The Future of Sales: Trends to Watch

As the year is speedily rolling to an end, every company is hurrying to Trends Shop to refresh their strategy “wardrobe” for the next one. Do you hear that noisy crowd? These are marketers on the craze with social listening and influencers’ “jackets” trending now.

And what about current sales trends? What does the future keep in stock for sales teams, and what winds of change are blowing their way? Isn’t it time to get something “warmer” for your prospecting email? (Spoiler: it is! You’ll see what it can be and how it warms up leads.)

It’s always better to prepare everything in advance and “dress up” your business, ready to go outside into the sales world in the coming months. Let’s review what you might need to “wear” individually as a sales rep or collaboratively as a team during the next sales season.

9 Trends Reshaping the Future of Sales

Take a closer look at this “display window” with the top sales trends.

1. Lead-gen videos

If content is king, then video is the dazzling royal mantle (on sale now!) worn only on a special occasion: quality lead generation, whether in B2C or B2B.

In a trance-like manner, prospects’ eyes get glued to engaging sales videos like these:

• Product demo
• Video sales pitch
• Comparison video
• Webinar
• Videocast
• Client’s video testimonial, etc.

Rodger Desai, CEO of Prove, strongly advocates for a video trend in sales. He calls it a “powerful visual stimulator” in B2B lead-gen strategies. Desai outlines webinars as the most impactful video tactic for their brand’s success in B2B sales. He shares, “Our webinars on digital identity verification and fraud prevention generate top-quality B2B leads across platforms. And our next dive into the future of sales will definitely include creating more video content like this because it’s absolutely worth the effort.”

For many brands, the video also acts as a highly convertible lead magnet popping up on their websites. For instance, watch a glimpse of this one on the homepage of Curator.io.

2. Chatbot-pushed sales

“Hey there

Wondering if we’re a good match? Let’s find out.”

At present, digital buyers receive similar greetings all over the web. But they are not from sales professionals. These are from AI-powered chatbots.

In fact,  41% of chatbots are used for selling, compared to only 17% for marketing.

Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, says, “I have no slightest doubt that conversational AI bots will transform the future of sales and marketing alike. One of them is already amplifying our website sales. It handles practically all visitors’ inquiries and converts leads into customers, guiding them through the sales funnel from TOFU to BOFU, upselling, and cross-selling.”

For example:

Check out how the chatbot at Ninja Patches responds to the inquiry about custom patch types for brand promotion. It provides a range of options (embroidered, woven, silicone patches, and so on) to pick from.

Pro tip: Use AI chatbot builders like Copilotkit.ai, Sitespeak.ai, or Chatfuel (for social platforms) to experiment with this sales trend.

3. Automation (typically AI-driven)

Did you know that it often appears as one of the “try-or-die” trends in sales discussions?

Let us explain. Without an automated sales process in 2025 and beyond, you can gradually lose everything: time, money, and customers. Perhaps that’s why 35% of sales reps turn to AI to automate manual tasks, saving an average of two hours and 15 minutes daily!

If you don’t want to trail behind, consider using tools for sales automation like these (most of them are powered by artificial intelligence):

• Automatic email finders: Skrapp.io or Findy
• Customer relationship management systems (CRMs): HubSpot or Salesforce
• Sales analytics software: Capsule or Zoho Analytics
• No-code sales email builders: Mailmodo or Selzy
• Web scraping tools: ScrapingBee or Octoparse

For example:

In Skrapp.io, you just need to type your prospect’s name, company, or website—and ta-dah! You have a validated contact ready for use.

4. Emotionally intelligent emails

In its traditional form, cold email is a faded-out “garment” in sales.

But it shouldn’t be thrown away. Still remaining “cold” by nature, it should rather gain emotional intelligence. Emotionally intelligent sales emails brim with the warmth of emotion. They pull at the heartstrings and stir sentiments, warming up leads by doing so.

Emotional responses can be as follows:

• Curiosity
• Surprise
• Cheer
• Empathy
• Gratitude
• Or others.

Here’s one of the follow-up email examples from the HubSpot sales team to the client who abruptly went silent on them, never responding to calls or emails.

The sales representative referred to Adele’s song in the subject line (“Hello from the other side”) and the email body (“I must have called a thousand times”) in a hilarious way.

Pro tip: If you use off-the-rack email templates, emotionalize them with memes or emojis and give them a bit of soul and personality.

For example:

Phil Strazzulla, Founder of SelectSoftware Reviews, tweaks Mailchimp’s ready-made newsletter templates by adding emoji language and emotional GIFs.

5. GenAI

Already 42% of salespeople take advantage of generative AI, commonly known as GenAI, to create content for prospect outreach, reducing the time required for this task from 30 minutes to one hour.

But not only.

Here are the most mainstream GenAI use cases and tools for sales professionals:

• For cold call recording and analysis: Chorus.ai or Gong.io
• For social media content: Canva’s Magic Write or Jasper.ai
• For sales presentations: Beautiful.ai or Gamma
• For AI-enhanced emails: Lavender or Smartwriter.ai
• For CRM data interpretation: People.ai or Clari

According to Sabas Lin, CTO at Knowee, there’s yet another reason for GenAI to be one of the best trends for sales teams to follow this year and into the future. He says, “My favorite function of generative AI is educational. It’s like your personal coach in sales that gives you precise instructions on what to do. You simply ask your GenAI ‘teacher’ anything to boost your sales performance or learn new sales hacks.”

For example:

Type your question: “How can I improve my B2B cold calls?”—and get an instantly generated response with actionable steps and tips.

6. Selling via augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR) or metaverses

Full steam ahead, the two realities, AR and VR, have already broken into real estate, automotive, and retail sectors as the most revolutionary sales trends. Today, sales teams from those industries organize AR or VR product demos or showrooms where customers can test products virtually.

For example:

AZULIK Real Estate offers a VR showroom experience grounded in nature.

Above all, in retail, you can notice a rapid rise in the popularity of VR stores. More and more brands create virtual stores in the Metaverse, a 3D-enabled digital space.

For example:

Adidas built the Metaverse, Adiverse, with a unique collection of clothing items as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

As a financial expert, Gary Hemming, Owner & Finance Director at ABC Finance, also points out the importance and benefits of cryptocurrency as an on-demand payment option in VR sales. “First of all, cryptocurrencies naturally fit into the ecosystem of NFTs as a primary method to buy, sell, or trade those in VR spaces. Second, they have lower transaction fees but add more security layers thanks to blockchain technology. Besides, some VR shoppers prefer anonymity, and crypto payments with Bitcoin or Monero fully cover this need.”

7. LinkedIn-ing (chiefly for B2B)

Where would B2B sales reps be without LinkedIn, responsible for 80% of all B2B leads?

Already used by nearly nine out of ten B2B brands for lead generation, LinkedIn will still remain one of the greatest (and often the central) social channels for B2B sales success in the near future.

It belongs to the utmost B2B sales trends you can’t afford to overlook and offers some of the best functionality for salespeople:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator with new features like Account Map, Relationship Explorer, AI-assisted search, and AccountIQ
• LinkedIn Live streaming
• Enhanced Company Pages with custom call-to-action buttons
• LinkedIn Events with poll and Q&A features
• LinkedIn Premium with InMail messaging

However, even if you don’t want to upgrade to Premium, you can engage with leads showing interest in your product/service via average DMs.

For example:

The potential customer asks about ERP software for the metal manufacturing industry. The brand promptly responds within one hour, sharing a live demo page.

Pro tip: Use Skrapp’s LinkedIn email finder additionally if you want to extract and save business contacts in bulk from LinkedIn and Sales Navigator in no time.

8. Networking with the community in person

Face-to-face networking is one of the evergreen trends in sales, similar to timeless clothing that never goes out of fashion.

Actually, 95% of business leaders agree that physical meetings are crucial for client relationship-building, where branded products can leave a memorable impact.

Reyansh Mestry, Head of Marketing at TopSource Worldwide, also believes in the power of in-person networking with clients. He explains why it’s significant in sales. “Face-to-face networking is about nurturing leads rather than hurrying to sell your product to them. It typically happens in a casual, non-forced atmosphere and establishes stronger connections than digital interactions. Everything matters here for forging bonds that withstand the test of time: eye contact, smile, handshake, and other non-verbal cues.”

Mestry shares a list of community event ideas for sales professionals to network with local clients:

• Local festivals or fairs
• Community service events (e.g., neighborhood clean-ups)
• Local trade shows
• Volunteering (e.g., food drives or charity fundraisers)
• Community sports events or leagues
• Co-hosted meet-ups with other local businesses
• Holiday celebrations

9. Sales + marketing = a match made in heaven

This “love formula” is hanging in the air as a groundbreaking tendency in front of Heads of Sales and CMOs.

“You won’t see a distinct line between marketing and sales anymore. These lines will be totally blurred in the future of sales,” predicts Jeffrey Zhou, CEO and Founder of Fig Loans.

This puts business leaders in the hot seat for a change to create favorable conditions for marketers and sales reps to help them enter symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships. “Yet,” Zhou remarks, “many companies still face challenges with hitch-free teamwork between these two departments. When these obstacles become too big to overcome, they can lead to financial losses or even company collapses.”

He recommends establishing total alignment to remove hitches in cross-departmental collaboration between sales and marketing teams:

• Strategies: Brainstorming and strategizing campaigns or unique offers together.
• Technologies: A CRM or an intranet system for seamless cross-team communication.
• Workflows: Consistent messaging across all customer touchpoints.

For example:

Let’s say your goal is to retain a SaaS customer. Your marketing and sales professionals can gang up to craft a compelling SaaS email with a personalized discount or incentive to renew a subscription.

Ready to Try Out the Best Sales Trends?

Take the first step and reboot your sales style with Skrapp.io. Scrape verified email addresses and build a targeted prospecting list. No more wasted time on gathering and validating contacts manually!

Create a free Skrapp account or get a Chrome extension, and let Skrapp become your secret weapon for lead gen.

Join five million other users who already enjoy the time-saving benefits of this tool.