All data in this report is drawn directly from Lusha’s live signal database. Signal counts reflect contacts with a detected company change or promotion event in Lusha’s database between January 1 and June 1, 2026. Department and seniority breakdowns are based on Lusha contact classifications. Geography is based on contact location as recorded at the time of the signal. No third-party estimates or extrapolated figures are used. Source: Lusha B2B Contact Change Report Q2 2026.
Between January 1 and June 1, 2026, Lusha detected 1,470,414 contacts who changed companies and 194,165 contacts who were promoted across every function, industry, and seniority level globally. That is an average of 13,600 contacts changing jobs every working day.
This report takes those numbers further. It maps which functions carry the highest commercial risk when contacts move, shows where the geographic concentration sits, surfaces the promotion problem that most teams are not tracking, and quantifies what the new-company opportunity window looks like for the contacts who just changed roles. Every number in this report is sourced directly from Lusha’s verified B2B database. Nothing is estimated.
The numbers at a glance
Ratio of company changes to promotions: 7.6:1. For every contact promoted in place, 7.6 contacts changed companies entirely. Departures are a far more common data quality problem than promotions in absolute terms — but promotions are more invisible and more likely to go undetected in the CRM.
Part One: The function-by-function risk matrix
Not all contact changes carry equal commercial risk. A sales rep moving companies is a data quality problem. A CIO moving companies is a deal-altering event. The matrix below plots the three most commercially significant functions from the Q2 2026 data against two dimensions: volume of changes detected and impact per change on an active deal.
Sales: the highest volume problem
121,238 sales contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026 — the highest single-function total in Lusha’s database for this period. The most commercially significant concentration is at Director and Head-of level — the people who run sales regions, manage AE teams, and carry relationships that persist through vendor renewals. Every sales contact who changes companies creates three simultaneous problems: the departed contact’s record stays active in the CRM; the coverage gap at the old account goes unnoticed; and the new company opportunity — the 30-day window where the contact is evaluating the new employer’s stack — goes untouched.
IT: the highest impact per change
60,384 IT contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026. The commercially significant detail in this number is not the volume — it is what happens when an IT leader moves. When a CIO changes companies, the new employer’s IT evaluation process often restarts from scratch, and the prior employer’s vendor selection — which may have been months into the process — loses its internal champion. The fastest-growing IT mobility categories in Q2 2026 are cybersecurity leadership (CISO movements) and data and AI leadership — Chief Data Officer, Chief AI Officer, Chief Digital Officer — the most competitive and therefore most mobile senior roles in technology today.
C-suite: the lowest volume, the highest consequence
23,301 C-suite and VP-level contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026. At 1.6% of all contact changes, this is not the largest volume segment. It is the most consequential. A C-suite departure creates four simultaneous problems: deal risk at the current account if the contact was the economic buyer; a new company opportunity if the contact evaluates the new employer’s stack within 60 to 90 days of joining; CRM contamination as the departed executive’s record remains active on multiple accounts; and relationship map disruption when the contact was the only entry point to the account.
Part Two: The promotion problem nobody is tracking
194,165 contacts were promoted in Q1–Q2 2026. A promoted contact is still reachable — the email address and phone number may not change. The problem is personalization, routing, and ICP scoring.
The 7.6:1 ratio tells the full story. For every contact promoted in place, 7.6 contacts left their company entirely. Departures are more common. 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. And by then, the personalization is wrong, the routing is wrong, and the ICP score is wrong.
Part Three: Where contact mobility is highest
The Q2 2026 data reveals a consistent geographic pattern. Across the contacts detected by Lusha in Q1–Q2 2026:
The UK’s position at the top of the European dataset reflects its combination of a fluid labour market, high concentration of technology and financial services employers, and a strong executive recruitment market — all of which drive higher contact turnover than most comparable European economies. For teams with significant UK pipeline, this means contact data is decaying faster in their most active market than anywhere else in Europe.
Part Four: The 30-day opportunity window
Every contact change is a data quality problem at the old company. It is also an opportunity at the new one. The Q2 2026 data confirms what Lusha observes consistently in contact movement patterns: when a contact changes companies, there is a buying window at the new employer that opens immediately and closes within approximately 30 days.
1,470,414 company changes in Q1–Q2 2026 means 1,470,414 of these windows opened in the first half of the year. Most of them closed without a single vendor reaching out because nobody was monitoring the signal. The teams that catch contact changes within 14 days of the move — while the contact is in the assessment phase — are working a fundamentally different opportunity than teams that find out via a bounce months later.
Part Five: The stale contact estimator
The numbers above are global. The number that matters for your team is specific to your contact list size and the last time you verified your data. The estimator below uses Lusha’s verified Q2 2026 rate — 13,600 changes per working day across 300M+ contacts — to calculate what is likely happening in your database right now.
The verified baseline rate from Lusha Q2 2026 data:
- 1,470,414 company changes across a 300M+ contact base over 108 working days (Jan 1 to June 1, 2026)
- Monthly company change rate: approximately 0.098% of contacts per month
- 194,165 promotions across the same base over the same period
- Monthly promotion rate: approximately 0.013% of contacts per month
- Combined inaccuracy rate: approximately 0.11% of contacts become inaccurate per month
How to use this: Take your active contact list size. Multiply by 0.0011 (0.11%). That is the estimated number of contacts becoming inaccurate every month. Multiply by the number of months since your last full verification pass. That is the estimated number of contacts in your database right now that have either changed companies or been promoted — with a stale record in your CRM.
Example: A team with 50,000 contacts that last verified their database 6 months ago: 50,000 × 0.0011 × 6 = 330 contacts estimated to have changed companies or been promoted since the last verification. At an average of 8 outreach attempts per contact before marking unreachable, that is 2,640 wasted outreach attempts — before anyone notices the data is wrong.
All figures derived from Lusha’s own verified Q2 2026 signal database. The monthly rate is calculated from published totals divided by the 5-month reporting window and the 300M+ contact base. This is an estimate applied to a general population — your actual decay rate will vary based on the seniority mix, industry concentration, and geographic distribution of your specific contact list.
What the data means for GTM teams
Three actions follow directly from the Q2 2026 numbers:
1. Monitor Sales contacts on a rolling cadence, not a quarterly one. 121,238 Sales contacts changed companies in Q1–Q2 2026 — the most of any function. At 13,600 changes per working day across the full database, a contact list that was verified at the start of the quarter has already drifted significantly by the end of it. Monthly verification for any contact on an active deal or enrolled in a live sequence is not excessive — it is the minimum that the change rate justifies.
2. Treat C-suite and IT changes as immediate commercial events, not data quality tickets. 23,301 C-suite and VP changes and 60,384 IT changes in Q1–Q2 2026 represent a continuous stream of deal risks and new company opportunities. The contact who just joined a new company as CIO is evaluating the new employer’s vendor stack within 60 to 90 days. The contact who just left an account with an open deal needs to be replaced before the deal goes dark. Both of these are commercial actions, not CRM hygiene tasks.
3. Build promotion detection into your ICP scoring and routing logic. 194,165 promotions in Q1–Q2 2026 — none of which changed the contact’s email address, and most of which went undetected in the selling team’s CRM. A contact who crossed from Director to VP is a different routing target, a different ICP score, and a different personalization requirement. The 7.6:1 ratio of departures to promotions means promotions are less frequent — but they are also the changes most likely to persist undetected longest.
Methodology and data notes
Data source: Lusha live signal database — 300M+ verified contacts, signals pulled June 1, 2026.
Signal window: January 1 to June 1, 2026 (108 working days).
Signal definitions: Company change signals reflect contacts where Lusha detected a move to a new employer during the reporting window. Promotion signals reflect contacts where Lusha detected a title change at the same employer during the reporting window. Both signal types are verified through Lusha’s multi-source verification process before being recorded.
Department classification: Based on Lusha’s internal contact classification system applied at the time of the signal.
Geography: Based on contact location as recorded in Lusha’s database at the time of the signal.
Privacy and compliance: All data in this report is aggregated and anonymised. No individual contact details are included or derivable from the figures presented. Lusha is fully GDPR compliant, certified by European independent auditors ePrivacyseal GmbH, and validated by TrustArc. Full privacy documentation is available at lusha.com/trust-center.
Source report: B2B Contact Change Report Q2 2026 — Lusha
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