What the research says about
ramp, coaching, and the live call.
The figures behind How to reduce sales rep ramp time, with their sources.
Ramp is getting longer, and companies are buying experience to cope.
Bridge Group's 2026 AE Models, Motions & Metrics report, the tenth edition of a biennial study drawn from 158 B2B companies, puts average account executive ramp at 6.2 months and attributes the increase to deal complexity and larger buying committees. The same report finds 48% of reps at quota, with a long-term downward trend, and a median AE quota of $960,000.
What Ebbinghaus measured, and what the 2015 replication found.
Hermann Ebbinghaus measured the forgetting curve in 1885. Murre and Dros repeated the experiment and published the results in PLOS ONE in 2015. Both measured “savings”: the share of the original learning effort saved when the material is relearned. Higher means more was retained.
| Time since learning | Ebbinghaus, 1885 | Murre & Dros, 2015 |
|---|---|---|
| 20 minutes | 58% | 47% |
| 1 hour | 44% | 37% |
| 9 hours | 36% | 28% |
| 1 day | 34% | 32% |
| 2 days | 28% | 23% |
| 6 days | 25% | 17% |
| 31 days | 21% | 4% (14% corrected) |
Most of the loss happens within a day, and a month out the material is largely gone unless it was reinforced. Training delivered in week one is working against this curve by week five.
Immediate beats delayed, and analysis needs data first.
Training fades on the curve above. Post-call analysis needs weeks of a rep's calls before it can say anything. The learning research favors feedback delivered at the moment of performance. Put together, that is the case for the live call as the highest-leverage moment in a rep's ramp.
Two things to check in any real-time coaching tool.
Does a bot join the call?
Some live coaching tools join the meeting as a participant, send the audio to their servers, and return guidance a beat later. Live Advisor runs beside the video engine on the rep's own machine, natively in Scoot or on the meeting platform the team already uses, so nothing changes on the buyer's side of the screen.
What does the coaching know?
Generic prompts help with the skill side of a call. Answering a buyer's technical, pricing or competitive question takes the company's own documents, CRM and past calls. Live Advisor draws on the Brain, which holds all three.
Where each figure comes from.
| Claim | Source |
|---|---|
| Average AE ramp 6.2 months, highest in study history; 48% at quota, down from 51% in 2024; 3.7 years experience at hire; median quota $960,000 | Bertuzzi, M. (2026). AE Models, Motions & Metrics: 2026 Research Report (10th ed.). The Bridge Group. bridgegroupinc.com |
| Forgetting-curve savings by interval | Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve. PLOS ONE 10(7): e0120644, Table 3. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120644 |
| Conversation intelligence typically needs six to eight weeks of call data before analytics become meaningful | Akhter, M. (2026). The 9 best AI sales coaching software tools in 2026. Outreach. outreach.ai |
| Dynamic coaching: 55.2% average win rate vs. 46.4% study average; 21.3% higher quota attainment | CSO Insights / Miller Heiman Group (2019). Fifth Annual Sales Enablement Study, p. 36. PDF |
| Immediate feedback enhances learning; delayed feedback does not | Dihoff, Brosvic, Epstein & Cook (2004). The Psychological Record, 54. doi.org/10.1007/BF03395471 |
| Immediate, informative feedback as a condition of deliberate practice | Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993). Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363 |
Read the full argument.
The three moments coaching can happen, 12 tools compared across all three, and why the live call is where ramp is won.
How to reduce sales rep ramp time