If Q4 2025 taught us anything, it is that the middle ground is collapsing.
Across the four major research studies that SBI released this quarter, which analyzed over 300 mid-market profit and loss statements (P&Ls), 515 sales managers, and 160 billion telemetry data points, a singular and alarming pattern emerged.
Most leaders spent FY 24 trying to stabilize. But our data shows that while Laggards were busy restructuring org charts and freezing budgets, market Leaders were actually increasing sales and marketing spend by 8% and preparing to steal market share.
The Growth Intelligence Quarterly compiles these findings into a single view. When you connect the dots between our research on NRR, AI failure rates, and Profitable Growth, one reality becomes clear: The strategies that kept you safe in 2025 will leave you behind in 2026.
Here are the three hidden signals from Q4 that every CEO needs to act on now.
1. The Growth Paradox: Leaders Are Spending More, Not Less
Conventional wisdom says that when demand softens, you cut costs to protect margin. Our analysis of 300 mid-market companies proves that is exactly how Laggards behave—and exactly why they fail.
We identified a cohort of "Rule of" Leaders—the top 21% of companies that outperformed peers in both growth and EBITDA. These companies didn't starve their commercial teams. They actually increased sales and marketing spend by 8% in FY24, compared to just 5% for the rest of the market.
The Strategic Divergence
The gap isn't just about how much they spent, but where they focused that energy:
- Laggards looked inward: They spent Q4 shuffling the deck chairs. 63% of laggards redesigned their GTM models, and 80% overhauled channel coverage. They treated the org chart as the problem.
- Leaders looked outward: They treated the strategy as the problem. Instead of internal restructuring, 93% of leaders focused on market expansion, and 37 percent of leaders emphasized pricing and packaging leverage (compared to just 10 percent of laggards).
The P&L Impact
Because leaders focused on revenue quality (price/market) rather than internal movement, they achieved a 31 percent higher growth yield per dollar spent.
The Lesson: You cannot reorganize your way to growth. While laggards are busy "optimizing" their structure, leaders are buying market share.
2. The Retention Lie: Why High Usage is not equal to Renewal
For a decade, the Customer Success playbook was simple: If usage goes up, the customer is healthy.
That assumption is now dangerous. With 58 percent of companies reporting declining NRR, CEOs are demanding answers. Our partnership with QuadSci analyzed 160 billion telemetry data points to find them. The result? Usage volume only shows part of the picture.
We found that while solution usage explains 80 percent of renewal decisions, looking at volume alone creates false positives. A customer’s usage can vary dramatically over time obscuring the signals GTM teams need to predict churn.
The Hidden Patterns
The winners in Q4 didn't just measure "how much." They measured Consistency. By mapping accounts into six distinct cohorts based on usage patterns (like "Power Users" vs. "Explorers"), these companies could predict churn and expansion with 90 percent accuracy, months before a renewal conversation happened.
- The Trap: Treating an "Explorer" (new, erratic usage) like a "Power User" (established, steady usage) just because they both logged in ten times this week.
- The Fix: Different cohorts require different interventions. Applying a renewal playbook to an inconsistent user isn't just ineffective; it accelerates churn.
The Lesson: Stop trusting your generic "Health Score." If your dashboard doesn't account for behavioral consistency, you are flying blind into your 2026 renewals.
3. The AI Reality Check: It’s a Management Issue, Not a Tech Issue
The hype cycle crashed into reality in Q4. MIT’s report confirmed that 95 percent of AI pilots fail to produce P&L impact.
The failure isn't technical. It’s managerial. Companies are treating AI like software. Install it, train the user, walk away. But AI isn't a tool; it's a workforce. When you treat it like a static application, context is lost, trust erodes, and adoption stalls.
This creates a massive bottleneck at the frontline. Our research into 515 sales managers found they are currently spending 47 percent of their week on necessary but lower-value tasks (reporting, forecasting, administrative), leaving only 15 percent for coaching.
The Capacity Trap
You cannot drop an AI pilot on a manager who is already drowning in admin and expect adoption. They simply don't have the bandwidth to figure out how to prompt-engineer their way to efficiency.
The "Rule of" Leaders understand that AI is a service layer, not a software license. They are using AI services to strip away that 47 percent admin burden, transforming the manager from a "Compliance Monitor" to an "Orchestrator."
- Current State: Managers spend days chasing CRM updates and inspecting pipeline hygiene.
- Future State: AI Services handle the data hygiene. Managers spend 32 percent of their time coaching, using AI-generated insights to shape deal strategy rather than just reporting on it.
The Lesson: If you buy AI tools without redesigning the manager’s workflow, you are just adding noise to a broken system.
The 2026 Imperative
When you combine these three insights, the roadmap for 2026 becomes clear.
The companies that will dominate next year aren't waiting for the market to rebound. They are:
- Investing through the downturns (smartly, in price and expansion, not just headcount).
- Looking deeper at data (ignoring volume for consistency to solve NRR).
- Operationalizing AI (moving from "pilots" to managed services that free up frontline managers).
The divide is widening. You can be on the side that waits, or the side that distances.
Get the full data, the failure patterns, and the playbooks in the Growth Intelligence Quarterly.
Read the Full Q4 Analysis
