2025 is here, and let’s be real—if you’re not leveling up, you’re falling behind.
Your buyers are getting more sophisticated, new AI tools are dropping every day, and I’ve lost count of how many social media platforms exist.
Sales isn’t about doing more of the same; it’s about working smarter, connecting better, and staying ahead of the curve. The difference between a mediocre sales year and a record-breaking one is how you adapt, experiment, and execute.
Here are 7 strategies to use in 2025 that will leave your 2024 sales numbers in the dust.
1. Post More, Sell More: Get Better at Social Selling
How do sales reps win in 2025? Build a personal brand on social media.
You can roll your eyes at the term “personal brand” all you want, but it’s hard to argue with results: 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.
Buyers are watching—be the go-to expert they want to engage with before they even know they need you. Social selling is an easy (and FREE!) way to showcase your expertise and build trust and visibility.
Think of your LinkedIn feed like a lead-nurturing drip sequence running at all times, except it’s for everyone in the world to see. A strong LinkedIn presence can warm up a lead long before a cold call.
Stretch goal for 2025: Put a face to the name—stop being camera-shy and post video content on whatever social media channel your buyers use most.
Check out this episode of The 0 to $30 Million Blueprint with Steli Efti to learn more about how to build an authentic personal brand and turn your subject matter expertise into content that drives sales organically.
2. Stop Fighting AI: Let the Robots Do Some Stuff for You
AI isn’t stealing your job; it’s stealing the boring parts—a.k.a. all the stuff that takes your attention away from talking to other humans.
Sales automation eliminates the repetitive manual admin tasks, allowing you to focus more on the things robots can’t do: being charming and funny and handsome.
In 2025, you need to start using AI-powered sales automation to:
- Transcribe your sales calls and generate call summaries
- Auto-send outreach through phone calls, SMS, and email to contact more customers faster
- Trigger follow-up emails to nurture leads
- Re-engage leads that have gone cold
- Analyze customer data for better targeting
Sales reps who learn how to use AI-powered automation will run laps around those who don’t. When you automate your sales process, you speed up your ability to close—and when you speed up your ability to close, you can tackle a higher sales volume than ever before.
If you can integrate AI into your workflow, you can demolish your sales targets in 2025.
3. Befriend Your Marketing Team
Sales and marketing aren’t two separate teams—they’re two parts of the same revenue engine. So why do they operate in silos? Opportunities get missed, messaging falls flat, and deals get harder to close.
Sales provides valuable insights into buyer personas that help marketing target the right audience, while Marketing offers crucial insights into the messaging that drives buyer interest and conversions.
It’s time to start collaborating to build trust, open lines of communication, and align on shared goals. When Sales and Marketing trust each other, they proactively share observations (like shifts in buying patterns) and align more effectively on strategy, leading to bigger wins.
Getting the chemistry right between these teams isn’t just nice to have—it’s a game-changer for the business.
Our advice: Share buyer insights in real-time—don’t wait for the quarterly all-hands meeting.
Sales has daily conversations with buyers. Sharing real-time insights with Marketing leads to better messaging, better campaigns, and better sales collateral.
Plus, by constantly sharing insights, both departments can experiment with approaches faster—seeing what works and what doesn’t work through rapid iteration.
Here’s one way to do it:
- Create a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel for “Buyer Insights.”
- Anytime a rep hears something useful on a call (a new objection, pain point, or trend), they drop it in the channel.
- Marketing can use these insights to adjust messaging, create content, and improve campaigns.
- Bonus: Set a "Buyer Insight of the Week" to highlight the most useful share and recognize the rep who posted it.
Let’s make 2025 the year we break down these silos! With our forces combined, we’ll crush all our revenue targets, and then everyone will clap. 👏
4. Clean Your Damn Pipeline
A bloated pipeline of dead leads is like a messy closet—it slows you down. Sales reps with good pipeline management consistently outperform those with poor pipeline hygiene.
Start fresh in 2025. Clean up your CRM data, keep it realistic, and focus on deals that can actually close.
Some tips for cleaning your pipeline:
- Purge dead leads and stale deals. Remove deals stuck in "proposal sent" or "decision pending" stages for months. If a deal hasn’t moved in 90+ days (or whatever timeline works for your sales motion), they’re just not that into you. It’s time to archive or requalify those leads with a fresh approach.
- Prioritize high-probability opportunities. Focus on deals with a clear path to closing—those that align with your Ideal Customer Profile, have active engagement, realistic timelines, and strong intent to buy. Let go of long shots.
- Set a weekly pipeline review habit. Once a week, spend time flagging outdated or incomplete records for follow-up or removal, moving deals to the correct stage based on the most recent activity or feedback, merging duplicate contacts, etc. It’s not sexy work, but it makes for good pipeline hygiene so you can move faster and focus on the right deals.
5. Be a Coach, Not a Seller
Nobody wants to be “sold to.” Today’s buyers want guidance. Stop selling them a product and start solving their problems.
Buyers can easily name their pain points—the problem is they don't know what the hell to do about them. They’re inundated with solutions but no guidance.
Your biggest enemy isn't the competition. It's your prospect's decision to do absolutely nothing.
Instead of asking, "Who else are you considering?" try asking:
- "What happens if you do nothing about this problem?"
- "What's the cost of maintaining the status quo?"
- "How does this issue impact your business 6 months from now if left unsolved?"
Think like a coach. Ask better questions on your calls. Understand your prospects’ pains. Educate them on how to solve their problems.
To your buyer, the sale is a byproduct of being helpful, not the main attraction. Don’t chase commissions—chase trust.
6. Ditch Your Dusty, Old Sales Scripts
If you want results you’ve never had, you’ll need to do things you’ve never done.
This doesn’t mean you should abandon every proven method for successful sales calls. But why not test new approaches to see if something can work better?
A/B test a new pitch against your existing sales script. Ask questions differently, use different customer stories, revamp your pitch deck, find new ice-breakers—whatever you think is worth exploring, try it.
Bonus: By innovating new approaches to your sales scripts, you can avoid burnout and show up to all your calls with refreshed energy. Prospects can tell the difference between a sales rep who is excited about what they’re doing and a sales rep who is dead inside.
7. Learn How to Tell Stories That Stick
People have terrible imaginations. Real estate agents know this—they stage houses for sale with fake furniture instead of leaving it empty so buyers can easily picture what living there would look like. And those same unimaginative homebuyers will one day hop on sales calls with sellers like you.
Buyers need to be able to picture how their lives will be different once your solution is in their hands. Facts tell, but stories sell.
Forget dumping stats on people. Stories make a stronger impression because they make your solution real. Find your success stories and tailor them to your audience. If you don’t have stories, go get some.
Some tips for telling better stories:
- Make the customer the hero. When sharing stories with prospects, frame the customer, not your product, as the hero of the story. Position yourself as the guide who helps them win (think Yoda, not Luke). Focus on their growth and how they solved their challenges.
- Use sensory details and emotional triggers. Don’t just say, “They were frustrated.” Say, “Their inbox was flooded with 100+ unread emails, and they were getting chewed out by their CFO for slow response times.” The more vivid and specific your language, the easier it is for buyers to imagine themselves in the story. Emotional triggers make stories stick.
- End with the successful payoff. Finish every story with a clear, measurable outcome (e.g., "cut churn by 25%" or "closed deals 30% faster"). Buyers will imagine their lives if they had the same result—which gives them a reason to care about your solution.
Let’s Go 💪
2025 is your year to step up, stand out, and shatter your sales goals. Whether it’s mastering AI, building trust with storytelling, or ditching the outdated habits holding you back, success comes down to one thing: execution.
You don’t need to do all this at once. Start with the resolutions that resonate most and build from there. The key is to take action, stay consistent, and keep pushing yourself to grow. Sales is never static, and you shouldn’t be either. Go make 2025 your best year yet.
If you need help, we’ve got your back—try Close free for 14-days and see why sales teams win more with our fast, No-BS CRM.
