If it seems like your company is investing heavily in growth, particularly in new business and technology, but is hard-pressed to measure real ROI, you’re not alone.
According to TMSA’s newly released 2026 Sales & Marketing Industry Benchmark study, 76% of respondents said they are no better than “somewhat confident” in their ability to measure ROI from the beginning of the sales process through the sale.
It’s one of several findings that raise important questions for transportation and logistics companies: Are they investing in the right places? Do they have the data to know what’s working? And are sales and marketing aligned well enough to turn those investments into growth?
Industry professionals gathered in Pittsburgh for a TMSA-sponsored workshop on September 23 to dig into those questions.
Sarah Ahern, Partner at PATH Growth, and outgoing TMSA Executive Director Jennifer Karpus-Romain led sales and marketing leaders and practitioners through the survey findings, giving participants an opportunity to compare the benchmarks with what they are seeing inside their own organizations.
For transportation and logistics professionals, the research provides a rare look at the practices, priorities and performance of industry peers.
“The 2026 Sales & Marketing Industry Benchmark research is a unique and comprehensive guide into the psyche of sales and marketing executives working in supply chain,” said Jeff Price, Director of Marketing at Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT). “My team and I find it valuable to use just like the title suggests, as a benchmark. Whether you're working on a large team or small one, you'll find some gold in this report.”
Workshop discussion zeroed in on four findings:
1. Companies are growing, but sales teams are still missing their targets.
The disconnect from the benchmarking report is striking: 83% of organizations reported revenue growth, yet 69% finished at or below 90% of sales quota.
Some participants of the workshop questioned whether the problem begins with the targets themselves.
“I wonder if, as an industry, we set unattainable targets/stretch targets for our reps or is it that we have been overly optimistic on when things would rebound after the COVID high?” said Cassandra McRae, Marketing Manager at A. Duie Pyle, Inc. “I think it’s probably a bit of both!”
The discussion quickly moved from quotas to another problem: Companies often lack the data needed to understand why salespeople are winning or losing.
Only one in five companies publishes win rates at the individual salesperson level. Workshop participants considered that a bare minimum. Data on why deals are lost is even harder to find, with 70%–80% of companies not sharing loss details in their CRM systems, per the report.
One sales and marketing leader said that the underlying reason is that entering data takes salespeople away from selling. Unless companies demonstrate how reporting helps salespeople win, participation will remain difficult.
Long sales cycles complicate matters further. One participant noted that closing a contract logistics deal can take 10 months, making consistent reporting and attribution challenging.
Constantly being in survival mode is another reason cited by Leigh Sauter, TMSA’s Interim Executive Director and Founder of Glass Ball Consulting. “Anyone who has waited tables knows what it means to be in the weeds, with every table needing something at once. That's how most transportation and logistics companies operate. The crisis or customer in front of us wins every time.”
2. New business gets the investment, but existing customers drive much of the growth.
One of the survey’s biggest surprises involved where companies plan to put their growth dollars.
Sixty-three percent of respondents plan to increase the number of new-business salespeople, nearly double the 32% reported in TMSA’s 2024 Benchmarking Study.
“The thing that jumped out the most was that budgets were going up and companies are hiring. I haven’t seen that yet,” said Don Friddell, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Brown Integrated Logistics and President of TMSA.
Another report finding raises an important question about those investments. Nearly nine in 10 organizations get at least 25% of their revenue from retaining and growing existing customers. Yet only 25% plan to add account managers.
Workshop participants questioned whether transportation and logistics companies are overinvesting in customer acquisition while underinvesting in customer growth and retention.
The survey gives them another reason to consider the balance: Service quality, not price, remains the leading reason customers leave, cited by 39% of survey respondents.
Participants noted that companies often become nervous when pipelines are thin and reflexively put more resources into prospecting. But the data suggests companies should examine whether the balance between acquiring new customers and growing existing ones reflects where revenue actually comes from.
The discussion also moved beyond headcount. Participants emphasized investments in training, insight and intelligence that can make existing salespeople more effective.
That is particularly important given the cost of turnover and long ramp-up times. Forty-four percent of respondents said it takes seven months or longer for a new salesperson to become fully productive. Meanwhile, 35% lose at least one in five salespeople voluntarily each year.
One sales and marketing leader emphasized the continuing value of face-to-face training, not only to improve sales performance, but also to help retain good people.
The bigger question, then, may not be simply how many salespeople a company needs. It is whether companies are putting resources behind the people, customers and opportunities most likely to produce growth.
"This finding is a big part of why TMSA's board adopted a new three-year strategic plan this month," Sauter said. "Growth in our industry doesn't come from new business alone. It comes from everyone who wins, grows and keeps customers, which includes account management, customer success and company leadership alongside sales and marketing. We're building on TMSA's sales and marketing roots to bring that whole group together."
3. The industry is still struggling to measure what works.
The survey’s measurement findings produced the workshop’s biggest wake-up call. Seventy-six percent of respondents said they are no better than “somewhat confident” in their ability to measure ROI across the sales process.
“What jumped out at me was the disconnect between investment and measurement,” said Anthony Pagnotto, Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing at Mohawk Global. “The industry clearly wants growth, but we’re still not very good at proving which sales and marketing activities are actually creating it. Before we keep adding people, technology and programs, we need to get better at understanding what’s already working.”
Several report findings illustrate the problem. Only 21% of organizations publish salesperson-level win rates. Just 37% have a documented agreement between sales and marketing, and only 47% define both marketing- and sales-qualified leads.
Participants discussed whether the underlying problem is technological, structural or cultural. The main questions were: Who owns the CRM, sales or marketing? Who determines when a lead is ready? What signals about timing does sales need from marketing? And what information does marketing need back from sales to improve lead generation? The need for documented reporting processes within companies that sales and marketing accept was a key takeaway.
Jill Schmieg, Founder and Chief Strategist of Sol de Naples Marketing, sees alignment as a major competitive opportunity. “Invest the time and effort to gain complete sales and marketing alignment all the way from the top to the bottom of the funnel,” she said. “If you do this, you will come out head and shoulders ahead of your competitors, growing faster and more nimbly than ever before.”
4. AI adoption has accelerated. Now the question is whether it’s creating value.
Technology investment is accelerating, too. According to the study, 55% of companies plan a CRM deployment within the next 12 months.
But workshop participants questioned whether companies are sometimes trying to solve process, alignment and reporting problems simply by adding more technology. According to the report, simplifying existing technology ranks near the bottom of company priorities, at just 13%.
AI is an important example of this. Marketing’s use of AI has jumped from 49% in 2024 to 81% in 2026. Two years ago companies’ restrictions on using AI were the problem. Now companies face the challenge of turning experimentation into measurable business value.
Sales and marketing appear to be experiencing that challenge differently. For sales teams, too many tools that don't work together is the leading AI concern, cited by 51% of survey respondents.
“The fact that tool sprawl is the single biggest AI complaint in sales at 51% and the smallest in marketing at 18% is consistent with comments I've heard in conversations with business development executives,” Price said.
The report points to a different problem being experienced by marketers that is rooted in mistrust of content and research created by AI. While marketers in the workshop agreed on the efficiency of using AI, they also discussed the hidden cost of that efficiency: the time required to check, verify and revise AI-generated work.
One marketing leader explained that AI is right 80% of the time, and reviewing, revising and thinking remain human responsibilities. At their company, if content goes out and isn't 100% accurate, the writer remains accountable regardless of AI’s role in producing it.
The larger opportunity discussed during the workshop was in using AI to connect sales and marketing rather than simply helping each department perform existing tasks. Participants pointed to CRM-integrated AI that aligns lead generation and prospecting as having significant potential.
What’s worth the investment?
The most important message to emerge from both the benchmarking study and the Pittsburgh workshop is that more investment does not automatically produce more growth.
“The benchmark's central question, ‘Before you add more, do you know what's already working?’ is really an invitation to get out of the weeds long enough to look up. The participants in the workshop proved it can be done,” Sauter said.
Right now, measurement quality may be the most valuable benchmark of all. And at a time when organizations are preparing to spend more on people, technology and growth, knowing where those investments are most likely to pay off will lead companies in this industry to their greatest competitive advantages.
The 2026 TMSA Sales & Marketing Industry Benchmark report gives transportation and logistics sales and marketing professionals data they rarely have access to anywhere else, and a clear way to compare their own performance with their peers’.
The full report is now available to non-members. You can purchase the complete 2026 Sales & Marketing Benchmark for $395 at info.tmsatoday.org/tmsa-benchmarking-study. If you join TMSA within 60 days of your purchase, the full $395 will be applied toward your membership. If you’d like a preview first, a free summary of key findings is available at info.tmsatoday.org/2026-tmsa-benchmarking-study-summary.
TMSA members can access the full report through the member portal at no additional cost.
