The Motion Report

Tracking the business of selling in Canada.

Part research, part curiosity. The Motion Report tracks how manufacturers, distributors and industrial service firms scale, operate and compensate their sales teams.

ManufacturersDistributorsIndustrial service firms
Published on Substack

Latest from The Motion Report.

Read on Substack →

The first issue is on its way.

New issues appear here as soon as they're published on Substack.

Subscribe on Substack →
What we track

Four pillars of research.

We don’t report on the economy. We report on the sales organizations inside it: how they hire, pay, organize and equip the people who sell.

01

Sales hiring & talent demand

How many sales roles are open, which companies are hiring, where demand is concentrated and what experience, travel and skills employers ask for.

02

Sales compensation & employer costs

What companies pay their salespeople, how packages differ by role, and what it actually costs to employ a rep once commissions, payroll taxes, benefits and tools are added.

03

Sales organization & go-to-market models

How B2B companies structure their commercial teams: field versus inside sales, territories, account ownership, channel partners, outbound prospecting and sales management.

04

Sales technology & enablement

Which CRMs, prospecting platforms, automation and AI tools sales teams use, and how companies are changing the way they sell.

Every issue opens with

The Canadian B2B Sales Index.

The same core measures each month, so readers can track how sales hiring, pay and practice change over time.

Active sales vacancies — Month-end count
Median advertised base — CAD per year
Estimated employer cost — Annual, per rep
Postings mentioning a CRM — Share of sampled listings

Values publish with the first edition, once the dataset has been collected and validated. Each edition will state its method, sample size and limitations.

Coming up

The first three editions.

  1. December 2026

    The state of B2B sales hiring in Canada

    Active job advertisements, salary disclosure, role demand, geography and what employers require.

  2. January 2027

    What does a Canadian sales team actually cost?

    Compensation bands, on-target earnings, fully loaded employer costs and different team configurations.

  3. February 2027

    How Canadian B2B companies build their sales teams

    Field versus inside sales, team structure, CRM requirements, technology adoption and commercial operating models.

Get the report

The Motion Report, in your inbox.

One issue a month on how Canadian B2B companies hire, pay, structure and equip their sales teams. Free for sales and business leaders.

We’ll only email you The Motion Report and related research. Unsubscribe any time. Prefer Substack? Subscribe there.

Research notes

What the research already says.

Productivity

The 60% problem: where your reps’ week really goes

Salesforce’s 2026 State of Sales puts selling time at 40% of a rep’s week. For B2B field reps, SPOTIO’s 2026 field sales survey puts it closer to a third, with around eight hours a week lost to admin and data entry.

Hiring more reps doesn’t fix that ratio; it multiplies it. The faster lever is taking the non-selling work off their plate: list building, follow-up, CRM updates and reporting.

Sources: Salesforce, State of Sales (7th ed.), 2026 · SPOTIO, State of Field Sales, 2026

Pipeline

Quotes rarely fail on price. They fail on follow-up.

In a 2026 BuildOps survey, more than 29% of contractors said their quotes don’t get followed up, and the most common leak was work spotted in the field that never became a quote at all.

Every one of those quotes already cost an estimator hours. A simple cadence with an owner and a deadline recovers revenue without spending a dollar on new leads.

Sources: BuildOps contractor survey, 2026

Lead generation

Buyers research alone. Outreach has to earn its place.

Gartner’s March 2026 survey found 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, up from 61% the year before, and its 2025 survey found 73% actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.

That doesn’t make outbound dead. It makes generic outbound dead. Messages built on real signals, written in the buyer’s language, still get replies.

Sources: Gartner B2B buyer survey, March 2026 · Gartner B2B buyer survey, June 2025

Start here

Assess your sales motion.

Our free, five-minute Sales Organization Audit helps you take stock of how your sales motion operates, from team structure and pipeline management to sales processes, technology, and enablement.

Get a clearer picture of where your organization stands, identify potential gaps, and understand where improvements could have the greatest impact.

Assess Your Sales Organization → Book a discovery call
Let’s talk