Clari Research: Enterprise Sales Gap – New Study Finds Top 10% of Sellers Drive 65% of Revenue

Clari Labs Enterprise Benchmarking Report analyzes 10 million opportunities to uncover what separates top sellers from the rest

Clari, the leader in Enterprise Revenue Orchestration, today released a new research report analyzing 10 million anonymous opportunities from Fortune 500 companies. The latest research from Clari Labs finds that just 10% of sellers now generate 65% of all revenue, while the bottom 50% contribute less than 8% — a divide that exposes fundamental inefficiencies in how revenue teams operate today.

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Driving these insights, Clari Labs taps into the world’s most comprehensive revenue dataset spanning CRM, email, meetings, support tickets, marketing systems, ERP, and conversation signals — historically tracking change and impact across 10+ years worth of revenue data. This breadth of data allows Clari customers to identify revenue risks, uncover trends, and drive next-best actions across the entire revenue process, not just within isolated sales conversations.

“The State of Enterprise Revenue Report, 2025: Insights from 10 Million Opportunities” by Clari Labs reveals a growing reality: The most successful sales organizations aren’t just hiring better reps — they’re operationalizing AI, data, cadences, and automated workflows at scale to create repeatable success. The result? A widening gap between top sellers.

Andy Byrne, CEO and Co-Founder of Clari, said: “Will your team be part of the 2% that dominates revenue — or the 98% playing catch-up? Sales leaders need AI-ready data, visibility, and accurate predictions to take action. Enterprises with revenue cadences and repeatable processes are systematically converting opportunities into closed deals — faster, and at enterprise scale.”

Clari Labs: Key Findings

This report showcases Clari’s industry-leading revenue data, scale and expertise — uncovering the behaviors that enable top-performing reps and providing actionable insights for revenue leaders looking to replicate success.

• Top performers dominate revenue — The top 2% of sellers alone drive 37% of total revenue. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% contribute just 7.6%. Revenue teams are over-reliant on a handful of rainmakers instead of operationalizing what makes them successful.
• AI accelerates deal velocity — Companies using AI-assisted selling and automation close new logo deals 20% faster than they did two years ago. The companies leveraging AI aren’t just closing deals faster, they’re driving predictability, reducing pipeline risk, and optimizing execution at scale.
• Expansion is the most efficient path to growth — Expansion deals make up just 5% of total pipeline (with renewals accounting for the majority) but drive 13% of won revenue per quarter — closing 20% faster than new logos. Yet, many companies fail to treat expansion as a structured cadence, missing out on faster, more predictable revenue.
• Seller inefficiency impacts revenue — Only 25% of sellers complete assigned sales tasks, and 98% of companies fail to track closed/lost reasons consistently. Closing this execution gap isn’t just about efficiency — it’s about capturing revenue that’s already within reach.
• Bigger deals don’t take much longer to close — Deals worth $500,000 take only 15 days longer to close than deals worth $50,000 to $100,000. The companies winning big are prioritizing high-value deals and maximizing rep efficiency, not wasting time on low-impact opportunities.

The new revenue playbook: How top enterprises win

The companies winning more revenue aren’t just selling differently — they’re running revenue across the entire customer lifecycle differently. The fastest-growing enterprises are rewriting the rules of sales execution with:

• AI-driven execution: The best sellers aren’t just working harder — they’re using AI to prioritize deals, predict buyer intent, and automate workflows. Though fewer than 50% are leveraging AI effectively for their roles.
• Revenue Orchestration that replaces CRM guesswork: The traditional CRM model is a system of record. The fastest-growing companies are moving beyond static sales tools and embracing full-funnel Revenue Orchestration to drive repeatability, orchestrate revenue cadences, unify forecasting, deal execution, and pipeline management.
• Expansion as the fastest path to revenue: While ACV has declined in recent years, net-new pipeline remains important, leading companies are winning through renewals, upsells, and deeper customer relationships and delivering value.

The future of revenue is here, and it runs on Clari

Building on 10 years of AI innovation, Clari is the only platform that integrates internal and external-facing AI-powered workflows, giving revenue teams a unified platform to drive execution across the entire revenue lifecycle. With AI-driven insights and Revenue Cadences, Clari guides every revenue-critical employee to take the right action at the right time with the right insights — driving consistency and repeatability every week of the quarter.

Research Methodology

Clari Labs data scientists aggregated anonymized data points from 10 million opportunity records from over 100 de-identified major enterprises for all deals between Q1 2023 – Q4 2024. Each opportunity was analyzed based on 33 parameters, including: name, close date, rep, amount, closed lost reason, renewal rates, account firmographic information, and more. These enterprises are all headquartered within the United States, and all revenue is recorded in U.S. dollars.

Additional Resources

• Download the 2025 Enterprise Benchmarking Report by Clari Labs.
• Secure your spot in Clari's upcoming webinar on March 20, 2025 at 8am PT / 11am ET. “The State of Revenue AI: Separating Hype from Tangible Innovation,” will explore why early AI promises fell short, what tangible benefits exist now, and how you should be thinking about your AI-powered revenue cadence.
• Read about Clari’s latest AI Innovations for the entire revenue team.

About Clari Labs

As the research arm of Clari, Clari Labs analyzed sales performance across industries, company sizes, and deal structures to deliver the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise revenue benchmarking report. The findings outlined in this report are powered by Clari’s proprietary AI models, which predict revenue trends and risk with precision. With $4 trillion in revenue under management, Clari Labs researchers have access to the largest and fastest-growing revenue data set.

About Clari

Clari's industry-leading Revenue Orchestration Platform helps companies optimize the end-to-end revenue process. More than 1,500 organizations run revenue on Clari to improve win rates, prevent slipped deals, forecast with accuracy, and boost the productivity of all revenue-critical employees. Visit clari.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

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