As business leaders start to look forward to the new year, it’s worth taking stock of how B2B and B2C sales strategies are evolving. The influx of AI is disrupting the buyer’s journey and the sales team’s ability to perform. Plus, strong sales and marketing collaboration with an emphasis on social selling are the main ingredients for success in 2026.
Marketing and sales intersect more often
Hybrid selling is an omnichannel sales approach that combines digital and offline outreach. The rise of hybrid selling has brought sales and marketing teams closer together. The combined customer insights and omnichannel experience this collaboration offers can fuel better performance.
This trend has proven to have staying power. HubSpot's 2025 State of Sales Report shows sales teams are borrowing from the marketing playbook—and it's working. Forty percent of sales teams have expanded their offering of self-serve tools, resources that have typically fallen under the purview of marketing. Pricing pages, customer stories, and social media are now highly effective sales assets.
“The data confirms what many of us already suspected: When sales reps start thinking like marketers, they close more deals and build stronger pipelines,” wrote HubSpot. “Sales still needs to sell, and marketing still needs to market. But, the organizations winning right now are the ones where both teams borrow freely from each other's playbooks.”
[Read more: How to Create a Hybrid Sales Model]
Social selling is here to stay
It’s clear that B2B sales communication now takes place primarily in the digital realm. Most B2B sales communication between suppliers and buyers takes place via email, live chat—and surprisingly, social media. HubSpot reported that social media now delivers 42% response rates, nearly double that of email. Sales reps are getting their highest-quality leads from social channels.
What does this look like in practice? “Social selling is about public visibility, consistent value sharing, and building trust before the first conversation even happens,” wrote HubSpot.
Small business owners and sales reps can leverage both their personal LinkedIn profiles and their company pages to share thought leadership, engage with connections, and start to build authority. Again, take a page from marketing; consider building out a content calendar and optimizing your posting times for maximum readership.
Help your sales reps mitigate burnout
The pace of change is like nothing we’ve seen before, in sales and across all key business functions. The shift to remote and hybrid work, an uncertain economy, geopolitical volatility, and the rapid adoption of AI have dramatically changed the workplace.
Organizations tend to adapt to these challenges by bringing on new tech, software, and workflows. Gartner estimates that the number of “organizational change initiatives” increased by 67% between 2016 and 2024. Simultaneously, employee willingness to support those initiatives dropped from 74% to 44%.
“Sellers are being asked to do more than ever before—often without the tools or clarity to succeed,” wrote Gartner. “Overwhelmed sellers are significantly less likely to attain quota. To reduce burnout and improve performance, CSOs must prioritize differentiated seller skills and offload less impactful activities from their teams’ workload.”
Building a resilient salesforce is key to sales success in the next year and beyond. But that means adopting lasting solutions that enable sales leaders to reconcile forward-looking change initiatives with present-day seller output.
Prepare for a different buyer’s journey
The B2B sales cycle is becoming more streamlined due to the rise of AI. Research in G2’s 2025 Buyer Behavior Report shows that IT decision makers are spending less time in the research phase of the journey, relying on generative AI to make recommendations.
“Across the board, buyers are becoming more efficient researchers. Nearly two out of three now prefer engaging with vendor salespeople only in the later stages of their buying journey, up sharply (+17 ppt) from last year,” wrote G2. “This puts pressure on software marketers to ensure their products are discoverable and highly recommended, showing up in exactly the right places at precisely the right time.”
Cold calling and sales pitches still have their time and place, but it’s worth understanding that many B2B buyers are conducting their own research before meeting with sales reps to validate their work. Buyers aren’t exclusively relying on genAI—they still check review sites and ask peers for recommendations. Capitalize on those opportunities to make sure your company is shortlisted.
Customers do their research and explore their options before they ever see an email blast, which means they don’t need you to tell them what your product is; they need you to tell them why you are better than the competition.Donny Kelwig, Zendesk
The rise—and risk—of AI agents
AI agents, or agentic AI, are autonomous, proactive applications designed to execute specialized tasks—from handling customer service queries to advanced tasks like making travel arrangements. This technology is at the forefront of AI innovation, and sales teams are among the first to benefit from AI agents.
However, experts are starting to raise alarms about the prevalence of AI in the sales process. AI’s rapid adoption may end up doing more harm than good. “The explosion of new and untested genAI functionality, combined with lagging AI user skills, will result in incidents that lead to the loss of more than $10 billion in enterprise value from declining stock prices, legal settlements, and fines,” predicted Forrester.
AI adoption has skyrocketed 282%, according to Salesforce’s data. Yet, consumers are still wary of the information that genAI churns out. They prefer to use genAI as the first research step and then validate the results with a human sales agent.
“B2B leaders must embrace a more disciplined and evidence-driven approach to how they engage with generative AI, prioritizing trust and tangible value for buyers as they head into next year,” said Sharyn Leaver, Chief Research Officer at Forrester.
Sales enablement tools to support modern teams
Sales enablement tools generally help with three things: getting salespeople ready to sell, guiding their day‑to‑day execution, and measuring what works. Sales enablement tools range from CRM systems that collect, share, and analyze customer information to sales engagement platforms that automate outreach and track prospects.
“When evaluating sales enablement tools and technologies, value is key. Your teams need to not only be able to use the systems easily; they need to see value in the systems,” wrote Oracle. “They need to see how the new processes and tools empower sales teams to become more efficient, productive, and profitable.”
Because sales enablement is such a broad category of software, there are many vendors to assess. Generally, modern sales teams need:
- CRM software. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can store your customer and business data, track customer interactions, and integrate with your website, social media profiles, emails, and other marketing. Popular CRM software includes HubSpot CRM, Salesforce CRM, and monday.com CRM.
- Marketing automation software. Marketing automation manages routine marketing tasks such as sending emails, creating social media posts, and tracking lead generation activities. Some marketing automation software options available include Marketo, HubSpot Marketing, and ActiveCampaign.
- Content creation. Content creation software helps sales teams create and organize internal training and client-facing assets, such as webinars, whitepapers, and product demos. Some popular content creation platforms include Loom, Showpad, and Seismic.
- Social media selling apps. With the right strategy, social media selling apps—such as Nimble, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and IFTTT (If This Then That)—can help your sales team convert your company’s social media followers into customers.
How to build a data-driven sales process
As AI continues to impact the sales process and customers get savvier, sales analytics will make the difference for successful sales teams. A sales process informed by data helps your team put effort into the right activities, nurture the right leads, and make smarter pitches that resonate.
“Customers do their research and explore their options before they ever see an email blast, which means they don’t need you to tell them what your product is; they need you to tell them why you are better than the competition,” wrote Zendesk. “They also expect you to understand their pain points.”
A data-driven sales approach allows your team to create a smaller pool of qualified leads that are more likely to convert into customers. Use KPIs such as sales by lead source, average customer lifetime value, percentage of revenue from existing customers (and new customers), and cost of selling as a percentage of revenue generated.
Building a data-driven sales approach starts by getting everyone’s buy-in. Get clear alignment from your sales team and senior leadership on what the goals are and how you will collect and use data to get there. Audit your existing data and solutions to identify gaps.
Many businesses fall down between the data collection step and taking action. Close this gap by figuring out the process for translating a data insight into action. How will you move from data analysis to improving performance? Hammer out this process early on to keep things running smoothly this year and beyond.
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