Somewhere right now, a company just like yours is sitting on their hands. Waiting for inflation to ease. Waiting for chain buyers to loosen up. Waiting for the market to feel normal again.
That company is your competition.
And while they wait, you get to work.
A study of 3,900 companies found that those which maintained their marketing spend during the 2008 recession achieved a 17% compound growth rate, while their cost-cutting peers fell behind.
Source: Medium Giant, citing analysis of 3,900 companies, August 2025
The companies that kept playing offense did not just survive. They used it to take ground.
What makes 2026 different is that inflation is not creating a temporary pause. It is extending the buying cycle itself. The average B2B sales cycle has grown to 6.5 months, up from 4.9 months in 2019, and chain buyers under margin pressure are actively deprioritizing new vendor conversations. The bar to get in front of a decision-maker has never been higher.
Here is the part most suppliers and service providers miss: the length of the cycle is not the obstacle. It is the argument for starting now.
If you start prospecting today, you are not closing today. You are closing six, nine, twelve months from now. Your competitors who are waiting for things to settle down will be cold calling into accounts you have already been nurturing for a year. The holiday buying cycle makes this more urgent than most suppliers realize. Chain buyers are not making vendor decisions in October. They are making them now. Deloitte’s 2025 Retail Holiday Buyer Survey found that 78% of retail buyers were already concerned about securing adequate inventory from reliable suppliers, and that survey was conducted in May and June. Then factor in Amazon moving Prime Day 2026 to late June, a full two weeks earlier than its usual July window. Chains plan their promotional calendars around Amazon’s timing. When Amazon moves, the whole retail calendar shifts with it. The Q4 conversation starts in Q2. If you are not in front of the right contacts before summer, you are not in consideration for the season.
There is one more thing working in your favor. Most of your competitors are not just pausing outreach. They are going dark. Chain decision-makers notice. The company that keeps showing up, sending relevant information, checking in when something shifts in the market, that company earns the evaluation slot when spending resumes. The one that went quiet has to re-introduce itself.
The other problem is single threading. Most companies selling into chains know the category buyer and treat that as coverage. It is not. The buying committee includes the regional VP, the ops lead, the director of purchasing. Accounts with multiple contacts engaged close at a 42% higher rate, yet 78% of accounts are still single-threaded. One personnel change and you are starting over.
That is what moving now actually looks like. Go through your target list and count how many verified contacts you have at each chain. If the answer is one, you are one personnel change away from starting over. Use your best current clients as a blueprint; the size, segment, and structure that made them a fit; and find more accounts that match. Build the list before you need it, not after.
Keep the accounts already in your pipeline warm while you do. A check-in, a relevant data point, a note when something changes in their segment. You are not pushing for a decision. You are making sure they remember who showed up when things were hard. And you are mapping beyond the first contact, so that when a decision gets called, you are already in the room with the people who make it.
CSG LeadSearch covers tens of thousands of chain accounts across retail, restaurant, and service, with hundreds of thousands of verified decision-maker contacts refreshed daily. The list your competitors are not building right now is the one you should be.
Patience is not a strategy. It is just a slower way to lose ground.
Get in front of the accounts that matter now. Your competitors will still be waiting.
Sources
Retail TouchPoints. “What’s Behind Amazon’s Prime Day Calendar Change?” May 8, 2026. https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/news/whats-behind-amazons-prime-day-calendar-change/619248/ Deloitte. “2025 Retail Holiday Buyer Survey.” Conducted May-June 2025. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/retail-distribution/holiday-retail-buyers-survey-strategies.html Medium Giant. “Reduce marketing spend during a recession? History says no.” August 7, 2025. https://mediumgiant.co/blog/marketing-during-recession/
Gradient Works / Ebsta. “2025 B2B Sales Performance Benchmarks.” March 30, 2026. https://www.gradient.works/blog/2025-b2b-sales-performance-benchmarks
Forrester / 6Sense. Cited in Digital Applied, “B2B Marketing Statistics 2026.” April 21, 2026. https://www.digitalapplied.com/blog/b2b-marketing-statistics-2026-essential-data-points
Wave Connect. “B2B Sales Statistics 2026.” March 9, 2026. https://wavecnct.com/blogs/news/b2b-sales-statistics
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