It’s the most wonderful time of the year for predictions. Plenty of people are happy to pontificate about what to expect from the stock market, global politics, their favorite sports teams or anything else you ask about.
Our aim in this report on trends for B2B sales and marketing professionals is not so much to predict what we’ll encounter in 2025, but rather to provide thought-starters on aspects of B2B sales and marketing that will be front and center.
Emerging (and omnipresent) topics such as artificial intelligence and personalized marketing are covered, as well as subjects that have been part of business management for decades — sales training, improved networking and lead generation, and workplace appreciation that increases engagement and drives performance.
We only scratch the surface of these topics in this report — raising awareness and highlighting key developments.
Conversations on all of these topics will continue more in depth throughout 2025 in subsequent Focus Reports. If you haven’t done so already, register on our website to receive our biweekly newsletter and to be notifiied each time we publish a new Focus Report.
Here’s a look at some trends you may encounter in the new year.
#1 – Sales Enablement Is Everyone’s Job
Have you got your head around sales enablement?
The added complexity of the B2B buying journey (including the advent of buying teams) combined with increased capabilities of CRM software and digital marketing technology led to a heightened awareness of the concept of sales enablement around 2010.
Job titles with the term became more prevalent in the subsequent decade. Suppliers of sales enablement platforms emerged offering integrated solutions for sales training, target marketing, CRM, sales process evaluators and data analysis tools.
Today, the term “sales enablement” connotes roles and strategies that didn’t exist even 10 years ago. At its core, sales enablement is about arming sales and marketing professionals with technological tools to be more effective and efficient.
Not surprisingly, artificial intelligence and machine learning will be key aspects of sales enablement in 2025 and beyond.
AI-driven sales enablement platforms provide:
- Personalized training on demand
- More accurate sales forecasting
- Improved and personalized (there’s that word again!) marketing content
- On-time and on-target customer communication
- Real-time insights into deal progress, ideal next steps and ways around objections
Sales enablement will become more integrated into companies’ revenue growth strategies. Sales enablement professionals will increasingly impact product development, marketing strategies, sales processes and customer experience initiatives.
Much to some B2B buyers’ disappointment, complex sales processes still involve a human rep. However, the journey to a closed deal, including self-serve demos, guided tours and interactive product pages, is increasingly the byproduct of sales enablement software platforms. Expect more of the same — and expect the unexpected.
#2 – Develop a Culture of Agile Learning
According to the World Economic Forum’s “2023 Future of Jobs Report,” employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years. Six in 10 workers will require training before 2027, but only half of workers are seen to currently have access to adequate training opportunities.
Surveyed companies report that investing in learning and on-the-job training and automating processes are the most common workforce strategies which will be adopted to deliver their organizations’ business goals. PwC research shows that 79% of CEOs globally are concerned that skills shortages will hinder their company’s growth.
It’s one thing to profess the importance of continuous skills building and employee development; It’s another thing altogether to carry it out. Corporate leaders face formidable challenges to find time for existing team members to complete necessary training while accomplishing their jobs. And, as the authors of an article in MIT Sloan Management Review on developing continuous learners state, the extensive list of skills that need to be developed leaves many employers uncertain about what to prioritize.
Wendy Tan is a managing partner at the Flame Centre, a strategy and people development practice, and the author of “Learning Agility: Relearn, Reskill, and Reinvent.” Joo-Seng Tan is an associate professor of management at Nanyang Technological University’s Nanyang Business School in Singapore. The co-authors emphasize the importance of learning agility, which Columbia University and the Center for Creative Leadership define as “a mindset and corresponding collection of practices that allow leaders to continually develop, grow and utilize new strategies that will equip them for the increasingly complex problems they face in their organizations.” Learning agility has also been defined as the ability to learn from one’s experience and then apply that learning to new situations.
Tan and Tan identify four key elements to developing an environment of agile learning:
Link purpose to learning – Understanding how the skills being disseminated will foster improved performance provides motivation to prioritize learning.
Create a learning-rich work environment – The authors define a learning-rich job as “having work or diverse tasks out of one’s comfort zone that requires the application of new skills in different domains to succeed.” Leaders who promote learning-rich environments accept occasional failure if their workers develop new skills through participation in experiments or moonshot projects.
Ask meta-learning questions – Meta learning is stepping back and asking: What needs to be learned? How is it best learned? What is the best way to develop the skill? Who can support the learning (think mentors)? Managers can help team members by asking — and helping answer — these types of questions. In doing so, they can intentionally accelerate the process with highly effective learning activities.
Nurture a learning team – Managers can play a vital role in encouraging continuous learning, beginning with allocating a budget and building time for skills development into workers’ schedules. Having team members share news of skills development can be part of team meetings.
Strengthening learning agility improves workers’ ability to handle ambiguity, complexity and change, Tan and Tan state. “This adaptability becomes a competitive advantage for organizations, fostering a culture in which learning is not just an event but an ongoing process. When teams cultivate these habits, they don’t just respond to disruption, they become drivers of innovation who will be able to lead their organizations into the future.”
#3 – Embrace (Or Ignore) the Shift to Less Buyer
You’ve likely seen the surveys showing that B2B buyers increasingly desire minimal interaction with sellers. Gartner reports that up to 75% of buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience. Other reports state that B2B buyers are anywhere from 50% to 75% down the path of making a buying decision before they even reach out to a supplier.
Even the best consultative sellers will struggle to make headway in a world where two-thirds of the buying process is touchless, right? Not necessarily.
The sales training company RAIN Group studied 488 B2B buyers representing $4.2 billion in purchasing power across 25 industries. RAIN Group discovered that buyers want to hear from sellers at two phases of the buying process:
Future-seeking – When they’re looking for new ideas and possibilities to drive stronger business results.
Problem-solving – When they’re actively looking for a solution to fix what’s broken or to solve a problem.
Mike Schultz, co-founder of RAIN Group (recently acquired by UK-based learning and development provider Alchemist), argues that the fact that 71% of buyers want to talk to sellers when they’re looking for new ideas is proof not only that they want to interact with suppliers, but they want to interact early in the buying decision process.
When asked what factors influence their overall purchase decision, 92% of buyers said they would be influenced to buy from sellers who deepen their understanding of needs,” Schultz reports.
“Forget what you may have been told. Get in front of your buyers and talk to them early,” he states. “Sellers who master consultative selling, deepen buyers’ understanding of their needs, and who reach out and connect with buyers early in the buying process will greatly increase their odds of becoming a top performer.”
Dave Brock, founder of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a sales consultancy, also rebuffs the notion that increased interest among buyers in digital information gathering means less opportunities for sellers to create value.
In a fascinating AI-generated discussion on rep-free B2B sales transactions on Brock’s website (fascinating for a glimpse at AI capabilities alone), Brock — or rather, his AI cohosts — reinforce the importance of “value co-creation” through customer interaction as a key to long-term sales success.
For starters, Brock argues, 60% of buyers begin the process of researching a new solution, but never complete it, and thus stick with the status quo. That’s a loss for everyone involved, according to Brock.
Value co-creation shifts the focus from simply selling a product or service to achieving the customer’s desired outcome. It’s about working with the customer to understand their specific pain points, and then tailoring the implementation of your product to solve those pain points. “It’s more about becoming a partner rather than just a vendor.”
To be sure, AI will expand the capabilities of buyers to self- educate, but Brock argues the skills that will matter most to buyers long term are the ones that are hardest to automate — building relationships, understanding complex needs, thinking strategically and providing creative solutions.
Yes, buyers can obtain multitudes more information on their own during a buying journey than they could even five years ago. Brock says it’s a wake-up call to truly assess how your team is engaging with customers and prospects to understand their needs.
“Think about the companies that you love to do business with. They don’t treat you like a transaction, do they?” Brock’s bots say. “They understand [your] needs; they anticipate [your] challenges; they go above and beyond to make [your] life easier. That’s what creates loyalty. That’s what turns customers into advocates. That’s how you build a sustainable business.”
#4 – Influencer Marketing Works in B2B Environs
Just as TikTok has become a useful platform for B2B marketing efforts, influencers are no longer solely for pedaling cosmetics, fashion and other consumer goods.
LinkedIn surveyed more than 1,700 technology buyers across the U.S., UK and India to learn more about the role influencers played in shaping purchase decisions. A whopping 87% of B2B buyers are seeking authentic, expert voices to assist with their decisions.
It all boils down to trust and humanization, writes Yolanda Zaw, senior content marketing manager at LinkedIn. Whereas influencers in the consumer world primarily boost brand awareness and promote brand affinity, B2B brand influencers are experts with significant experience in their field, educators, thought leaders, entrepreneurs or even a company’s own employees. Their value, LinkedIn reports, lies in their trustworthiness and the authenticity of their content.
“Where B2C influencers are tasked with bringing a ‘halo of celebrity’ to the brands they work with, B2B influencers need to provide a ‘halo of credibility,’ ” Zaw states.
Zaw’s tips for making good decisions regarding B2B marketing influencers:
Experts over notable names – Every industry has its well- known figures, but less-visible industry veterans are often more highly regarded. Scour your industry’s reports and conferences for analysts and speakers. And consider your own loyal customers.
Look internally – Your own team likely has knowledgeable people who can step out of their sales or marketing role to share compelling insights. Zaw reports the collective network size of a company’s employees on LinkedIn is, on average, 12 times larger than a company’s network.
Time it right – LinkedIn data shows that 67% of buyers engage with influencer content during the consideration and research phase of the buyer journey.
Be practical and creative about where you share – Not surprisingly, LinkedIn touts its own platform as a prime way to reach professionals making buying decisions. And that’s fair. But consider stepping outside your comfort zone as well. EMarketer projected that while LinkedIn and Meta would account for 42% of B2B digital ad spend in 2024, TikTok is emerging as a contender for organic creator-based B2B marketing. Adobe and Grammarly are among the notable names that have a significant presence on TikTok.
Use a multi-format approach – Featuring influencers in blog posts, newsletters, videos, podcasts and other formats will help you reach different audiences with personalized content.
#5 – Where SEO Is Going
The million-dollar question following one judge’s verdict determining that Google illegally monopolized web search (plus the filing of additional antitrust lawsuits against Google’s parent company Alphabet) is what does it mean for online marketing? Appeals to the verdict mean it could be years before the full impact is clear. Increased competition from existing and new search platforms, which could result in lower pricing, is possible, but again, it will likely be slow going.
Writing for Search Engine Land, digital marketer Maria Georgieva stated, “while all competitors would start with the same foundational data, they could also innovate and introduce new methodologies. For SEOs, this means we won’t just be developing a single strategy but potentially 10 or 20, ensuring our websites remain competitive across all these new platforms.”
Meantime, marketers who pay attention to search engine optimization are, not surprisingly, advising users to make sure AI is a primary part of every SEO strategy. A HubSpot survey of more than 100 SEO professionals showed that 73% agree that AI tools, features and solutions are an important component of their company’s SEO strategy.
AI is being used to optimize websites for technical SEO and improve search engine results page (SERP) ranking. HubSpot content creator Erica Santiago recommends using AI to:
- Brainstorm topics based on your target
- Find keywords for your chosen
- Monitor search data to identify
- Accelerate the research
- Generate content
- Identify opportunities to optimize
- Find link-building
- Analyze KPIs such as page views, clicks and time on
While some AI tools can be helpful, there’s a real risk in relying too heavily on them, Georgieva cautions. “If you and thousands like you are all using the same tools trained on identical data, the outcome will be mediocrity at best. Over-relying on AI can also hinder your critical thinking. A key strength of a great SEO expert is their ability to apply real-world experience, intuition and creativity to problem-solving.”
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), a component of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, will continue to be a key component of SEO success in 2025, Georgieva adds.
To create content that performs well under E-E-A-T metrics, play up the four elements of the acronym itself. Show your content is created by first-hand experience in author bios or referencing author experience in the content itself.
Demonstrate subject matter expertise through comprehensive and accurate information. Build your brand’s authoritativeness by regularly publishing high-quality content that earns coverage from other respected sites. Follow ethical content practices and provide clear contact information to establish trustworthiness.
Don’t get discouraged by lower click-through rates (CTR) from organic search, experts advise. Google’s addition of instant answers to queries on search engine result pages lowered CTR. More recently, Google’s addition of a Search AI Overview to most searches means even fewer CTRs.
Lastly, optimizing for the user and the search intent of a query will perform stronger than focusing on keywords and promoting your own products or services. An overreliance on AI-created content will fall short in meeting E-E-A-T guidelines. SEO specialist Dileep Thekkethil, writing for SEO services provider Stan Ventures, states, “When businesses understand what users are searching for and provide them with content that answers their questions, then the business also benefits from it along with the users.”
#6 – Positive Corporate Culture = Caring
Establishing a corporate culture that people appreciate — one that serves as your strongest retention tool — isn’t a trend in the sense that it’s an emerging area of focus. Business leaders have known for a long time that making the work environment welcoming, supportive and fun is one of the most effective ways to recruit top talent, increase worker engagement and pull the best effort from people while increasing their job satisfaction.
We’ve known this for a long time, but surveys of worker engagement and satisfaction indicates a lot of companies aren’t achieving this critical objective. In a January 2024 poll by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), only 31% of employees say they are “very satisfied” with the culture within their workplace, with 45% saying they were “somewhat satisfied.” Half (52%) of employees reported feeling burned out in the past year because of their job, and 37% reported feeling so overwhelmed it made it hard to do their job.
The cover story of the November/December issue of Harvard Business Review is headlined “We’re Still Lonely at Work” with the subhead stating, “It’s time for companies to take a different approach to culture.”
It’s time (actually, it’s past time) to be intentional about gauging the mental health of your workforce, truly hear and understand the response, and take steps to make improvements where they are needed. The authors of the HBR article on loneliness at work emphasize it is not a problem caused by hybrid or remote work or by a younger generation of needy employees.
To build a workplace that fosters connection, the first step is to measure loneliness among your employees. (A tool for measuring work loneliness is provided in the article.) Building slack into the workday by being properly staffed and
reorganizing workflow ensures that workers have time to build the sort of strong relationships that generate trust, mutual knowledge, mentoring opportunities and overall positive feelings about work.
Build socializing into the workday. The HBR authors surveyed 1,000 knowledge workers in a cross-section of environments and those who reported being least lonely said their employers offered “a frequent and robust set of social opportunities.” Free communal lunches, meetings that devote time to personal chitchat, and happy hours ranked highest among a list of social activities that promote socializing with coworkers.
Building a better work environment that promotes strong relationships and makes each individual feel appreciated begins with leadership earnestly caring about their team members. And it’s not solely the responsibility of management.
“Anyone can make a difference in their workplace, regardless of their position — whether supervisors, coworkers, receptionists, managers, frontline employees or team members from other departments,” write Gary Chapman and Paul White in “The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.”
Chapman and White state that improving the levels of praise and recognition received by employees was found to increase productivity and revenue between 10% and 20%. A whopping 79% of employees who leave their jobs voluntarily cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving, according to Leigh Branham, author of “The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave.”
So, while creating a positive work culture by showing genuine interest in workers’ mental health and providing a real sense of purpose isn’t a new trend, a host of recent polls and workplace surveys indicates it’s an area that continues to have a lot of room for improvement and one that must be high on every manager’s list of priorities.
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