Report: sales teams focus on their best and worst performers, while the middle 60% decide the quarter
Latest SalesScreen data finds that the biggest performance opportunity lies not with struggling sellers, but with capable middle performers working below their potential. Companies that close the gap see middle-performer KPIs rise by 61% and overall sales revenue grow by 30%.
New York, NY, July 28th, 2026 — SalesScreen, the AI-powered sales performance and gamification platform, today released The Sales Performance Gap Report, an analysis of sales underperformance based on platform data and industry research. Its central finding is that the biggest performance gap is hiding in plain sight: in a typical team, the middle 60% of reps operate at just 60–85% of their potential, yet receive less attention than either the top or the bottom, leaving the largest source of untapped revenue largely unaddressed.
The report draws on behavioral and performance data from SalesScreen's deployments, combined with third-party industry research, including an analysis of 13,646 sales competitions across banking and finance, energy, healthcare, insurance, professional services, real estate, software, telecommunications, and more.
The findings observe that management attention tends to concentrate on the extremes. Top performers are recognized for visible results, while struggling reps receive coaching because their numbers demand it. Middle performers receive less support than either group, despite representing the largest share of the available performance gain. SalesScreen's own data estimates that a 30-person sales team with an average deal value of $25,000 could be leaving up to $439,000 on the table every quarter simply by not improving the daily activity of their middle performers by 15%.
The report argues that this lack of support is partly a visibility problem. Most sales systems record outcomes after they happen, while the daily behaviors shaping those outcomes remain largely unseen. Signals of a slipping quarter can appear two to three weeks before they surface in revenue data, meaning managers often discover the problem only after their best opportunity to change the result has passed.
"Every sales leader has run the competition that lifts numbers for two weeks before everything slides back," said SindreHaaland, CEO and Founder of SalesScreen, whose science-backed approach to sales performance helps enterprise teams at Allianz, Nordea Bank, and GoodLeap turn consistent daily behaviors into predictable revenue. "The industry treats that as a motivation problem, but it's really about focusing on the wrong indicators. Managers are expected to intervene early, while relying on systems that mostly show them only outcomes. By the time those numbers tell them something is wrong, it's already too late to make an impact"
Among SalesScreen customer teams that addressed the middle-performer gap directly, key metrics for the group improved by 61%, while overall sales revenue increased by 30%.
"Managers spend around a fifth of their week on self-reporting that just tells them what they already know, and 70% say they don't have time to coach," Haaland added. "The hours leadership actually needs to develop their team are being spent confirming what already happened."
Industry research cited in the report underscores the scale of the problem: According toSalesforce's 2024 State of Sales report, 84% of sales reps missed quota last year. The2026 edition found that nearly half of reps rarely receive feedback on their sales conversations and that sales teams are increasingly stretched, with administrative bottlenecks identified as the primary drag on productivity.
The full Sales Performance Gap Report is available on the SalesScreen website.
For additional information:
Media kit with pictures
Olga Karanikos, CMO
SalesScreen
olga.karanikos@salesscreen.com
About SalesScreen
SalesScreen is the leading sales gamification solution for building motivated teams that achieve their goals. SalesScreen taps into the individual psychological drivers that motivate sales reps, boosting performance and helping managers build the right strategy for their team. Our gamification works by engaging each user with up-to-the-minute performance data, short-term targets, dozens of competitions, personal milestone celebrations, a rewards shop, and streamlined sales coaching. Since its creation in 2014, SalesScreen has motivated tens of thousands of sales reps globally and is consistently rated highly by customers for ease of use, satisfaction, and industry-leading customer service. Read more on salesscreen.com or follow us on LinkedIn.