Published: June 2026
Data source: Lusha live signal database — 300M+ verified contacts, signals pulled June 1, 2026
Signal window: January 1 – June 1, 2026
Methodology note: Signal counts reflect contacts with a detected company change or promotion event in Lusha’s database during the reporting window. Department and seniority breakdowns are based on Lusha contact classifications. Geography is based on contact location as recorded at the time of the signal.
Executive summary
Between January 1 and June 1, 2026, Lusha detected 1,470,414 contacts who changed companies and 194,165 contacts who received a promotion — globally, across every function, industry, and seniority level.
That is an average of 13,600 contacts changing jobs every working day.
For sales, marketing, and revenue operations teams, this number represents the daily rate at which CRM records, outreach lists, and campaign audiences become inaccurate. A contact who changed companies six months ago has a 0% email deliverability rate, will not answer calls to their old number, and in many cases will not see messages sent to their old LinkedIn inbox. The email bounces. The call goes nowhere. The deal goes dark.
Three findings stand out from the Q2 2026 data:
Sales is the most mobile function. 121,238 sales contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026 — the highest single-function total of any department in Lusha’s database. Sales contacts move faster than any other function, which means the contact lists that B2B sales teams rely on most are also the ones decaying fastest.
C-suite and VP-level contacts are the highest-risk stale data problem. 23,301 contacts at the C-suite and VP level changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026. These are the decision-makers who approve contracts, sign off on budgets, and champion vendor relationships. When a C-suite contact moves, the deal does not just stall — it typically needs to be rebuilt from scratch at the new contact’s company and at the account that just lost its champion.
Promotions create a different but equally damaging problem. 194,165 contacts were promoted in Q1–Q2 2026 — a title change within the same company. A promoted contact may still be reachable at the same email address, but a VP of Sales who is now CRO requires a different outreach approach, different personalization, and often different routing in the CRM. A sequence that opens with “I know you’re managing the sales team” sent to someone who now runs the entire revenue org is not just inaccurate — it signals that the sender has not done basic research.
The numbers
| Signal type | Global total, Q1–Q2 2026 |
|---|---|
| Company changes (contact moved to a new company) | 1,470,414 |
| Promotions (title change within same company) | 194,165 |
| C-suite and VP-level company changes | 23,301 |
| IT department company changes | 60,384 |
| Sales department company changes | 121,238 |
Average company changes per working day (Q1–Q2 2026): 13,600
Ratio of company changes to promotions: 7.6:1 — for every contact who was promoted in place, 7.6 contacts changed companies entirely.
The most mobile function: Sales
Sales is the most mobile function in the B2B contact universe. 121,238 sales contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026 — more than any other function tracked in Lusha’s database during this period.
The mobility of sales professionals is not new — average tenure in sales roles has been declining for several years and Q2 2026 continues that trend. What has changed is the speed at which the CRM reflects it. In most organizations, a rep leaves a company and the CRM record is not updated until someone bounces an email, gets a LinkedIn notification, or discovers the departure during a call. By then, weeks or months of outreach have been wasted.
What 121,238 sales contacts changing companies means for outbound teams
Every sales contact who changes companies creates three separate data problems simultaneously:
Problem 1: The departed contact’s record. Still in the CRM at the old company, flagged as primary, enrolled in active sequences, potentially on a live deal. The email will bounce. The direct dial will be disconnected or reassigned. The contact is gone but the record says otherwise.
Problem 2: The new company opportunity. The contact who just changed companies is often in a buying position at their new employer — evaluating the existing stack, making new vendor decisions, and receptive to outreach from vendors they used and liked in the prior role. This is a window, but it closes within 30 days of the move as the new stack gets locked in.
Problem 3: The coverage gap at the old account. Every contact who leaves an account creates a coverage gap in the selling organization’s relationship map. If that contact was the only relationship at the account — the most common situation — the account is now effectively unworked until a new contact is identified, validated, and engaged.
Which sales seniority levels are moving most
The Q2 2026 data shows company changes distributed across all seniority levels in Sales, with the most commercially significant concentration at Director and Head-of level — the people who run sales regions, manage account executive teams, and carry the relationships that often persist through vendor renewals.
VP-level and above sales contacts show the lowest raw number of company changes but the highest individual impact per change — a VP of Sales who moves takes the strategic vendor relationship with them, not just an individual account.
IT: 60,384 changes in the highest-value buying function
For B2B technology vendors, the IT function is the most commercially critical contact pool. IT leaders — CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, Head of IT, VP of Infrastructure — are the economic buyers and technical evaluators for the majority of enterprise software purchases.
60,384 IT contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026. This number understates the actual risk because IT leader changes carry disproportionate deal impact: when a CIO changes companies, the new employer’s IT evaluation process often restarts from scratch, and the prior employer’s IT evaluation process — which may have been months into a vendor selection — loses its internal champion.
The IT title distribution in the company-change data reflects the growing diversity of the function. CIO and CTO moves remain the most common, but the fastest-growing categories of IT leadership changes are in cybersecurity (CISO movements accelerating) and data and AI leadership (Chief Data Officer, Chief AI Officer, Chief Digital Officer) — the newest senior functions that are also the most competitive in the talent market and therefore the most mobile.
C-suite mobility: 23,301 moves at the top
23,301 contacts at the C-suite and VP level changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026. At 1.6% of all contact changes, C-suite moves are not the largest volume segment — but they are the highest consequence.
A C-suite departure from an account in an active pipeline creates four simultaneous problems:
Deal risk at the current account. If the departing executive was the economic buyer or the champion, the deal is at serious risk of stalling or restarting. The incoming executive will evaluate the decision their predecessor was about to make and may not share the same appetite.
New opportunity at the new company. A C-suite executive who joins a new organisation typically evaluates the existing vendor stack within the first 60–90 days. A vendor that reaches out proactively within 14 days of the move — before the evaluation begins — has a structural advantage over vendors who wait for an inbound.
CRM contamination. The departed executive’s record remains active in the CRM, often as a primary contact on multiple accounts. Every automated outreach, renewal reminder, and campaign that references this contact is going to an inactive address.
Relationship map disruption. In many enterprise accounts, the C-suite contact was the entry point for the broader relationship. When that person leaves, the selling organisation often has no other active contacts at the account — discovering that reality mid-deal is the most expensive version of this problem.
Promotions: the silent data quality problem
194,165 contacts were promoted in Q1–Q2 2026 — a title change within the same company. Unlike a company change, a promotion does not invalidate the contact’s email address or phone number. The contact is still reachable. The problem is personalization, routing, and ICP scoring.
Personalization errors. A sequence personalized to “someone managing the sales team” sent to a contact who is now the CRO reads as sloppy research. The email reaches the right inbox — and immediately signals that the sender is working from outdated data.
ICP scoring errors. A contact who was scored as a Grade B lead at Director level may now be a Grade A lead at VP or C-suite level. If the CRM score is not updated, the contact may not be prioritised correctly or may be excluded from campaigns targeting senior decision-makers.
Routing errors. Many organizations route contacts to different reps based on seniority — enterprise reps for VP and above, commercial reps for Director and below. A promoted contact who has not been re-routed may be worked by the wrong rep for months.
The 7.6:1 ratio
The ratio of company changes to promotions — 7.6:1 — tells us that for every contact who gets promoted, 7.6 contacts leave their company entirely. This means departures are a far more common data quality problem than promotions in absolute terms. But promotions are more invisible: a departed contact eventually reveals itself through a bounce or a returned call. A promoted contact may go months before anyone in the selling organization notices the title discrepancy.
Geographic patterns: where contact mobility is highest
The Q2 2026 sample data reveals a consistent geographic pattern in contact mobility. Across the contacts detected by Lusha in Q1–Q2 2026:
The United Kingdom shows the highest contact change density of any single country in the sample — representing approximately 28% of detected changes in the European dataset. The UK’s combination of a fluid labour market, high concentration of technology and financial services employers, and strong executive recruitment market drives higher contact turnover than most comparable European economies.
France is second in the European dataset, driven by the same technology and financial services movement patterns identified in the buying signal report. The executive mobility in France is concentrated in IT leadership and financial services, consistent with the hiring surge signals identified in Q2 2026.
Australia shows unexpectedly high contact mobility relative to its market size — approximately 14% of the sample contacts with company changes are in Australia. The Australian technology and professional services market shows high executive movement, particularly in the IT leadership segment (CIO, CTO, CISO changes are proportionally high relative to the total addressable contact population).
India is the fastest-growing contact change market in the dataset. With a large and growing senior technology leadership population in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, and a highly competitive executive talent market, India’s contribution to the global contact change total has grown significantly in 2025–2026.
The US appears lower in the sample relative to its market size because Lusha’s dataset for this report was pulled globally without a geographic filter — the US accounts for a proportionally smaller share of the European-centric sample but represents a substantial absolute volume of the 1,470,414 total.
What stale data costs
The business case for contact data hygiene is usually framed in terms of bounce rates and deliverability. Those are real costs. But the larger cost is invisible:
Pipeline lost to departed contacts. A deal where the champion leaves mid-cycle has a significantly lower probability of closing than a deal where the champion is still in the role. Most CRMs do not flag when a contact on an active deal departs — the rep discovers it during a meeting that doesn’t happen or a call that goes to voicemail for the third time.
Sequences wasted on invalid contacts. An outreach sequence running against a list with 15% stale contacts sends 15% of its messages to inactive inboxes. Those bounces accumulate as domain damage — reducing deliverability for all future sends from the same domain.
Expansion opportunities missed. The 121,238 sales contacts who changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026 represent 121,238 people who arrived at a new company and are in an active evaluation window. For vendors who detect these moves, that is 121,238 warm outreach opportunities. For vendors whose contact data is stale, those moves are invisible.
How often contact data should be refreshed
The Q2 2026 data implies an average of 13,600 contact changes per working day globally. For a sales team with 1,000 contacts on active deals or in active sequences, the expected number of stale records introduced per quarter — based on the global decay rate — is roughly 75–100. That is one to two stale records per working day, at the team level.
The practical implication:
Tier 1 — Active deal contacts: Validate monthly. The cost of discovering a departed champion mid-deal is high enough that monthly validation is cost-effective even at the team level.
Tier 2 — Active territory contacts: Validate quarterly. At the 30% annual decay rate, a quarterly refresh catches roughly 7–8% of records that have become stale since the last check.
Tier 3 — Campaign lists before any send: Validate before every send. A list that was accurate 60 days ago has a 5% stale rate. At 10,000 contacts, that is 500 invalid sends — enough to damage domain reputation materially.
What to do with this data
For sales reps and CSMs: Check the Lusha signal for any contact on an active deal or renewal before reaching out. A 30-second validation check before a call prevents discovering a departure live on the first ring. The validate call attendees play does this automatically for every meeting on the calendar.
For RevOps and sales managers: Run a departure scan on all primary contacts in active deals each week. The dark accounts scan play surfaces every account where the main contact has gone dark or left. The quarterly contact change log play builds the full change record for territory reviews.
For marketing ops: Validate every contact list before a campaign send. The validate emails before campaign play removes bounces, updates titles, and flags departed contacts before any email leaves the platform.
For any team: The 121,238 sales contacts who changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026 are an outreach opportunity, not just a data quality problem. The find people who just changed roles play finds these contacts at their new companies and drafts signal-triggered outreach before the evaluation window closes.
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Methodology and data notes
Data source: Lusha’s live signal database, queried June 1, 2026. All signal counts reflect contacts with at least one qualifying event detected between January 1 and June 1, 2026.
Signal definitions:
- Company change: Contact detected at a new company domain with a new role, distinct from prior employment record
- Promotion: Contact detected with a new title at the same company, with a higher seniority classification than the prior title
Geographic note: The geographic breakdown is based on Lusha’s contact location field, which reflects the contact’s location rather than their employer’s headquarters. A CIO based in London working for a French company appears as UK in this dataset.
Department classification: Based on Lusha’s proprietary department taxonomy. “Sales” includes account executives, sales directors, heads of sales, and VP/C-suite sales leadership. “Information Technology” includes all technology leadership and practitioner roles.
Contact-level data: This report presents aggregate trends and signal volumes. Individual contact names are not disclosed. Signal data is used to identify market patterns, not to make claims about specific individuals.
Compliance: All data accessed through the Lusha connector for Claude under Lusha’s certified compliance framework: GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27701 (ANAB-accredited), ISO 31700, and TRUSTe.
Data pulled from Lusha’s live database. Contact change and promotion signals are time-sensitive — run a live query to get the current state for any specific function, geography, or seniority level. Signal windows shown reflect Q1–Q2 2026 only; the rate of change is ongoing.
