Why B2B Deals Have Gotten Harder to Close (And It’s Not About You)

If deals feel harder to close than they used to, there’s a real reason for that, and it isn’t a sign anything’s wrong with the approach.

The average B2B buying committee has nearly doubled in size since 2015, from around 5 stakeholders to 8, sometimes 13 or more, involved in a single purchase decision today. Roughly 72 percent of B2B purchases now run through genuinely complex, multi-department buying groups. The deal itself hasn’t gotten harder to sell. The room it’s being sold into has gotten bigger.

One Contact Versus Several

Here’s where that shows up in the numbers. Deals that stay tied to a single contact at the company close at around 5 percent. Deals that properly engage five or more stakeholders close at around 30 percent. That’s a six times difference, and it starts moving almost immediately, going from one contact to two alone makes a deal roughly 37 percent more likely to close.

It’s a strange thing to sit with. A single enthusiastic champion inside a company can feel like real momentum. The data says that momentum is fragile in a way that isn’t obvious from the inside of the deal. If that one person goes quiet, changes roles, or simply can’t carry the decision alone through a buying group that size, the deal usually goes quiet with them.

It’s Not About You

This is the part worth genuinely taking comfort in. Sales cycles stretching out, deals stalling after a great first call, decisions taking longer than they used to, none of that is evidence of a weaker pitch or a worse process. The buyer’s side of the equation changed. More people now have to say yes before anything moves forward, and that was true before the conversation even started.

The MSPs and sales teams adapting well to this aren’t the ones working harder to convince one person. They’re the ones who’ve built engaging the wider buying group into the process from the start, rather than treating it as a late-stage scramble once a deal unexpectedly stalls.

That’s a structural shift in how deals get run, not a personal one. It’s the kind of thing that’s much easier to build well with a team whose entire process is already designed around it, rather than trying to retrofit it into a sales motion built for a smaller buying group that mostly doesn’t exist anymore.

That’s exactly how we run every deal we work, mapping and engaging the full buying group from the first conversation, not chasing a single contact and hoping they can carry it alone.

Real people. Real meetings. Real clients.