The Top Sales Trends and Technologies for 2025: Thanks to AI, Sales Roles and Platforms See an Expansion
This year’s dominating sales trends and technologies build on the growing use of artificial intelligence, which is becoming more impactful in 2025. In addition to AI, sales organizations are enhancing their data assets and data management, social selling capabilities, individualized onboarding and training of sales professionals, post-purchase engagement abilities, and self-service options.
AI started taking hold as a business technology in the past couple of years. In 2025, the technology has started providing notable benefits on the sales side of the business, according to Paul Farrell, SugarCRM chief product officer.
“We continue to see that sellers have less physical time with buyers,” Farrell says, noting that AI enables sellers to maximize their time by automating scheduling, follow-ups, note summarization, and other mundane tasks so they can focus on getting the most value out of their limited time with buyers.
“There’s definitely an opportunity for companies who can use their sellers in a smarter manner,” Farrell says. “In 2025, we will see traditional means of engaging with customers as a differentiator. It’s a combination of automation and salespeople generating their own leads, augmented by technology. It takes seven or eight touches before you can get access to a buyer. But at the same time, those seven or eight touches need to be orchestrated very accurately. It’s not just ‘I will call them once a week and I will send them this document I just wrote.’ The way that touches are made and that touches are done needs to be in a way that is going to be impactful.”
Orchestration depends on AI and machine learning to serve up a customer’s esoteric connections in a way that a sales team or a marketing team can use to determine the best ways to engage with existing customers, their existing products, and their existing markets, Farrell adds. Orchestration also depends on having a 360-degree customer view.
Orchestration also provides a road map for the seller: send information one day, follow up a couple of days later, follow up again for subsequent emails and phone calls, etc. Automation ensures the follow-ups are sent at optimal times and at an optimal frequency.
While achieving seven touches is important, customers don’t want to be inundated with sales messages. The touches need to be “uber-personalized,” Farrell adds. “This is where things like generative AI can help make sure each interaction is driving business value. It’s driving the hook that’s going to engage them.”
Enter Agentic AI
Also new on the AI front is agentic AI, which is eliminating the need for sellers to choose between scale and personalization, according to Jonathan Lister, chief operating officer of Vidyard, a provider of video messaging, video hosting, and buyer engagement solutions.
Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can autonomously make decisions, take actions, and adapt to changing conditions to achieve complex goals, essentially acting like a digital employee with limited human supervision.
“For years, teams have faced a false choice: maximize outreach through generalized, one-size-fits-all messaging or sink significant time and resources into crafting deeply personalized messages for only a small pool of customers and prospects. Neither approach is particularly successful for hitting business targets, and both create roadblocks for sellers,” Lister says.
Agentic AI tools do the “heavy lifting,” Lister explains. “We are already seeing this trend take shape with the rise of AI [sales development representatives] and video sales agents. These agentic tools can independently take action on behalf of reps, automatically delivering meaningful interactions to customers and prospects throughout the sales cycle to increase engagement and revenue.”
For example, an AI agent might be deployed to automatically offer a demo to prospects who have just downloaded a white paper, or they might be used to confirm booked meetings to reduce the rate of no-shows.
“For teams using AI avatars and other video-based agentic sales tools, there’s something else to look forward to this year,” Lister adds. “As AI models advance, AI avatars will soon become indistinguishable from human-recorded videos. Facial expressions, vocal tone, even regional accents will all be replicable, making these tools an even more seamless part of go-to-market strategies.
“By leveraging AI to handle routine touch points, sellers can refocus their time and attention on high-value conversations with decision makers without sacrificing scale,” Lister adds. “Go-to-market teams that embrace this agentic future are well-positioned to build stronger relationships, increase customer satisfaction, and drive brand loyalty in 2025 and beyond.”
Increased Focus on Data Assets
Since AI relies on data, the more data the better. It’s no surprise, then, that sales organizations are focusing a good amount of their technology spending in 2025 on clean data and on consolidating data from multiple systems, according to Farrell. “They want to optimize the things they already own. They will look at how they can do more with their assets, particularly their data assets.”
Farrell adds that access to data is becoming more restrictive as enterprises become more protective about who has access to their data.
Process mining extracts and analyzes data across business systems, such as CRM, enterprise resource planning, and supply chain tools, to visualize workflows, identify inefficiencies, and uncover friction points that impact customers, says Kerry Brown, a transformation evangelist at Celonis, a data processing company. This year, sales organizations are moving from merely diagnosing problems to gaining active recommendations and automated fixes in real time via process intelligence to minimize lost sales, she states.
“Many businesses lose customers due to order cancellations, delays, or errors, often caused by unseen inefficiencies in procurement, payments, or logistics,” Brown explains. “IKEA, for example, turned to process mining to analyze order fulfillment and click-and-collect processes, aiming to reduce customer drop-off points. By mining data, IKEA was able to pinpoint inefficiencies that led to order cancellations and improve the overall order creation and delivery process. This kind of optimization is becoming a standard expectation in 2025.”
Successful process mining depends on well-integrated, high-quality data, Brown adds. Organizations that invest in strong data foundations and process intelligence can optimize customer service with agility.
Social Commerce Continues to Grow
AI is also fueling a resurgence in social commerce, according to many experts, who see the technology as a great way to gain insight into what consumers are thinking and doing on social media sites.
“We spend so much time on social media it is becoming more important to listen to online conversations to derive sentiment,” says Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder and CEO of Mavens & Moguls, a strategic marketing consulting firm. “Social media is highly emotive, so there is more context on the source of ideas, complaints, purchase behavior, and macro/micro trends.”
Social selling merges the convenience of online shopping with the interactive nature of social media, Arnof-Fenn adds. “Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest are evolving into comprehensive buying experiences where users can discover, explore, and purchase products directly within their feeds. Consumers and B2B buyers today turn to communities they trust rather than brand advertising before they make a purchase.”
Lead generation software vendor OptinMonster expects social selling to only grow in 2025, meaning that sales reps will need to brush up on their skills across that medium. To highlight its growth, the company offers the following figures on social selling for 2025:
- Eighty-seven percent of buyers believe social media helps them make shopping decisions.
- Two-thirds of customers purchase after seeing others’ social media posts.
- Social selling generates 45 percent more opportunities than traditional sales channels.
- Seventy-eight percent of salespeople who use social selling outperform their peers.
- Three-quarters of B2B buyers use social media to inform purchasing decisions.
- Seventy-one percent of customers are more likely to buy based on social media referrals.
- Companies with social selling strategies see up to 48 percent larger deals on average.
- Fifty-four percent of B2B marketers generate leads from social media platforms.
Social media, experts agree, will continue to prove effective at introducing brands to particular audiences, finding buyers, engaging buyers, and building long-term relationships. But there is one key caveat: Social media only works if you’re using it often to build connections and deepen relationships. That’s not something that everyone can do easily, and so sales rep skills training and hiring have to undergo a change as well.
Individualized and Prescriptive Onboarding
For decades, companies have focused on onboarding salespeople and other employees in the same way, according to Christina Brady, cofounder and CEO of Luster, a provider of AI-powered predictive sales enablement technology. This has led to one-size-fits-all follow-up training rather than training that is tailored to each hire’s specific learning style, proficiency, or skill gaps, she says.
The most successful sales organizations today are using generative AI-infused tools to scale personalized training and coaching for sales teams. By diagnosing skill gaps, identifying learning styles, simulating realistic customer interactions, and delivering real-time feedback, AI takes the guesswork out of enablement, according to Brady. This technology can help improve performance in an individualized and scalable way without compromising revenue opportunities.
Andy Springer, chief client officer of sales training company RAIN Group, agrees. “Only 26 percent of sellers say they receive effective sales coaching. That’s a huge gap. The best sales organizations aren’t just investing in training; they’re making coaching and mentoring a continuous priority. And it’s paying off.”
Sales teams with strong coaching cultures see higher quota attainment, better engagement, and stronger retention, Springer adds.
But the training will have to change to accommodate new market needs. Sellers don’t just need training; they need guidance, real-world application, and someone in their corner to help them improve every day. The most effective sales leaders in 2025 won’t just manage. They’ll mentor and develop their teams through structured coaching, deal reviews, and skill reinforcement, according to experts.
“Those who are smart are taking a much more integrated approach to their sales process, their sales coaching, and their development activities rather than just bolting on AI tools,” Springer says. “It’s not about leading with AI; it’s about leading with the outcome, defining the outcome, understanding process, and understanding the gaps where AI can provide efficiency and support the behaviors that save [sales] managers time.”
And for sales teams and their managers today, time is not what it used to be.
Increased Post-Purchase Engagement
Companies are increasing post-purchase engagement with customers, with an eye toward future sales, says John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer of Redpoint Global, a marketing software provider. “One big global trend we are seeing with sales is coming from the customer journey and experience mapping side of the industry,” he says, pointing to a “supercharged emphasis on post-purchase engagement.”
Since companies have been striving harder to focus on individualizing and personalizing customer journeys, this dedicated effort to providing value to the customer journey is key. Post-purchase emails are a powerful tool for companies to show they care about customers beyond the transaction.
A McKinsey survey shows that customers respond positively when companies demonstrate their investment in the relationship, not just the transaction. Thoughtful outreach, such as checking in post-purchase, sending how-to videos, or asking consumers to write reviews, generate positive brand perceptions, the research firm says.
“There are many different objectives for sending a post-purchase email—an offer for a complementary item, a thank you, a survey—but whatever the objective, a relevant and deeply personalized email is usually welcomed by the customer because it demonstrates the brand’s interest in strengthening the relationship, according to Nash.
“We as a company began seeing this upward trend starting around this past Thanksgiving,” Nash says. “One Redpoint customer, a travel and hospitality company, saw email revenue increase by 11 times for one holiday campaign when it started segmenting out its audience based on guests’ personal interests and experiences. Eligible guests who had previously booked a reservation received an email tailored to their individual history, significantly increasing conversions.”
Another Redpoint customer, a specialty retailer, used personalized post-purchase emails as the centerpiece for a replenishment campaign. Triggered to be sent in a regular cadence based on each customer’s consumption patterns, the reminder emails resulted in higher conversions. With a real-time, single customer view, the retailer could avoid sending irrelevant email reminders to customers who made purchases before the expected timeframe.
Other Sales Technologies
One additional change in the sales landscape is the move to functionalities that were traditionally handled by back-office systems. The biggest example of this is configure/price/quote (CPQ) systems. In 2025, sales organizations will be employing CPQ technologies to ensure they are selling the right products at the right price points, which is especially important if a recession occurs, Farrell says. “They want to make sure that they are selling the right products in the right way and maximizing the existing relationships that they have.”
And finally, with a growing number of B2B buyers preferring a rep-free sales experience, customer self-service sales portals will be a business mover in 2025. In fact, Forrester Research sees comprehensive self-service portals for B2B transactions picking up steam due to the growth of $1 billion-plus self-service transactions. Comprehensive self-service portals enable buyers to access information like FAQs, detailed product descriptions, case studies, and tutorial videos; place orders; and manage their accounts without seller intervention. This will require sales reps to work with marketing and IT to optimize these portals and maximize their impact, creating yet one more skills challenge for reps and their managers.
Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises1@comcast.net.