Companies that execute four or more sales play best practices grow revenue up to 1.9 times faster than their peers. That is from Bain & Company’s January 2026 Commercial Excellence survey of 1,125 commercial leaders across industries.
What the article says
Bain & Company drew on 1,125 commercial leaders who answered its global, cross-industry Commercial Excellence survey, dated January 2026. Revenue growth rises with each sales play best practice a company deploys: 1.2 times with one, 1.4 times with two, 1.5 times with three, and 1.9 times for companies adopting four or more. Nearly one in five laggards has no formal model for prioritizing accounts and relies on legacy relationships and sales input. Only 6% of winners, the organizations with the fastest revenue growth and strongest margins, work that way. Asked for the biggest barrier to clearly differentiating their value proposition, 49% of respondents cited core product or service differentiation.
Why it matters at the top of the house
Bain’s best practices include choosing target customers with data, anchoring the sales narrative in a clearly defined value proposition, and giving each play sales and marketing collateral specific to each buyer persona. The survey is cross-industry, with no manufacturing breakout. For a manufacturer, the question is who picks the accounts: the data or the rep’s memory. And whether the website and the quote say why this product and not the next.
Source: Bain & Company, “B2B Growth Masters’ Formula for Repeatably Capturing New Customers,” by Rishi Dave, Jordan Lee, Simon Kloeckner, Mukarram Bhaiji and Fiona Wolnicki, March 30, 2026. Research: Bain Commercial Excellence Longitudinal Survey, January 2026 (n=1,125). The Marketing Table shares the link and a note on why it matters; the article and its copyright belong to the publisher.
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