B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
49%
49% -- share always researching accounts before contact for average AEs (2026)
49% of non-top-performing AEs always research an account before contact.
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
49%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
Geography
North America
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
50
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Prospeo
Primary
Tier C
https://www.datamagnet.co/post/account-research-infrastructure-for-aes/ ↗
Source Article
Account Research Infrastructure: The 4-Layer AE Playbook
Account Research Infrastructure for AEs: A 4-Layer Guide
B2B buyers complete 60-70% of their evaluation before they ever talk to a salesperson (ORM Tech, 2026). That means your AE walks into most conversations already behind. If they're piecing together account context on the fly, they're not catchi…
Original Research
Prospeo
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Cited from Prospeo.
Methodology documented
Segmentation
IndustryB2B
Company SizeEnterprise
RegionNorth America
RoleAll marketers
Cite this stat
Plain Text
average AEs: 49% share always researching accounts before contact. Source: Prospeo (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/other-ae-account-research-rate-2026
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/other-ae-account-research-rate-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>49%</strong> -- share always researching accounts before contact for average AEs<br><small>Source: Prospeo (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/other-ae-account-research-rate-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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