N.Rich launches the survey to explore how challenger brands run GTM in 2026

Help us learn how challenger brands beat market leaders.

Survey Overview

Who this research is for

This research is for B2B marketing, sales, and revenue leaders operating as challenger brands in competitive, high ACV markets. It is designed for teams that are not the default choice in their category and must work harder to earn trust, enter deals earlier, and compete against established market leaders.

It is especially relevant for organizations running Account Based Marketing and complex GTM motions where buying decisions involve multiple stakeholders, long sales cycles, and high perceived risk. If your team competes against category giants, operates across markets with uneven brand recognition, or lacks benchmarks that reflect similar constraints, this research is built for you.

Why this research exists

Most GTM playbooks and benchmarks are written for market leaders. They assume brand recognition, early buyer consideration, and steady inbound demand. Challenger teams know this reality does not reflect how their markets actually work.

This research exists to better understand the challenger tax, meaning the additional effort required to earn trust, influence buyers early, and compete effectively against established leaders. By collecting data across regions, industries, and GTM motions, the goal is to create a clearer, data backed view of challenger GTM conditions today.

What you’ll get by participating

This 10 minute survey contributes to the first data backed Challenger GTM Playbook. Participants will receive:

• Early access to the full research findings
• Peer benchmarks against other challenger brands
• Insight into how GTM conditions differ across markets and motions
• A clearer baseline for evaluating ABM and GTM performance

Challenger brands need different ABM and GTM strategies because late entry, lower trust, and buyer bias reduce conversion, pipeline quality, and predictable revenue growth.

Understanding your challenger reality matters if your B2B company is trying to grow through Account Based Marketing or Go To Market strategies in a competitive environment. This article explains why many challenger brands struggle to see results from standard ABM and GTM playbooks, how buyer trust and early opinions shape deal outcomes, and why clearly understanding these conditions is necessary to evaluate performance and progress accurately.

How market conditions differ for challenger brands

In many B2B categories, buyers do not approach the market with equal consideration for all vendors. Gartner research shows that 77 percent of B2B purchases involve multiple decision makers and high perceived risk, which often leads buyers to rely on familiar or established options. At the same time, broader market research from McKinsey shows that the number of challenger brands has grown by roughly 25 percent over the past five years, driven by faster go to market strategies and shifting buyer loyalty.

The result is a more crowded competitive landscape where more companies are competing, but fewer are becoming default choices. For challenger brands, this directly affects how ABM and GTM strategies perform in practice, particularly when it comes to trust building, timing of engagement, and early buyer influence.

Why standard ABM and GTM benchmarks fall short for challenger brands

Most ABM and GTM benchmarks are built on assumptions that reflect market leader conditions, including baseline brand recognition, early buyer consideration, and consistent inbound demand. Challenger brands often operate without these advantages. They are more likely to enter deals later, face higher scrutiny, and engage larger buying committees under greater perceived risk.

In high ACV B2B environments, buying decisions typically involve multiple stakeholders with different priorities and risk thresholds. For challengers, this complexity makes it difficult to assess ABM and GTM effectiveness using traditional lead based or funnel metrics alone. Late entry into deals, longer evaluation cycles, and no decision outcomes are common, yet these dynamics are not always visible in standard reporting.

When benchmarks do not account for timing, trust, and buying committee complexity, teams struggle to determine whether performance gaps are driven by execution issues or structural market factors. One of the primary motivations behind this research is to better understand these differences and build benchmarks that reflect how challenger brands actually experience the market.

Building a more accurate view of challenger GTM reality

As competition increases and buyer behavior continues to evolve, marketing, sales, and revenue leaders need more than surface level performance indicators. They need context. A clearer understanding of challenger reality helps teams identify where friction occurs in the buying journey, where influence is gained or lost, and how GTM performance varies across markets and motions.

A more accurate view of challenger GTM reality also enables teams to compare themselves against relevant peers, interpret performance signals with greater confidence, and align leadership expectations more realistically. It creates a shared language across marketing, sales, and revenue operations to discuss challenges that are structural rather than tactical.

This research is designed to establish that baseline understanding. It does not aim to prescribe solutions or promote specific strategies, but to clarify how challenger brands are operating today so future decisions can be grounded in better information.

Are you fighting the giants of your category?

Share your insights and learn from other challengers by contributing to the Challenger GTM survey. 

Your perspective helps ensure future benchmarks and insights reflect how challenger brands actually compete, not just how market leaders operate.