2026 will be remembered as the year the market rewarded the disciplined, signal-driven, and buyer-intelligent — and left behind the reactive, story-driven, and nostalgia-led. This isn’t a market correction. It’s a capability correction.

by Lucrum Partners As we move into sales kickoff season, revenue leaders face a clear crossroads: either they run their playbooks like modern offensive coordinators, studying the defense (buyers), audibling at the line, adapting the play mid-game, or they rely on familiar “best practices” that increasingly resemble last season’s Hail Mary: flashy, hopeful, but lacking precision. At Lucrum Partners, we’ve seen enough performance data to know which path wins. The New Buying Gam

The revolving door of executive sales leadership is spinning faster than most companies realize. CROs and VPs of Sales are burning out, being replaced, or walking away, not because they’ve lost their edge, but because the systems they’re asked to run are fundamentally misaligned with how growth actually happens today.In short, leadership churn is often the symptom. The underlying cause is a misfit between what leaders are accountable for and the systems they’ve inherited.

When landmark legislation passes, capital doesn’t just move, it accelerates toward new opportunity. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is doing exactly that. It’s been hailed as one of the most consequential tax and capital investment bills in modern U.S. history. By expanding 100% first-year depreciation, R&D tax incentives, and qualified production property (QPP) expensing, the bill effectively reprograms corporate investment math.

Across industries, B2B revenue leaders are feeling the pressure. Win rates are down. Customer experience is deteriorating. And buyer confidence, once predictable, is now scattered across bloated buying groups that can’t reach consensus.

2026 is shaping up to be the year when traditional go-to-market (GTM) strategies finally collapse under their own weight. The funnels, lead-hand-offs, and stage-gated campaigns that once powered predictable growth are now failing to keep up with a new kind of market dynamic—where buyers are self-directed, AI curates the shortlist, and alignment is the only multiplier that matters.

Do your clients really trust your teams—or are they staying out of convenience until a better option comes along? It’s an uncomfortable question, but one every CEO needs to wrestle with before locking in a 2026 revenue plan

Too many CEOs today are still staring into the mirror, uncertain about what they want their firm to be in the market. They say, “We want to be viewed as a strategic partner”, but their go-to-market reality tells a different story. Instead of conviction, they drift in the sea of sameness.

High seller turnover and missed quotas are becoming the most frustrating constants for today’s GTM and revenue leaders. For many, every new quarter feels like déjà vu: underperformance, reactionary hiring, and another round of “performance management.” But here’s the truth: If you’re tired of firing low performers, then stop hiring them.