Six dated studies put a typical B2B buying committee at somewhere between 2 and 13 people inside the buying company. Where a study lands in that range depends on who it counts.
Count only the core group that owns the decision, and TrustRadius's 2024 survey of technology buyers puts it at 2 to 5 people. Count everyone inside the company who is involved, and Forrester's survey of more than 16,000 business buyers puts the average at 13.
Forrester's 2026 edition goes further: 13 internal stakeholders plus 9 external influencers on a typical decision.
Company size and deal size move the number. In the TrustRadius data, the most common core group at small and mid-sized companies is 2 to 3 people, and at enterprises 4 to 5.
6sense's 2025 buyer experience report sums up its 2023 and 2024 studies: typical purchases involved 10 or more people, on a $250,000 average deal size. Its 2025 survey found that buying groups had not grown, even though buyers were weighing more vendors.
I checked every figure below in September 2026.
What six studies say about committee size
The table puts six dated studies next to each other, with what each one actually counted.
| Study | Published | Who was asked or measured | Reported size | What it counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TrustRadius, B2B Buying Disconnect | 2024 (survey March 2024) | 2,164 technology buyers involved in a software or hardware purchase in the past year | Groups stabilizing at 2 to 5 people | The designated buying group |
| Forrester, State of Business Buying 2024 | December 4, 2024 | More than 16,000 business buyers worldwide | 13 people on average, usually from 2 or more departments | Everyone inside the organization involved in the decision |
| Forrester, State of Business Buying 2026 | January 21, 2026 | Sample not stated in the press release | 13 internal stakeholders plus 9 external influencers | Internal people plus outsiders who shape the decision |
| 6sense, Buyer Experience Report | 2023 and 2024 studies, summarized in the 2025 report | Buyers in its 2023 and 2024 studies; the 2025 survey drew nearly 4,000 buyers with a minimum spend of $25,000 in the past two years | 10 or more people on a $250,000 average deal size; no growth in the 2025 survey | People involved in a typical purchase |
| Gong, deal analysis | February 13, 2026 | Over 1 million sales cycles with executives | At least 10 stakeholders | Stakeholders in won deals worth $50K to $250K |
| One outbound agency's 2026 study | 2026 | 1,871 client intake forms, January 2024 to February 2026 | 4.6, 5.6 and 6.0 titles by target company size | Titles sellers said they planned to target |
Table: buying committee size by source, checked September 2026.
Every source here is a vendor of some kind. Forrester sells research, 6sense and Gong sell revenue software, TrustRadius runs a software review site, and the last row is an agency describing its own clients.
None of them is neutral. Each one does state who it asked or what it measured, and that is what makes them comparable.
Why the numbers do not agree
The gap between 2 to 5 and 13 comes from counting different circles of people around the same kind of purchase.
The core group versus everyone involved. TrustRadius counts the designated buying group. Its own report adds that other people inside the company still influence the decision without sitting in that group, with legal and procurement as examples. Forrester's 13 counts everyone inside the organization who is involved.
Inside versus outside. Forrester's 2026 figure adds 9 external influencers to the 13 internal stakeholders. Those are people outside the buying company whose views shape the purchase. No other study in the table counts them.
Deal size filters. 6sense's 10 or more comes from its 2023 and 2024 studies, where the average deal was $250,000. Gong's figure of 10 is for won deals of $50K to $250K. Studies built on bigger purchases report bigger groups.
Surveys versus deal data. Forrester, TrustRadius and 6sense asked buyers. Gong analyzed sales cycles in its own data instead of surveying anyone.
Plans versus reality. The agency study counted the job titles its clients wrote on an intake form before any outreach started. Its own limitations section says the titles reflect intended targeting, and it cannot tell which title combinations led to closed deals.
So before you repeat any committee number, ask two questions. Who was counted, and on what size of purchase?
How committee size changes with company size
Two of the studies split their numbers by the size of the buying company.
TrustRadius's 2024 survey looked at the most common group size in each segment:
- Small businesses: 2 to 3 people was the most common size, reported by 53% of small-business respondents
- Mid-sized businesses: also 2 to 3 people, reported by 39%
- Enterprises: 4 to 5 people was the most common, reported by 34%
The agency study points the same way from the seller's side. Sellers targeting companies under 200 employees listed 4.6 titles on average, mid-market targets (200 to 1,000 employees) got 5.6, and enterprise targets (1,000 or more) got 6.0.
Among the enterprise-focused sellers, 20.7% listed 6 to 8 titles and 14.2% named 9 or more.
The step up from small to large companies is real, but in absolute terms it adds only one or two people. In the TrustRadius data that makes the typical enterprise group nearly twice the size of the typical small-company group. In the agency study it is about 30% larger.
Industry is a different kind of split. None of the six studies reports headcount by industry.
The agency study splits roles by industry instead. In its marketing and advertising group (101 forms), a CMO was listed in 54.5% of cases, and financial services was the one industry group where the CEO (51.9%) came ahead of the CTO (43.0%).
Why bigger deals bring bigger groups
Deal size is where the bigger numbers come from.
For enterprise-priced purchases, TrustRadius notes that teams remain larger overall, though they look to be shrinking from more than 20 people. 6sense's groups of 10 or more, from its 2023 and 2024 studies, sat on deals averaging $250,000.
In Gong's data, won deals worth $50K to $250K usually have at least 10 people involved.
A separate Gong analysis covered 1.8 million new-business deals, all closed in 2024. In that set, large strategic wins averaged 17 contacts on the buyer side.
Put together, the pattern is simple. A small purchase at a small company can be settled by 2 or 3 people. Once a won deal reaches the $50K to $250K range, the studies put the group at 10 or more.
Who sits on the buying committee
The studies also say something about who sits in the room, which matters as much as the count.
- Seniority. In TrustRadius's 2024 survey, 52% of buying group decision-makers held VP titles or above.
- Procurement. Forrester's 2026 release counts procurement staff among the decision-makers in 53% of buying cycles.
- Technical buyers. In the agency study, a CTO appeared in 65.4% of the SMB-focused intake forms and 77.1% of the enterprise-focused ones.
- The CEO. In the same study, the CEO or founder was listed in 33.8% of SMB-focused forms, 38.3% of mid-market ones and 28.7% of enterprise ones.
- Finance. The agency's forms named a CFO in 18.1% of mid-market-focused cases and 17.1% of enterprise-focused ones, rising to 44.3% in the study's financial services group.
- Newer titles. Chief digital, customer, information security and revenue officers each showed up on fewer than 4% of the agency's 1,871 forms, between 2.2% and 3.7% apiece.
The first two bullets come from buyer surveys. The last four are shares of seller intake forms, so they show who sellers planned to reach. Which title to email first is a separate question, and the steps further down start from your own closed deals.
Where the "6 to 10" figure fits
A committee-size figure you may have seen is "6 to 10 decision makers", credited to Gartner.
Gartner's current B2B buying journey page does not state it. That page describes buying groups and six buying jobs that buyers loop through, and names organizational change as the driver behind 99% of B2B purchases, but it gives no headcount.
Without a current Gartner page behind it, the 6 to 10 range has no year, sample or method you can point to. It does sit inside the span of the dated studies above. When you need a number you can defend in front of a board or a sales team, use one with a year and a method attached.
How many people to plan for
The two tables below turn the study figures into planning numbers. They are planning guidance derived from those studies, and no single study reports them in this form. Every figure in them traces to a named study and year.
| Target company | Core group (TrustRadius, 2024) | Titles sellers planned (agency study, 2026) | Names to map per account (derived) | Roles named most often (agency study, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small, under 200 employees | 2 to 3 people, the most common size for 53% of small-business respondents | 4.6 on average | 2 to 5 | CTO 65.4%, CEO or founder 33.8% |
| Mid-sized, 200 to 1,000 employees | 2 to 3 people, the most common size for 39% | 5.6 on average | 2 to 6 | CTO 70.9%, CEO 38.3%, CFO 18.1% |
| Enterprise, 1,000 or more employees | 4 to 5 people, the most common size for 34% | 6.0 on average | 4 to 6 | CTO 77.1%, CEO 28.7%, CIO 20.7%, CFO 17.1% |
Table: planning guidance by company size, derived from TrustRadius (2024) and one outbound agency's 2026 study. The employee bands are the agency study's. TrustRadius labels its segments small, mid-sized and enterprise. The role column leaves out the agency's generic "Manager (other)" bucket, which ranked third at small and mid-sized targets (31.7% and 28.4%) and second at enterprise targets (30.9%).
The low end of each range is the core group buyers reported to TrustRadius. The high end is the agency study's average title count, rounded to a whole person.
| Purchase | Plan for (derived) | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Won deals of $50K to $250K | 10 or more people by the time the deal is won | Gong, 2026: at least 10 stakeholders in a typical won deal of that size |
| Purchases around $250,000 on average | 10 or more people | 6sense, 2023 and 2024 studies (summarized in its 2025 report): groups averaging 10 or more members |
| Large strategic wins | Around 17 buyer contacts | Gong, 2025: average for large strategic deals won, in its 2024 new-business data |
Table: planning guidance by purchase size, derived from Gong (2025 and 2026 pages) and 6sense (2023 and 2024 studies, summarized in its 2025 report).
The outer edge is Forrester's 2026 count of 13 internal stakeholders plus 9 external influencers on a typical decision. That counts everyone inside and outside the company who shapes the purchase, well beyond the names on a prospect list.
What this means when you sell to a committee
My team runs a different strategy for every client, because no single setup fits every business. Committee size follows the same logic. A 30-person consultancy buying one service and a 3,000-person company buying a platform are unlikely to involve the same number of people, and one average across both describes neither.
Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. A cold email goes to one named person, so these numbers decide how many people per account are worth researching.
Five steps turn the tables above into a plan for an outbound team:
- Split the list by company size first. A list that spans one-person firms and 10,000-employee companies mixes three different buying processes, as I put it in my post on what goes wrong in a lead list. Plan each band from its own row of the company-size planning table.
- Map titles from your own closed deals. The role shares above describe what many sellers planned. Your past projects show who actually signed, and my post on choosing a market explains how to pull that title from each one.
- Check who your first contacts are. Before adding more names, take the first contact at each account and sort that list by job title. At small and founder-led accounts, count the people who could sign a contract without asking anyone else. The list post has the rule: if they are under half, stop the campaign. At mid-sized and enterprise accounts almost nobody signs alone, so count the first contacts who sit in the core buying group or own the budget instead.
- Find and verify the names per account. Use the "names to map" column as the guide for how many people to research at each company. Mapping them is not a plan to email all of them in week one. The first wave is smaller, and I cover how many people per company to contact first separately. Run each address through a verification tool before anything is sent to it.
- Add roles as the purchase grows. Once a conversation points to a deal of $50K or more, plan from the purchase-size table. Gong found won deals had twice the buyer contacts of lost ones.
One more case changes the numbers. In a small market, my post on choosing a market argues for going deeper instead of wider: extra decision-makers per company, sequences that run longer, and patience. There, plan from the top of each range.
Common questions about B2B buying groups
Is the Gartner "6 to 10 decision makers" figure still accurate?
It is not stated on Gartner's current B2B buying journey page, which gives no headcount. Dated studies put the core group at 2 to 5 people and everyone involved at about 10 to 13, so 6 to 10 falls inside that span but has no year or method attached.
Are B2B buying committees getting bigger?
Not by internal headcount. Forrester counted 13 people inside the buying company in 2024 and 13 internal stakeholders in 2026, when its release also counted 9 external influencers. 6sense's 2025 report says buying group size has not grown, and TrustRadius found group sizes stabilizing in 2024.
Does a bigger buying group mean a longer sales cycle?
TrustRadius's 2024 survey points that way, without proving that group size is the cause. In it, 87% of buyers completed purchases within six months. For enterprise buyers, where groups are larger, that fell to 65% within six months and reached 87% only by 12 months.
Does buying committee size differ by industry?
None of the six studies in the table reports headcount by industry. The agency study reports that industry changes which functions sellers list more than company size does: in its marketing and advertising group, 54.5% of forms named a CMO. For headcount, the studies split by company size and deal size.