Does sales experience improve performance?

Uhubs Research Team • Published 1 Jul 2026 • Updated 17 Sep 2026 • 500,000+ dual-scored assessments • Methodology • Data tables • Full report
Published by Uhubs

Finding

It depends on the role, and it is not uniformly positive. Account Executive & SDR performance plateaus after 2–3 years. Customer Success & Account Manager performance improves steadily with tenure.

The data

Role group	Tenure effect
CS / Account Managers	Improves steadily, reaching above-quota attainment at ~5 years
AEs / SDRs	Plateaus after 2–3 years; further experience shows no correlation with improvement

‍

Skills that improve
Skill	Change
Negotiation	+0.66
Strategy & methodology	+0.64
Market acumen	+0.47
Product acumen	+0.45

‍

Skills that erode
Skill	Change
Growth mindset & drive	−0.44
Time management	−0.21
Prospecting	−0.13

What it means for revenue leaders

Experienced reps get better at strategic competencies and worse at the execution habits most correlated with quota. For AE and SDR roles, years of experience is a weak signal for execution quality.

How this was measured

Manager-rated competency scores compared across experience bands, 1–7 scale.

Source: Global Sales Capability Index 2026 (Uhubs). Based on 500,000+ dual-scored sales capability assessments across 45 countries and 30+ role types, 2020–2026. Published April 2026.