The Verified Number: 17 Contacts on a Large Deal
HubSpot’s 2026 Sales Trends Report, cited in HubSpot’s own sales-statistics roundup last updated 2026-02-24, found large, strategic B2B deals now involve an average of 17 contacts on the buying side. 81% of revenue leaders separately report their team’s deals are more complex than ever, a sentiment that lines up with a buying group that size.
This is the most directly verified figure available for this page. A widely repeated “Gartner says 6 to 10 stakeholders” figure circulates across B2B sales content, but a direct check against Gartner’s own published research was not possible this research cycle, gartner.com blocked every attempted path, so that specific number is presented below with the secondary citation it rests on, not as an independently confirmed Gartner figure.
The Widely Cited Gartner Range, and Where It Comes From
The Starr Conspiracy’s own 2025 B2B Buying Committee Benchmarks report cites Gartner’s Future of Sales research putting the average enterprise-software buying group at 11 stakeholders, with the more commonly quoted industry rule of thumb sitting at 6 to 10 people for a typical complex B2B purchase. The same source scales that down for smaller deals: a mid-market purchase in the $25,000 to $100,000 range typically involves 4 to 7 stakeholders.
The same benchmark tracks how fast committee size has grown: from an average of 5.4 stakeholders in 2015 to 8 to 13 by 2025, nearly doubling in a single decade. Both figures are real, published, and widely cited across the sales-research industry, but they reach this page as a secondary citation of Gartner’s own report rather than a number this research independently re-verified at the source, worth knowing if a footnoted, precision-grade citation is what you need.
The Numbers
Large, strategic B2B deals now involve an average of 17 contacts on the buying side, and 81% of revenue leaders say their team’s deals are more complex than ever.
Gartner’s Future of Sales research puts the average enterprise-software buying group at 11 stakeholders, per a secondary citation this research did not independently re-verify against Gartner’s own site.
The Starr Conspiracy, B2B Buying Committee Benchmarks 2025, citing Gartner
The commonly repeated industry rule of thumb for a typical complex B2B purchase is 6 to 10 stakeholders, while a mid-market deal in the $25,000 to $100,000 range typically involves 4 to 7.
The Starr Conspiracy, B2B Buying Committee Benchmarks 2025, citing Gartner
Average B2B buying-committee size has grown from 5.4 stakeholders in 2015 to 8 to 13 stakeholders in 2025, nearly doubling in a single decade.
The Starr Conspiracy, B2B Buying Committee Benchmarks 2025, citing Gartner
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- HubSpot, 2026 Sales Trends Report
- The Starr Conspiracy, B2B Buying Committee Benchmarks 2025, citing Gartner