5 Sales Trends for 2023: This Is What Your Selling Will Look Like

Are you ready for sales in 2023? If you can't scream "yes" at the top of your lungs, it's time for us to take a look at the latest B2B sales trends. We guarantee: these sales trends are 100% sales-approved! Our sales team at Dealfront has lifted the curtain to provide you with the most important sales trends for this year. Let's go!

1. Sales Trend: Less Cold Calls, More Account-Based Selling

How does sales work in your company? Do you still do classic cold calls, where you call companies at random and hope to convince them with your pitch? Nothing against good-old cold calling! In B2B sales, and especially in the DACH region, many decision-makers prefer to be approached and wooed directly over the phone.

However, the generic "fishing in the big ocean" also comes along with some disadvantages. Using this method, you can catch a lot of "fish" that don't fit your product or your company. Not only does this often make your calls very frustrating, but it can also lead to companies not sticking to you for long. Perhaps they even cost customer service a lot of time and nerves.

You can actively counteract with this B2B sales trend: Account Based Selling. With Account Based Selling – some of you might remember Account Based Marketing – we don't talk about the big, wide ocean, but the metaphor turns into many small ponds. Here you know exactly how big a pond is, which fish swim in it and with which bait you can immediately hook them. In concrete terms: In account-based selling, individual salespeople or teams specialize in a particular target audience – for example, start-ups in the financial sector – so that they can dive deep into their pains and needs and understand future customers precisely.

With this trend in sales, your prospecting as well as outreach will benefit. Furthermore, you will interact only with companies that perfectly fit your product. Once you have a few customers from a certain segment and know their requirements, you can turn those requirements into strategies to win new prospects.

The advantages of this trend in B2B sales for you are pretty obvious: You know the environment of your target audience including their competitors, pains or even the skepticism that may arise towards your product or solution. You build up your knowledge continuously and eventually speak the language of your (future) customers. The first big change for in 2023 you should be: Define recurring use cases based on your prospects or customers and make us of the sales trend Account Based Selling.

2. Sales Trend: Customer Centricity: Use New Tools and Different Possibilities for Customer Interaction

The next trend in B2B sales is probably different from the previous approaches in sales, where you only have your goals and numbers in mind. The magic word is "Customer Centricity". It means a change of perspective from your point of view to the point of view of your (future) customers. A key question you would answer in a customer centrist approach is: “How do I build trust with prospect or customers as quickly as possible?”

Spoiler alert: This does not always have to include a cold call. Sales via phone is still useful, but how about an outreach to prospects via LinkedIn or in a personal video via email?

With this sales trend, it’s time for you to have a look at handy video tools like Vidyard and Tolstoy. These video tools help you give your sales emails even more personality – no matter if it's a first contact or during the buying process. With Vidyard you can send short videos, in which you briefly summarize your conversation and present your solution in a crisp and informational video. Include first insights into your software or share success stories of your customers!

With Tolstoy you go one step further: Make your video interactive and insert buttons that your prospect can click on, directly in the video:

Here again, account-based selling plays a major role. After all, you need to know exactly what you want to say in such a video, what information you still want to get hold of and which type of "bait" works best.

3. Sales Trend: Automate Your Customer Journey with Sequencing and Sales Engagement

This sales trend is about creating more touch points along the entire customer journey. The best way to do that is with automation and the intelligent use of B2B data. Along with using the a customer service software for your business, try other tools that help you with sales engagement and productivity— that will increase your touchpoint rate. Not only does that have a positive effect on your prospect's attention, but also the engagement of your offer.

You spend hours with repetitive tasks every day? What a shame. As you can imagine, you work more efficiently when time-consuming tasks, like writing a first mail to a prospect, are automated. "That's possible?" you may be thinking. Absolutely! All it takes is smart tools like Outreach or Salesloft to help you automating these tasks.

Let's look at an example:

Step 1: Your Marketing strategies generate a lead that leaves an email address.
Step 2: As an account manager, you draft a first email or call them right away. 

Step 3: You need to do a follow-up after your initial contact if your counterpart doesn't get back to you.

If you combine these techniques and tools with your CRM system, life gets even easier. Especially as an Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) or Business Development Executives (BDEs) this can be an exciting perspective to hand over unpleasant tasks and to use the remaining time more sensibly. Think about it! The perspective is a real boost for your efficiency – definitely one of our favorite sales trend for 2023!

4. Sales Trend: Build Your Own Network and Invest in Your Brand

This sales trend is all about variation in your sales. You probably acquire your customers in B2B via cold calling and set yourself a reminder when to follow up again. There is nothing wrong with this approach and many companies do that. However, there are other channels that are worth a try – for example, via LinkedIn.

As a salesperson, you are always a brand ambassador for your brand: your face, your statements, your content are automatically linked to the name of your company or your product. Therefore, you need to position yourself as the expert that you are – especially for the outside world. And what’s better than LinkedIn? Social selling on LinkedIn works so well because you can attract your target audience with your profile, your engagement in the form of likes and comments, and of course your own content. 

LinkedIn is a very engaging way for prospects to find out where your expertise lies and how you can help them. Build your own personal brand, network and stay in touch with your followers. This will not only help you to learn more and more about your target markets, but companies will automatically approach you when they have a certain need as well.

This means: Plan and align your content and your entire online presence (or offline, if you have been invited as a speaker) with your target audience. Coordinate with the marketing team, so that you’re working towards the same direction and you know what the other part is planning and implementing at the moment.

5. Sales Trend: Focus on Marketing and Sales Alignment

And last but not least, a trend in B2B sales that is more of a general recommendation: work together with your company's marketing team. It's no use at all if you work side by side and everyone does their own thing. Profit from your experiences and exchange ideas regularly—in a task force or even in a specific revenue team – and plan next steps together.

This approach enables you to see where the priorities are at the moment and can also coordinate content from time to time. Take your marketing colleagues with you and let them take a look behind the scenes of sales, so that they can also align campaigns, landing pages or ads with your target audience. Move your brand forward together and continuously try to improve your brand image. If there's one sales trend that never goes out of style, it's probably this one.