2026 Sales Challenges and Priorities: Where Leaders Should Focus

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1. Without that direction, AI may improve efficiency without improving the sales behaviors that affect outcomes. How to Address the Top Sales Challenges and Priorities A common response to a difficult sales environment is to add initiatives: launch a prospecting push, update the playbook, run negotiation training, add AI guidance, increase forecast inspection, schedule more coaching, or revisit account planning. Any one of those responses might be right. The risk is choosing one before understanding the issue. The research points to four places to focus first. 1. Diagnose the Performance Constraint Before Choosing the Intervention Before choosing the response, leaders need to get specific about the problem they’re solving. A pipeline creation issue may require better targeting, prospecting, messaging, account planning, and sales / marketing alignment. A conversion issue may require stronger qualification, discovery, value communication, stakeholder engagement, and deal coaching. A retention issue may require account management, value realization, renewal planning, and Sales / Customer Success coordination. Four useful questions are: Where is performance breaking down? Which behavior needs to change? Who needs to reinforce it? What outcome should improve? The intervention should match the pattern in the business. 2. Prioritize Conversion-Critical Seller Capabilities The priority data point strongly toward conversion-critical capabilities. Winning against competitors, reducing no-decision, improving retention, and communicating value all require sellers to do more than present solutions. They need to help buyers understand why change matters, why now, why this approach, and why the value outweighs the risk. These skills work together in live opportunities. Strong value communication depends on strong discovery. Reducing no-decision requires sellers to understand urgency, stakeholders, risk, and the buyer’s decision process. “AI can help sellers prepare for discovery, analyze account context, draft value hypotheses, identify stakeholder gaps, summarize buyer concerns, and prepare for manager coaching sessions.” Before adding another tool or program, leaders should ask: What seller or manager behavior are we trying to improve? How will this fit into the workflow? How will managers reinforce it? How will we know whether it is working? That keeps AI, process, and enablement from becoming separate workstreams with separate goals. The Key to Progress Is Focus Sales and enablement leaders are not short on challenges. The 2026 research shows pressure across talent, economic uncertainty, sales cycles, no-decision, competition, manager development, buyer complexity, sales skills, pipeline quality, and budget constraints. But the priority data show that urgency is concentrating in competitive wins, no-decision, retention and renewals, and value communication. That combination calls for sharper diagnosis and more focused execution. Leaders need to know where performance is breaking down, which capabilities matter most, how managers will reinforce them, and how process and AI can support the behaviors that improve outcomes. Progress starts with getting clear on the constraint before choosing the fix. From there, the work becomes more focused: build the capabilities that address the constraint, reinforce them through managers, connect process, tools, and AI to the same behaviors, and measure whether the targeted outcomes improve. Sales challenges are broad. The response doesn’t have to be scattered. Get the Full Report Download the full 2026 Sales Challenges & Priorities Research Report to explore the complete findings, including challenge-priority alignment, no-decision trends, seller capability blind spots, performance profiles, manager effectiveness insights, and AI adoption trends.

   In AI research synthesis

2. The Most Urgent Priorities Are Conversion-Critical When respondents were asked to select their top three priorities, four rose to the top: Win more against difficult competitors: 44.0% Reduce sales lost to no decision: 40.8% Improve customer retention / renewals: 39.7% Improve ability to communicate value: 30.0% Top Ranked Sales Priorities % Selected These priorities have something important in common: they all affect whether opportunities and accounts move forward. Leaders aren’t only worried about filling the front end of the funnel. They’re focused on what happens when buyers evaluate, hesitate, compare, delay, renew, and expand. Winning against difficult competitors requires more than knowing a competitor’s weaknesses. Sellers need to understand what the buyer values, how the buyer defines risk, and why the difference between options matters enough to act. Reducing no-decision is rarely solved by more follow-up alone. Sellers need to help buyers see the cost of inaction, build internal alignment, and develop enough confidence to make a decision. The sale doesn’t end when the contract is signed. To support retention and renewal, teams need to prove value, protect relationships, identify risk, and create the conditions for expansion. Value communication is central to each of these priorities. If buyers can’t see the business case, differentiation weakens, no-decision risk rises, renewals become more vulnerable, and expansion becomes harder to justify. This is easy to underestimate because “communicating value” is such familiar language in sales. Many organizations already talk about it and train on it. Fewer inspect whether sellers are actually connecting their solutions to business impact, financial outcomes, risk reduction, and the buyer’s strategic priorities in live opportunities. For sales enablement, the implication is clear: don’t treat every performance problem as a general skill gap. “When buying committees expand, sellers need to understand decision dynamics, not just add more names to a stakeholder map.” That’s often how no-decision appears: it looks like something that happened late in the opportunity. Percent of Proposed / Quoted Opportunities Lost to No Decision % Respondents 2023 vs. 2026 The research reveals why no-decision deserves more attention than it often gets: 28.2% said losing deals to no decision or the status quo is very challenging as an organizational issue. 30.3% said losing sales to no decision is very challenging for sellers. 40.8% selected reducing sales lost to no decision as a top-three priority. 78.8% said no-decision losses stayed the same or increased. No-decision may surface late, but it usually develops earlier. It can begin when discovery doesn’t uncover the full business impact of the problem, or when the buyer doesn’t see the cost of staying the same. It can worsen when stakeholders are misaligned, risk isn’t addressed, the champion lacks the internal case to build consensus, or the seller moves forward without enough evidence that the buyer is committed to change. This is why reducing no-decision requires more than seller persistence. Managers play an important role here. No-decision could stem from lack of follow up, objection handling, qualification and pursuit intensity, value case, or buyer alignment. In a deal review, managers can move the conversation away from, “What activity is happening?” and toward, “What evidence do we have that the buyer is committed to change?” A coaching conversation might focus on a few questions: What business problem is driving the opportunity? What happens if the buyer does nothing? Which stakeholders need to agree before this moves forward? What evidence do we have that the buyer is committed to change? What risk could slow or stop the deal? These aren’t just inspection questions. They help managers test whether the opportunity has enough urgency, alignment, and commitment to keep moving. They don’t guarantee a win.

   In Buying committee and personas

3. In many sales organizations, performance conversations cover familiar ground: pipeline reviews, forecast inspection, deal-by-deal scrutiny, and the recurring question from leadership: what needs to change for more opportunities to close? The answer isn’t always more pipeline. Nor is it always more activity, another tool, or more forecast pressure. Sometimes those are the right moves. Often, they treat the symptom while the root cause lies in weak qualification, unclear value, stalled buyer consensus, limited manager coaching, or poor visibility into deal risk. These problems are connected, but they’re not the same. When leaders treat them as the same, they risk investing in fixes that don’t move the number. In RAIN Group’s 2026 sales challenges and priorities research, we surveyed 252 sales management, leadership, and enablement professionals. This is the third wave of the study, following research fielded in 2019 and 2023. The findings, as detailed in our B2B Sales Challenges Report, reveal what sales organizations find most challenging, what leaders are prioritizing, and where enablement and leadership teams can have the greatest impact. The findings point to a practical problem many sales teams share: turning buyer interest into decisions, renewals, expansion, and revenue. The State of the Sales Environment The Sales Environment Remains Structurally Difficult The Most Urgent Priorities Are Conversion-Critical Some Pressures Require Direct Action; Others Require Indirect Response No-Decision Is More Than Buyer Indecision Watch for Seller Capability Blind Spots Manager Effectiveness Is the Multiplier AI Is Present, But Not Yet Embedded How to Address the Top Sales Challenges and Priorities The Key to Progress Is Focus The Sales Environment Remains Structurally Difficult Picture a sales leader in a Monday forecast meeting. Sales manager 1: “Hiring has slowed the team’s capacity.” Sales manager 2: “Several late-stage deals have pushed.” “Qualified sales-ready opportunities: 79.3%” The Most Urgent Priorities Are Conversion-Critical When respondents were asked to select their top three priorities, four rose to the top: Win more against difficult competitors: 44.0% Reduce sales lost to no decision: 40.8% Improve customer retention / renewals: 39.7% Improve ability to communicate value: 30.0% Top Ranked Sales Priorities % Selected These priorities have something important in common: they all affect whether opportunities and accounts move forward. Leaders aren’t only worried about filling the front end of the funnel. They’re focused on what happens when buyers evaluate, hesitate, compare, delay, renew, and expand. Winning against difficult competitors requires more than knowing a competitor’s weaknesses. Sellers need to understand what the buyer values, how the buyer defines risk, and why the difference between options matters enough to act. Reducing no-decision is rarely solved by more follow-up alone. Sellers need to help buyers see the cost of inaction, build internal alignment, and develop enough confidence to make a decision. The sale doesn’t end when the contract is signed. To support retention and renewal, teams need to prove value, protect relationships, identify risk, and create the conditions for expansion. Value communication is central to each of these priorities. If buyers can’t see the business case, differentiation weakens, no-decision risk rises, renewals become more vulnerable, and expansion becomes harder to justify. This is easy to underestimate because “communicating value” is such familiar language in sales. Many organizations already talk about it and train on it. Fewer inspect whether sellers are actually connecting their solutions to business impact, financial outcomes, risk reduction, and the buyer’s strategic priorities in live opportunities. For sales enablement, the implication is clear: don’t treat every performance problem as a general skill gap.

   In Handoff readiness criteria

4. This is where familiarity can work against sales organizations. Most have provided training on discovery, have discussed value, and expect sellers to understand the buyer’s decision process. Because these skills feel familiar, leaders assume they’re already handled. They may not be. For leaders, this is a practical caution: don’t assume foundational skills are solved because they’re basic. In difficult selling environments, the basics often determine whether opportunities advance or stall. Manager Effectiveness Is the Multiplier After a sales training program ends, sellers return to live opportunities, active accounts, forecast calls, pricing pressure, buyer delays, and competing priorities. Some apply the new skills. Some intend to but revert to old habits. Some use the language without changing their behavior. And some wait to see whether their manager reinforces it. That matters. The research reinforces the importance of effective sales managers: Developing sales managers was challenging for 79.6% of respondents Coaching the sales force effectively was challenging for 72.7% 54.2% rated improving sales managers’ effectiveness as very important 52.1% rated improving sales coaching capabilities as very important This aligns with other RAIN Group research: sellers receiving a combination of effective management, regular sales coaching, and effective sales training are 63% more likely to be top performers. Managers determine whether methodology becomes part of the weekly operating rhythm or stays in the training materials. Managers help sellers: Determine which opportunities are real Challenge weak assumptions Inspect whether next steps are buyer-confirmed With coaching on value, stakeholders, urgency, differentiation, and risk Prepare for executive conversations and account-growth discussions This is the routine work that makes capability change stick. It’s especially important when the priority is conversion. “The most extensive use cases are concentrated in task-level activities: call notes, summaries, follow-up emails, account research, meeting preparation, prospecting, outreach, proposals, business cases, and CRM or administrative work.” Without that direction, AI may improve efficiency without improving the sales behaviors that affect outcomes. How to Address the Top Sales Challenges and Priorities A common response to a difficult sales environment is to add initiatives: launch a prospecting push, update the playbook, run negotiation training, add AI guidance, increase forecast inspection, schedule more coaching, or revisit account planning. Any one of those responses might be right. The risk is choosing one before understanding the issue. The research points to four places to focus first. 1. Diagnose the Performance Constraint Before Choosing the Intervention Before choosing the response, leaders need to get specific about the problem they’re solving. A pipeline creation issue may require better targeting, prospecting, messaging, account planning, and sales / marketing alignment. A conversion issue may require stronger qualification, discovery, value communication, stakeholder engagement, and deal coaching. A retention issue may require account management, value realization, renewal planning, and Sales / Customer Success coordination. Four useful questions are: Where is performance breaking down? Which behavior needs to change? Who needs to reinforce it? What outcome should improve? The intervention should match the pattern in the business. 2. Prioritize Conversion-Critical Seller Capabilities The priority data point strongly toward conversion-critical capabilities. Winning against competitors, reducing no-decision, improving retention, and communicating value all require sellers to do more than present solutions. They need to help buyers understand why change matters, why now, why this approach, and why the value outweighs the risk. These skills work together in live opportunities. Strong value communication depends on strong discovery. Reducing no-decision requires sellers to understand urgency, stakeholders, risk, and the buyer’s decision process.

   In Tools and AI