World trade growth fell to 0.8% in 2024 — the lowest since the pandemic. ESG reporting (CSRD, CBAM) became obligatory for thousands of companies in the chain. Seventy-three percent of supply chain leaders expect AI to be integral within two years — almost no one is structurally acting on it. One in four commercial vacancies sits open longer than six months. Autonomous growth has roughly halved (CPB: 2.1% vs the long-term 3.4%). And 77% of B2B buyers prefer no contact with sales during orientation. The old commercial model can't carry this.

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They think marketing, sales and customer processes are further along than they actually are — and now the structural pressure is exposing the gap. For 2026 we wanted to know what's actually moved. Where do commercial leaders themselves see growth opening or closing? And what does it really take, in a sector under structural pressure, to turn ambition into a system that compounds?

All leading mid-sized Dutch logistics service providers active in warehousing, transport and supply chain, including several from the top 10 of the Logistics Top 100. We mapped their answers against the seven pillars of commercial growth — brand & proposition, digital marketing strategy, prospect & lead management, customer management, data management, measuring & analyzing, technology & automation — and overlaid the findings on the EACH framework: Educate, Attract, Convert, Hook.

Second: digital maturity is overstated. Only four in fifteen have a clearly defined customer profile actively used in marketing and sales; just one combines CRM with marketing automation. Thirteen in fifteen describe their data analysis as "limited" or "not structural." Third — most telling — when asked what they'd change first, no one said more leads, more people or more sales capacity. The most common which was direction, structure, coherence.

The pattern across all fifteen: ambition isn't the bottleneck. Systematic execution is.

The pattern is sector-wide — and it's exactly where Gradient builds: not more leads or more reps, but the architecture that makes marketing, sales and service work as one. In transport & logistics, the next phase of growth runs on direction, structure and a system that compounds — not on more shipments or more square meters.

Growth in logistics doesn't come from more shipments or more square meters. It comes from smarter choices, sharper propositions and better follow-up.