The Future of Sales

Rick Macdonald
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May 2, 2025

Embracing the Data-Driven Approach

According to an article from Gartner, “The Future of Sales in 2025”, it is expected that 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition from experience- and intuition-based selling to data-driven selling. Well, it’s now 2025, have you started the journey to data-driven sales? The article focused on how AI is driving systems to assist sales in doing their jobs more productively. This is backed up by a quote in a recent Salesforce blog, “AI shines with repetitive, time-consuming or data-heavy tasks, helping you work faster and smarter.” However, the blog also stated, “AI isn’t the answer to everything – you must know when to use it.”

From my experience, I believe there is a great opportunity to be gained from a data-driven approach to sales through applying data to improve sales results beyond productivity. Before we get to that, let’s take a look back at how sales has progressed through the years.

Sales has evolved significantly over the last 100 years. The relationship selling approach, which sought to develop a long-term relationship with the customer to understand their long-term needs, moved away from the transactional, immediate sale. The better the relationship, the more loyalty was given, resulting in more sales.

Fundamental to sales in any era has been uncovering customers’ needs and providing solutions for those needs. During the latter half of the 20th Century, many methodologies were based upon these fundamentals. Solution Selling, introduced by Mike Bosworth in 1980, is a prime example.

In more recent years, the Challenger Sale methodology, developed by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in 2011, became popular. They recognised that customers had far more access to information themselves, and therefore suppliers were brought into the buying cycle much latter than before. This created the need for suppliers to challenge the customer’s thinking if they were to be successful. This drove an up-skilling of salespeople, and insight selling became a new way to sell, telling the customer an insight that they did not already know.

“Data-driven sales adds a layer of sophistication to one of the oldest trades in the world.”

During my time as a Sales Leader, I have utilized all of these methodologies, each with its own successes and challenges. Some came naturally, while others required dedicated training. In the case of Insight Selling, the approach necessitates that the organization be capable of generating insights. One source of these insights comes from data and analytics. From 2020-2024, I shifted from leading a team of salespeople to building a Sales & Marketing Analytics capability that elevated the organisation to a data-driven approach.

To improve sales results through a data-driven approach, we need to create the analytics capability that understands the business and has the skills to generate new insights from data. Often, an analytics function, if existing, is embedded in IT. I would strongly challenge this model and advocate that it should be part of the business with an experienced business/sales leader at the helm.

Returning to the central question of how data and analytics can improve performance beyond productivity, let us examine it through the lens of the macurial five pillars of sales strategy (see chart below).

Diagram showing Sales Strategy at the center, surrounded by Data & Metrics, Pipeline Management, Account Management, Sales Organization & Tools, and People Management.
THE MACURIAL FIVE PILLARS OF SALES STRATEGY
  • SALES PIPELINE — If you are focused on new customers acquisition, where are you finding new customers? Is it left to the salesperson’s intuition and experience or do you look at data to develop your Ideal Customer Profile that is then used to develop new leads?
  • ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT — If you are focused on account management, which customers from your portfolio should you spend most time on? Is it left to the salesperson’s intuition and experience or do you look at data to understand which customers value your offering the most, and will have the potential of bringing the highest Lifetime Value?
  • SALES ORGANISATION & TOOLS — If you are organising your sales model, which and how many customers should each salesperson be responsible for? Is it left to intuition and experience or do you analyse the data to maximize your resources across your sales organisation while meeting the business objectives?
  • PEOPLE MANAGEMENT — If you are deciding on the best use of your coaching time, which salespeople do you decide to spend most time with? Is it left to intuition and experience or do you look at data that demonstrates where each salesperson ranks across the team and coach those who make up the middle group to elevate them to a top performer?
  • DATA & METRICS — When preparing for customer meetings, do your salespeople have to search for the data and manipulate the data to present to the customer? Is it an expectation on them to uncover their own insights or do you serve the salespeople with all the visualizations and insights that are instantaneously available?

These are just a few examples of why creating a data-driven sales function will enable you to be far more effective and open up new opportunities for growth. The data-driven approach does not replace previous methodologies, people buy from people, you still need relationships, customers always have needs, you still need solutions, customers need to be challenged, you still need insights.

Data-driven sales adds a layer of sophistication to one of the oldest trades in theworld. If you have not yet started your journey to a data-driven selling organization you need to start now. Data-driven selling is here to stay. While AI is developing at break-neck speed and will open up multiple opportunities for further efficiencies, there is a real opportunity to create a competitive advantage through building your data and analytics capability.

At macurial, we understand that companies often need support to tackle their sales challenges. We apply a data-driven approach through the macurial five pillars of sales strategy. Get in touch to learn how we can help your sales organization overcome its challenges and achieve successful business outcomes.