B2B sales just keep getting tougher. Sellers face long, complex sales cycles with multiple stakeholders. Modern B2B buyers are highly informed and often price sensitive. The competition is fierce.
There are so many reasons deals can go sideways. Market instability makes selling complex offerings even harder. And this year, markets have fluctuated wildly with tariffs, trade wars, global conflict, and natural disasters. The risk of a new wave of supply chain disruption looms large.
What sales organizations need more than ever is agility: Agility to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions, new buyer needs, and unforeseen circumstances. They need flexibility to respond with new models and business offerings. And they need visibility into their sales pipeline and the insights that come with that visibility.
Sales AI and modern enterprise systems are helping on all these fronts.
When markets are in flux, sales teams need to move fast. They need to keep deals moving, but also not miss new opportunities that might pop up. They can’t do that with outdated tech or spreadsheets.
Generative AI in modern sales tools gives sellers and sales managers the insights they need to be proactive. It can provide both summaries and highlights of accounts and opportunities, and alert sellers about potential pitfalls. This arms sellers with the information they need to guide a customer through the buying process as markets shift and impact pricing.
For example, intelligent sales tools that are connected to core enterprise systems like ERP will detect extra inventory due to an international deal falling through or if there are supply chain issues because of incremental cost increases. Based on that information, they can offer sellers next-best steps to take.
A McKinsey & Co. survey of B2B decision makers released last fall showed that 19% are using gen AI use cases for B2B buying and selling, and 23% are in the process of implementing AI.
But analysts noted that most B2B organizations are lagging with respect to generative AI. They’re missing out on what it McKinsey describes the tech’s ability to help to drive “outsized profitable growth by boosting revenue generation, increasing sales productivity, and streamlining internal processes.”
B2B sales 2025 means that organizations should prepare for AI agents, consider practical use cases for generative AI, and ground their AI initiatives in quality data for the best results.
Another way sellers can help customers in unpredictable markets is by providing them with real-time insight into delivery status, post sales.
Connected systems give sales teams visibility into marketing, commerce, sales, and service channels so they can keep customers updated, which helps keep them happy and less likely to switch to a competitor.
Generative AI can surface critical information proactively so sellers have the right vision into each account and contact. When customer experience data is united, it can empower sellers with the right insights and highlights to understand buyers and act accordingly.
In addition to AI insights, sales teams need the flexibility to offer different solutions or pricing models, such as subscription services or a usage-based model. In a period of economic instability, budgets can shrink as customers look for ways to reduce their spending. More flexible business models can give customers the confidence to sign on the dotted line.
Full visibility into the sales pipeline is always essential for sales organizations, but it’s especially critical during periods of market disruption. Pipeline and forecast visibility is essential in order to keep business on track and moving forward.
Unlike traditional sales CRM, where sellers could easily obscure the real status of a deal, intelligent pipeline and forecast solutions provide real-time signals from opportunity interactions. Sales managers can easily see what’s really going and make informed decisions—instead of relying on their intuition or gut feeling.
With real-time data and AI insights, sellers and managers can focus on opportunities with the most potential to close. Managers also can spot opportunities at risk. If they see a deal that’s in trouble, they can pull senior sales staff in to save it.
Intelligent sales tools can help an organization overcome market instability by improving the accuracy of their sales forecasting.
Ten years ago, unlocking insights with data was a competitive advantage. Today it’s a competitive necessity for a successful sales strategy.
2025 has been anything but predictable, forcing many industries and businesses to adjust their planning. But for the past few years, businesses have had to adjust to many changes and sudden shifts. They’ve learned to be agile—sometimes the hard way, as we saw during the pandemic.
Organizations that take advantage of sales AI have the agility and flexibility to manage through unstable periods. When AI is rooted in quality data and systems are connected, they have the right insights to drive sales success and stay on a growth track.
