The Bold Outlook
B2B marketing and sales are undergoing structural transformation driven by changing buyer expectations, AI-driven automation, data-driven personalization, and a rethinking of traditional sales channels.
While digital transformation has been underway for years, the next five years will catalyze a deeper shift in how B2B businesses position themselves, build trust, and close deals.
Our recommendation: Organizations must embrace customer-centricity, flexible pricing, integrated go-to-market models, and AI-enhanced capabilities to outpace the competition. Read on to learn how.
B2B Buyer Behavior: Self-Service, Consensus-Driven, and Risk-Aware
Trend: Buyers Will Demand Even More Control
Today’s B2B buyers are digitally native, information-rich, and averse to traditional sales pitches. They want:
- Self-service discovery and evaluation (Forrester reports that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience for reorders or simple purchases).
- Collaborative decision-making (Buying committees now average 6–10 stakeholders).
- Proof over pitch — clear ROI, use cases, and customer references are non-negotiables.
Implication: Marketers must enable buyers across a longer, more complex, mostly digital path — think demo sandboxes, value calculators, and real-time ROI dashboards.
Emerging Insight: Trust is the New Differentiator
Buyers increasingly seek trusted guidance rather than just features. Transparency in pricing, security practices, and implementation complexity are vital.
Datapoint: Gartner found that buyers are 2.8x more likely to buy when they feel the information provided is high-quality and easy to consume.
Technology-Driven GTM: The Rise of AI and Automation in B2B
Trend: Generative AI as a Force Multiplier
Generative AI will rewire every phase of the sales funnel:
- Marketing: Personalized email campaigns, SEO content, ad variants, social copy.
- Sales: Automated research, personalized outreach, guided selling scripts, AI note-taking.
- Customer success: Predictive churn analysis, automated onboarding, sentiment detection.
Datapoint: McKinsey estimates that AI could add $4.4 trillion in value globally — with marketing and sales the biggest beneficiaries in B2B tech.
Emerging Insight: Intelligent RevOps
The next frontier is AI-powered Revenue Operations, where data from sales, marketing, product, and support are stitched into a real-time view of pipeline health, buying intent, and churn risk.
Implication: B2B firms must invest in data hygiene and AI governance — garbage in, garbage out.
Channels and Platforms: Disruption of the Traditional Sales Motion
Trend: Digital Self-Service and Direct-to-Buyer (D2B)
Buyers increasingly prefer self-serve options — including e-commerce for complex B2B solutions. By 2026:
- 60% of B2B transactions are expected to occur in digital self-service or marketplace environments (Gartner).
- Vertical SaaS marketplaces and procurement networks (like AWS Marketplace or G2) are rising in influence.
Emerging Insight: Content as a Distribution Channel
Traditional gated PDFs are dead. B2B brands are creating YouTube series, podcasts, newsletters, and community-led content as ongoing engagement vehicles.
Datapoint: HubSpot’s “HubSpot Academy” and Notion’s “Notion Champions” communities are winning hearts and wallets. And there are many more examples.
Implication: The marketing team becomes a production company — competing for attention, not just leads. Leveraging new and emerging formats and channels that meet buyers where they are is critical to gaining buyer attention.
Pricing and Packaging: Flexibility and Outcomes Over Licenses
Trend: Usage-Based and Value-Based Pricing Go Mainstream
B2B buyers no longer want rigid seat-based licenses. Instead:
- Usage-based pricing is now used by 60% of cloud/SaaS companies (OpenView Partners).
- Value-based pricing (charging based on ROI or results) is gaining traction in consulting, MarTech, and performance-based SaaS.
Datapoint: Snowflake’s pay-per-use data platform drove explosive adoption because it aligned price with usage, not access.
Emerging Insight: Modular, Flexible Offerings
Buyers want tailored bundles — pay for what you use, swap features, and avoid shelfware.
Implication: Product and pricing teams must collaborate with marketing and sales to co-create packages aligned to real use cases.
B2B Marketing and Sales Teams: Blending Tech, Talent, and Trust
Trend: The Rise of Hybrid Roles and AI Co-Pilots
New roles are emerging:
- AI Content Strategist
- Sales Enablement Ops
- Revenue Intelligence Analyst
- Prompt Engineers for Sales/Marketing AI
AI co-pilots will continue to grow and be part of every role across sales and marketing. Those that optimize the use of AI will be advantaged in both job success and employability.
Meanwhile, traditional roles (e.g. SDRs) are being augmented or replaced by intelligent systems. Expect more cross-functional “Growth Pods” blending sales, product, and marketing.
Emerging Insight: Sales as Consultants, Not Closers
Buyers want help, not pressure. The best sales reps act as advisors:
- Understand the customer’s entire business context
- Translate features into business outcomes
- Guide consensus among buying committees
Implication: Reps need business acumen, storytelling, and empathy — not just quota-chasing. To achieve this, marketing and sales must work even more closely together.
Planning for the Future: Fortune Favors the Bold
B2B marketing and sales in 2025–2030 will reward those who optimize for buying behavior, not just selling motions. The future belongs to companies that act less like vendors and more like guides, educators, and co-strategists to their customers — powered by data, empathy, and AI. Understanding these trends becomes even more important at a time of tightening budgets when buyers are demanding that every expenditure drive bottom-line value.
Bold can help. Contact us for a free consultation on how you can leverage these trends and position your marketing and sales departments to drive growth and revenue over the next five years.
Under-the-Radar Trends to Watch
Account-Based Everything (ABX) Gets a Makeover
ABM must evolve into “ABX” — Account-Based Experience, blending lifecycle marketing, customer success, and sales plays in coordinated journeys.
Buying Groups, Not Personas
Marketers must build campaigns for buying groups, not just job titles. Think: orchestrating messaging across 5+ stakeholders with differing needs.
Enterprise Influencer Marketing
LinkedIn influencers, practitioner content creators, and industry thought leaders are becoming powerful B2B media properties, and should be leveraged by every innovative marketer.
Procurement-as-a-Service
More companies are outsourcing buying decisions to B2B procurement consultants or automated platforms — a major channel evolution. Understanding how these platforms work is critical to success in the new era of B2B marketing and sales.
Emotion in B2B Marketing
It may be counterintuitive to the world of complex, enterprise sales, but data shows emotional messaging is 7x more effective in B2B brand recall than rational messaging (LinkedIn B2B Institute). Humanize, don’t commoditize.
