A seller experiences a stalled deal as silence. Inside the buying organisation, the same period is usually noisy.
What the survey found
Gartner surveyed 632 business buyers between August and September 2024 and reported in May 2025 that 74 percent of buying teams showed what it calls unhealthy conflict during the decision process. It defines that as members holding conflicting objectives, disagreeing on the right course of action, or being overruled by decision makers outside the group.
Buying groups that did reach consensus were 2.5 times more likely to report that the deal they completed was high quality. Separately, Gartner has reported that 74 percent of technology buyers found the buying process itself complex, and that only 27 percent came away saying they had achieved a high-quality deal.
What this means for a deal you are in
It reframes what a slow deal usually is. The default seller explanation is that the buyer is not a priority, or that the champion has gone quiet, or that budget moved. The more probable explanation, at these rates, is that the group is disagreeing and the disagreement is not about you.
It also explains a pattern most firms have seen and few have named: the deal that dies after a good final meeting. If the group was already in unhealthy conflict, a persuasive session with one part of it can sharpen the conflict rather than resolve it.
What we take from it
The useful shift is to stop treating the champion as the buyer and start treating the group as the buyer. That changes what you produce. A document that a champion can circulate, which states the scope, the limitations, the cost and the exit in terms a finance lead and an operational lead would each recognise, is doing work in rooms you will never be in.
It also argues for making disagreement easy to have in front of you. A proposal that presents one option removes the group decision and replaces it with a yes or no, which is the form most likely to be deferred. A proposal that presents a defensible smaller scope alongside the full one gives the group something to resolve rather than something to postpone.
Our position is that the low quality-deal figure is the one to sit with. If only around a quarter of buyers think they bought well, then a firm that makes buying legible is competing on something most of its market is failing at, which is a better place to compete than on the work itself.