketing and sales plan to orchestrate buyer-group journeys.”
- “We track buyer-group health and movement effectively in CRM.”
- “Our revenue technology stack provides sufficient coverage to support buyer-group orchestration.”
- “Marketing and sales work from integrated discovery rather than isolated lead handoffs.”
Several of the lowest-performing practices relate directly to marketing and sales integration, reinforcing that fragmentation remains a primary barrier and one that disproportionately impacts lower-performing organizations.
Five findings that define the current state of GTM.
Taken together, the data reveals a clear picture of how GTM performance is evolving and where it is breaking down.
01.
GTM leaders can see what's changing,
but execution is uneven.
The average score of 63.2 reflects partial maturity, but many efforts lag. For example, only about 38% report adopting key practices like AI-era content strategy, highlighting a gap between awareness and execution.
Adopting key practices
02.
The most important gaps are operational, meaning the system itself is becoming the primary constraint on performance, rather than any single capability.
The highest weighted practices in the Index — such as connecting all customer and account data sources into a single source of truth — indicate that operational infrastructure is a primary constraint on performance. Connected data carries the highest importance of all practices, but a low performance score of 55.0.
Connected data
03.
Organizations tend to know who buyer groups are, yet struggle to influence how they make decisions.
Core practices like 'identifying buyer groups' perform strongly (71.7 performance), but 'identifying hidden influencers' lags (60.6 performance), creating inconsistency in how decisions are influenced. Understanding buyers is no longer sufficient; influence now depends on coordinated execution across the full system.
Identify buyer groups
04.
External shifts are increasing pressure on execution.
Fragmented GTM models are becoming less viable as visibility decreases and buyer control increases. In the follow-up qualitative interview, 60% said most buyer research is happening outside a vendor's visibility and 80% said AI is already reshaping vendor discovery.
05.
A focused set of improvements will drive disproportionate impact.
As shown in the next chart, a small group of high-importance, low-performance practices are clearly visible in the top left quadrant square. These practices represent the clearest priorities because they combine outsized outcome relevance with current underperformance. Prioritizing this small number of system-level practice improvements is likely to drive disproportionate gains in performance.
GTM capabilities prioritized.
When the 28 practices are plotted together, a clear pattern emerges. GTM performance is not consistently strong or weak: it is uneven. This imbalance reinforces that progress is happening in pockets, but not yet at the system level required to consistently improve outcomes. Some capabilities are well-developed and embedded in execution. Others remain underdeveloped despite their importance. The clearest example is connected data (All customer data sources are connected); it carries the highest weight in the model yet performs at only 55.0.
The full quadrant chart helps see two things at once: where organizations are already building credible capability and where the highest-priority gaps are concentrated.
Importance versus performance chart for BGI focus areas
The full Buyer Group Index results: 28 best practices.
Below are the full results of all 28 practices measured within our index. Each practice is measured based on performance and weighted importance, determined by its relationship to commercial outcomes including pipeline value, velocity, time to market, efficiency, and GTM confidence. The analysis found a strong statistical relationship between the 28 GTM practices and the five business outcomes measured. This means organizations performing these practices more also tend to report stronger commercial outcomes. This reinforces that GTM performance is not random but strongly linked to how effectively these practices are implemented together.
Performance score key
| Practices (order of importance) | Practice Statement | Performance Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Connected data/SSoT | All customer/account data sources are connected, to provide insights from a single source of truth and drive decisions. | Low |
| 2. Data-driven decisions | Leveraging data for decision making is a high priority so we’re investing in advanced measurement technologies (including AI). | High |
| 3. Persona messaging | Relevant messages are tailored to different personas in our target buyer group, based on their role and level of influence. | Medium |
| 4. Integrated M&S plan | We have a single, integrated plan across marketing and sales for orchestrating our target buyer groups’ journeys. | Low |
| 5. GTM tech owner | A dedicated team (or named individual) manages the entire GTM technology stack. | Medium |
| 6. Exec thought leadership | Our company executives are thought leaders in our sector, sharing valuable content with our prospective buyers. | Medium |
| 7. Buyer group CRM | A single CRM system documents the relative health of our buyer group. | Low |
| 8. Connected touchpoints | Our content and communications are connected across every touchpoint (website, ads, social, communities, sales conversations, demos, customer stories, etc.) to tell a consistent story. | Medium |
| 9. Integrated discovery | Pipeline acceleration/conversion is based on an ongoing, integrated discovery process between marketing and sales, as opposed to a transactional ’lead’ handoff between the two teams. | Medium |
| 10. Journey content | Content is tailored for each stage of our target buyer groups’ journeys (mapped to however you define it, such as, awareness, consideration, and preference). | Medium |
| 11. RevTech coverage | Our revenue technology stack provides adequate coverage across key areas such as marketing and sales automation, content management, dynamic web personalization, intent monitoring, sales engagement, account- or contact-based digital advertising, and event tracking. | Low |
| 12. Value realization | Our content clearly tells prospects and customers how to realize value and solve their own problems, versus just providing self-promotional evidence of our product and service benefits. | Medium |
| 13. Channel & timing | We are reaching buyers in the right channels, at the right times, in the right formats for their respective preferences and current contexts. | Low |
| 14. Message experiments | Experimentation in messaging, content & media is used regularly to learn and adjust based on evidence (signals, experiments, win/loss data, etc.) | Low |
| 15. Pre-purchase challenges | We have proactively identified where our target buyers are most likely to encounter challenges on their journey and developed content to help overcome those challenges. | High |
| 16. Unified GTM team | We have a single, integrated plan across marketing and sales for orchestrating our target buyer groups’ journeys. | Medium |
| 17. Edu vs vendor content | We carefully calibrate the amount of educational, vendor-agnostic content versus branded content to promote our offerings. | Low |
| 18. Content effectiveness | We have a strong understanding of how existing sales and marketing content is resonating with each of our target buyer group members. | Medium |
| 19. Buying intent data | Data is used to understand buying intent (using predictive scoring models) even before target buyers engage with our brand. | Medium |
| 20. Hidden influencers | We have identified the hidden influencers in our target buyer groups. | Low |
| 21. Buyer Group ID | Our buyer group is precisely identified, including all key roles (decision makers, influencers, and other participants). | High |
| 22. BG vs MQL | Our definition of ‘leads’ has moved from individual Marketing Qualified Lead (MQLs) to evidence, insights, and proof points across our entire buyer group. | Low |
| 23. BG journey metrics | A team (or named individual) defines target buyer group journey metrics, produces buyer group reporting, and evaluates customer data requirements. | Medium |
| 24. Consensus building | We help our target buyer groups connect with each other and reach consensus on successfully committing to a purchase decision. | Medium |
| 25. Member personas | Data is leveraged to understand the feelings, pain points, and goals of individual personas in our target buyer groups, as each persona moves through the buying process. | Medium |
| 26. Engagement strategy | A dedicated strategy exists for engaging the key members of our target buyer groups, to best reach them where they consume information (eg PR, advertising, email, in-person meetings, social media, peer forums, events, webinars, product brochures, etc.) | High |
| 27. Full-funnel comms | A communications strategy is in place to earn credibility and awareness throughout all stages of our customer journey, even when target buyers are not in market. | High |
| 28. AI outreach | GTM teams use AI (e.g., GenAI, AI chat, AI agents) to orchestrate journeys (listening, content creation, experimentation, routing). | Low |
The new reality of GTM performance.
The BGI set out to provide GTM leaders the missing data: which practices matter most to commercial outcomes.
The study showed system-level capabilities represent the biggest gap between performance and commercial impact. For instance, having a single source of buyer group data impacts commercial outcomes far more than established best practices like creating full-funnel messaging, which ranks second to last in impact.
As the chart shows, connected data, integrated marketing and sales planning, and a single CRM that documents the health of buyer groups represent the biggest areas of opportunity.
Practice
Importance
Performance
Connected data / SSoT*
1st most important
*top ranked importance vs worst performance
28th for performance
Integrated M&S plan
4th most important
24th for performance
Buyer group CRM
7th most important
22nd for performance
Most GTM organizations are busy, yet few are effective. Use this report and the BGI assessment tool to benchmark where you stand and turn your energies to the practices that create measurable advantage.
Take Action Now
Assessment tool
A 15-minute interactive assessment can help
We created an intuitive self-assessment to help you quickly evaluate your strengths and gaps and get an overall index plus benchmark scores across the four pillars.
The index can fast-track your assessment, help you compare scores across other teams and regions, and give you objective benchmarks to measure progress against.
Take the assessmentThe Buyer Group Index is inspired by Pretzl's methodology. If you would like to understand how it applies to your organization, get in touch.
How the Study Was Conducted
The Buyer Group Index was commissioned by Pretzl, in partnership with the ANA, and conducted by NewtonX.
The 28 practices at the core of this index were not assumed. They were developed through a rigorous process that included in-depth qualitative interviews, review by leading analysts and experts in B2B buyer group dynamics, and a synthesis of the most cited published research on B2B buying behavior. Each practice was then weighted based on its statistical relationship to five commercial outcomes: pipeline value, velocity, time-to-market, efficiency, and GTM confidence.
The quantitative study surveyed 200 senior GTM leaders, director level and above, across Marketing, Sales, and RevOps at organizations with 500 or more employees with revenues exceeding $300M annually. Respondents spanned North America (44%), the UK (20%), Europe (20%), and Rest of World (16%), with 85% coming from organizations with more than 1,000 employees. Responders were all B2B focused, from a cross-section of industries including technology, manufacturing, finance, and professional services.
Findings were further validated through qualitative interviews with approximately 30 executives, capturing perspectives from both sides of the deal, GTM leaders and buyer-side decision makers, to ground the data in real purchasing behavior.
About Our Research Partner
NewtonX is an independent B2B market research company specializing in verified, expert-backed research across complex business topics. Visit newtonx.com to learn more.
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