B2B Sales Trends in 2025: Omnichannel, AI, and Automation

Today we will explore how the approach to B2B sales will evolve in 2025, what transformations B2B sales departments will undergo, what can be automated and where to call on AI to be at the forefront of the industry.

Taking a broad view of your target audience is no longer a working scheme. Your USP should be formed as a response to a specific consumer pain. We discussed USP meaning in business in another article. Therefore, to formulate it correctly, it is worth using the Solution selling approach. Its components:

• we collect the ICP (ideal customer profile) - the profile of our target client;
• we formulate three levels of pain - functional, business, personal;
• we create a value proposition along the pain-solution-value chain for each ICP.

There is a common mistake: to start describing a B2B client with the company they work for. In fact, you sell to people with specific functions and specific pain points. The first step is to outline the circle of these people, for example, salespeople who do not fulfill plans because they do not have a sales automation system.

At the second stage, we start talking about business and narrow the circle by the PAIN + FIT criterion. Here, filters such as the industry and revenue of the company where our target works are included. For example, we sell CRM for salespeople who work in large banks - this is our niche. Functionally, we solve problems specifically in the banking sector and for businesses with revenue of 10+ billion. This is how we turn the target audience into potential clients.

At the third stage, we turn on the next filter. From the BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) lead qualification model, we take the two most important elements — Authority and Need. And we look for those who:

• realize that they have a problem that we solve;
• are ready and willing to talk to us about their problem;
• are empowered to solve this problem with our help.

To summarize, we describe people who have a problem. They work in relevant companies, are aware of their problem, are ready to talk about it and want to solve it — this is our ICP.

There are three levels of B2B client pain. To formulate them, you need to answer the following questions:

• Functional pain — what specific problem are we solving with the product? We need to automate the sales process; In our case on promoting a B2B e-commerce company, WGG Agency specialists were engaged in the automation of business processes;
• Business (or financial) pain — what problems does our client's business face? The business needs to close 100 million in revenue to become self-sufficient;
• Personal pain — what benefit will the potential client receive? They need to get a bonus to go on vacation with their family.

In B2B sales, it is very important to convey value not only to the business, but to a specific person. There is an established concept of DM - decision maker. As a rule, there are many of them in B2B sales, and everyone has their own pain.

At the end, we describe a value proposition: we are focused on a specific target audience (people, functions, companies), solve specific problems (functional, business, personal) and contribute to achieving specific results that are usually significant both for each participant in the decision-making process and for the company as a whole.

In Solution selling, this proposition is unique for each client in the ICP matrix, because it comes from a unique pain-solution-values ​​link. The approach makes B2B sales more targeted and allows for more efficient closing of deals.

From sales strategy we move on to trends in the organization of the sales department. Trends show that as the customer check grows, the structure of the sales department evolves towards Henry Ford's conveyor model.

Conveyor principles:

1. There is a clear stage-by-stage interaction with the client;
2. A ​​specialist with a specific role, responsibilities, and set of skills is responsible for each stage;
3. Everyone is focused on their key task - everyone does their part of the job.

The picture describes 3 scenarios of the sales model for different deal sizes (the average contract value or annual revenue from the contract can be considered).

• At the pre-sale stage (client acquisition) with a low check (for example, $ 100), Inbound marketing (incoming leads) and MDR are used - a manager who processes applications.
• At a higher check ($ 10,000), an AE (account executive) is connected to it - a sales manager who closes deals.
• If the check is even higher, we connect an SDR (sales development representative) - he starts outgoing communication.
• After the sale, work with the client moves to the retention and expansion stage.

In addition, in very high checks (a million dollars) the opposite trend is observed, and one salesperson will be responsible for almost everything. The reason: a long transaction cycle, narrow specialization, a small number of clients in the market.

Let's imagine that we have built sales according to the conveyor model, but how to manage this conveyor? Who will be responsible for the synchronicity of processes? We can assign managers to each stage, set individual goals for them, which will lead to a situation where everyone will strive for their own KPI, without taking into account the common goal. This is where the next trend is born: collaboration of commercial functions of several departments.

This does not mean that everyone has one indicator - revenue. This means that the internal indicators of each department should directly affect revenue: for marketing - SQLs (quality leads, potential clients), for sales - the amount of money, for CS (customer success) - retention. Accordingly, the actions of each team will be subordinated to a common goal. Sales will improve outgoing communication with the client, increase the frequency of receiving feedback, and conduct regular business reviews. Marketing will improve the quality of leads, strengthen auto-onboarding, in collaboration with products will promptly receive and inform about product updates, provide unified communication in newsletters and chats.

In 2025, even if you sell a B2B product, usability must meet all B2C standards. Customer expectations dictate simple and intuitive digital interactions with self-service capabilities.

Professionals from our Dubai-based b2b digital agency strongly recommend that you improve the mobile experience for your consumers: give them the ability to manage the product from a smartphone, conveniently set up an account, receive support in real time where and how it is convenient for them.

Digitalization and the demand for consistency require an omnichannel approach to sales. Do not confuse with multichannel. Omnichannel means that your client can seamlessly move between all interaction channels: online, offline, messengers, social networks. Do not forget about creating a single CRM system that synchronizes data from all channels.

Let customers start interactions using a chat on the website, continue via email and complete the purchase in a mobile application. The implementation of omnichannel in an e-commerce software development company increased the conversion from viewing to purchase by 25%.

In an article about trends, we can’t ignore the topic of new technologies. At least 30% of sales tasks can be automated using AI. Do this and free up your managers’ time for more valuable interactions with clients!

Almost any process — from formulating client pain points to preparing CP templates — can be optimized using artificial intelligence, here are just a few examples.

1. AI is indispensable in email marketing — with it, you can create hyper-personalized communication (by the way, also a noticeable trend) and dozens of tailored offers in minutes.
2. Technologies are already available that fully analyze the seller’s actions and offer them the best variations for closing deals depending on the ICP. For example, AI with voice analytics improves the effectiveness of sales team calls by 15%.
3. Another process in which automation greatly helps is onboarding.

Sales is a very dynamic and changeable area, but there is something constant in it too. This is the need to generate a lot and quickly test new ideas.

Successful companies that grow their revenue exponentially form mini-divisions with one task - to test hypotheses, increasing the adaptability and resilience of the business to crises. As a rule, this is a team of 4-5 people - a product manager, strategist, marketer, sales - and specially implemented tools for tracking the progress of each idea. One of the methods for managing this process is the HADI cycle. The algorithm has four steps:

• H (hypothesis) - formulated a hypothesis;
• A (action) - implemented a change;
• D (data) - collected data;
• I (insights) - formulated conclusions.

The key principle is fail fast. If it didn't work, stop, reflect, throw it out or improve it. If it worked, implement and scale it.