Two numbers should make any B2B revenue leader sit up straight: 2,879 impressions and 266 touchpoints.
That’s the 2024 average to get to closed-won in HockeyStack Labs’ analysis of 150 B2B SaaS companies (ARR range: $8M to $2B) using anonymized customer data from January 1, 2024 to August 30, 2024, with a minimum $15k/month ad spend. Touchpoints were up 19.8% year over year, and impressions rose 9.5% versus 2023. (Source: 2024 B2B Customer Journey Statistics: Touchpoints, Deal Size, and Company Size [1])
More activity. More exposure. More “engagement.” And yet the same broader set of 2024 journey stats points to a market where 86% of purchases stall and 81% of buyers report dissatisfaction. (Source: [7]) Those extra touches don’t read like progress. They read like friction.
The nut graf: why this matters right now
In 2026, most GTM teams are already operating under a silent assumption: if pipeline slows, add more touches—another nurture stream, another retargeting sequence, another webinar, another SDR step. But the 2024 data suggests the inflation is happening across multiple stages, not just “top of funnel.” (Source: [1])
That changes the job. The goal can’t be “more touches everywhere.” The goal is to find where the journey got harder, then remove the specific kind of hardness. Different stage. Different fix. Same budget.
Where the journey actually got heavier (and why “more touches” isn’t a strategy)
HockeyStack’s stage-level deltas are the part most teams skip. They shouldn’t.
Early on, impressions from awareness to first website visit increased 23%, from 723 to 894. (Source: [1]) That’s the tax you pay when attention fragments across channels and feeds. It also matches a broader trend: the average buyer now uses 10 interaction channels, up from 5 in 2016. (Source: [5])
Then it gets more pointed. Touchpoints to generate an MQL jumped 31%, from 54 to 71. (Source: [1]) That’s not a rounding error. That’s a sign that “high intent” is harder to earn, or harder to recognize, or both.
From MQL to SQL, touchpoints rose again (87 to 96, +10%), while impressions actually dipped slightly (1,068 to 1,019, -5%). (Source: [1]) Translation: deals aren’t necessarily seeing more brand exposure in that mid-stage, but they are requiring more back-and-forth interactions to become real pipeline.
And the late stage—where teams often assume “sales will handle it”—also expanded. SQL to closed-won went from 81 to 99 touchpoints (+22%) and 836 to 965 impressions (+15%). (Source: [1])
Here’s the pattern interrupt: the journey didn’t just get noisier. It got heavier in the exact places most teams under-instrument—handoffs, consensus-building, and procurement drag.
Deal size changes the math: the enterprise journey isn’t “the same, just longer”
It’s tempting to treat deal size as a simple multiplier. The HockeyStack segmentation argues it’s more than that.
For deals above $100K, the average requirement jumps to roughly 5,500 impressions and 417 touchpoints. (Source: provided source content; aligns with [1]) That’s nearly 2x the impressions and about 1.5x the touchpoints versus the overall 2024 average.
At the other end, deals up to $10K were influenced by about 357 impressions and 47 touchpoints—well below the average. (Source: provided source content)
But the more useful takeaway for a CMO isn’t “enterprise takes more touches.” Everyone already knows that. The useful takeaway is where to spend precision.
Buyers spend only 17% of their journey talking to vendors. (Source: B2B marketing expert opinions deal size impact customer journey [5]) So as ACV rises, the work shifts toward marketing-led consensus support: clearer requirements content, better evaluation paths, and fewer dead ends that force internal stakeholders to restart the search.
And yes, digital still matters even at high ACV. About 70% of B2B decision-makers say they’re open to buying products above $50,000 via self-service or online, and 27% say they’d spend above $500,000 online. (Source: [2]) That doesn’t mean every enterprise purchase will become a checkout flow. It does mean that “big deal” is no longer an excuse for a clumsy digital journey.
Company size changes the motion: brand recognition doesn’t cancel complexity
Another assumption shows up in boardrooms all the time: larger companies should be easier because the brand is known, the need is clear, and the process is professional.
The HockeyStack report flags the opposite pattern: as company size increases, the number of impressions and touchpoints required also increases—contradicting the idea that brand recognition automatically reduces effort. (Source: provided source content; tied to [1])
Part of the explanation sits in other 2024 journey stats. Buying groups span multiple stakeholders and departments, which means more internal alignment work and more chances for a deal to stall. (Source: B2B marketing expert opinions deal size impact customer journey [6]) Longer cycles reinforce it: average journey length is reported as 211 days from first touch to closed deal, and 242 days for larger companies. (Source: B2B marketing expert opinions deal size impact customer journey [1])
But the most uncomfortable detail is early-stage reality. 92% of buyers start with at least one vendor already in mind, and 41% start with a single preferred vendor. (Source: [4]) Also, 83% fully or mostly define their requirements before speaking with sales. (Source: [4])
So the “company size” problem isn’t just governance and procurement. It’s that by the time sales gets a shot, the buyer’s mental shortlist is already narrow. Small. Sometimes one name.
The 2026 playbook: reduce friction, don’t just add touches
Call the 2024 pattern what it is: touchpoint inflation. And inflation is rarely solved by printing more currency.
The better approach is diagnostic and stage-specific.
Start where the deltas are largest. MQL creation (+31% touchpoints) and SQL-to-close (+22% touchpoints) are telling you where the journey is breaking. (Source: [1]) Then map fixes to those stages: the content and digital experiences that help buyers define requirements early (because 83% do), and the late-stage proof and enablement that helps groups agree internally (because they aren’t spending much time with vendors). (Sources: [4], [5])
Also, treat omnichannel as an operations problem, not a branding slogan. Buyers now operate across many channels (10 on average), and a single deal can be influenced by an average of 76 touchpoints across 3.7 channels. (Sources: [5], [9]) More than half expect a seamless experience, and lack of seamlessness contributes to switching. (Source: [5]) If handoffs are messy, the extra touches aren’t persuasive—they’re exhausting.
The circle closes back on those two numbers. 2,879 impressions. 266 touchpoints. In 2026, the teams that win won’t brag about how many they can generate. They’ll be the ones that can look at inflation, name the specific friction underneath it, and remove it—quietly, surgically, and with the kind of discipline most orgs reserve for cost cuts, not customer journeys.
