This past year, B2B organizations have faced a challenging market, with a number of economic pressures and an overwhelming trend of deal paralysis. Looking ahead to 2025, there is cautious optimism that some of these challenges will lessen.
As a sales or revenue leader, you must empower your salespeople with the right skills and tools they need to serve buyers in the current climate — and for the future ahead. In the face of the known and unknowns 2025 has in store, you need to give your sales team the competitive advantage to win.
In this article, I share three sales skills your professionals should boost to ensure your organization thrives in 2025.
SALES SKILLS YOUR TEAM NEEDS
(1) Prospecting Prowess
Your sellers have to capture buyer attention in an increasingly saturated marketplace — all the while building a foundation of value and trust to help buyers see your solution as No. 1. Marketing plays a key role in the buying journey, but your salespeople can make or break a buyer once they are qualified.
To nurture prospects, salespeople must add value to all buyer interactions, even if no deal is on the near-term horizon. Salespeople must hone in on the buyer’s status quo and any obstacles keeping them from achieving their goals. Expert salespeople are knowledgeable about the market and can offer game-changing insights to buyers. To bolster your prospecting prowess, you must equip your teams to engage with potential prospects effectively and impactfully.
(2) Aptitude for Discovery
Helping buyers solve their most-pressing business problems is where salespeople bring value that resonates with the buyer and for which they are willing to pay. Without a comprehensive view of the buyer’s current situation and desired goals, developing a differentiated strategy aligned with the buyer’s pains is impossible. No problems to solve, no value to deliver, no sale. But when a buyer can effectively perform discovery that reveals and amplifies the buyer’s challenges, that is not just value-oriented selling — it is the epitome of selling.
To achieve this, salespeople should do initial leg-work to learn all they can on a qualified, target buyer. This keeps them from wasting time during buyer meetings by asking them questions that can be answered on their website. Then, they must engage buyers with strategic questions and meaningful conversations.
(3) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy for Scale
As AI becomes increasingly popular in the workplace, some professionals may feel uneasy and uncertain about their future roles. While some fear AI will replace sales professionals, it will never replace great sellers. Instead of deciding how to replace your experts with AI, determine how you can partner the two.
Help your sales force learn how to leverage AI to scale their own capabilities. For example, instead of sales professionals spending two to three days researching a buyer account, they can use AI to streamline their process. As a result, the seller will have more time to do more-valuable tasks, like prospecting (see above). AI might not come naturally to every sales professional, though. Invest some time in helping your team know how best to use AI tools to make more-efficient work of their tasks.
BOOST REVENUE PERFORMANCE WITH THE REVENUE ACCELERATORS SERIES
Relying solely on your sales process for your organization’s revenue performance will hinder your success. As the buying journey becomes more complex, your salespeople need to bolster their skills to effectively compete in this competitive landscape.
With the Revenue Accelerators Series, you get access to 10 critical sales skill guides for each stage of the sales process to help your salespeople win an unfair share™ of the market.
Access the Complete Revenue Accelerators Series