4 Sales Trends You Should Be Taking Advantage of in 2025 (With Examples)

Good Morning. Oracle’s stock exploded 40% yesterday after announcing a mind-bending $455 billion in AI cloud contracts. The surge was so massive that it briefly made Larry Ellison the richest man in the world. We’d love to know who the sales reps are who closed those monster deals. Somewhere, an AE is updating their CRM with the note: “Next step: renew $300B contract with OpenAI.” Now let’s get into today’s Follow Up. (:

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4 Trends Every Sales Rep Should Be Acting on Right Now

Welcome to 2025, where we see a new AI sales tool every day, promising to completely change how outbound sales is done. 

It’s exhausting, to be honest. 

But you can’t deny that things are changing. 

Buyers are getting savvier (and harder to reach). There’s more AI-generated spam emails flooding inboxes than anyone could ever read. And yet, most of the sales basics are still true and working today. 

So we went out into the dark corners of the internet to find the 4 sales trends and AI hacks you should start embracing right now.

Like, the ones that actually work and make a difference. Let’s dive in. 👇️ 

1. Train AI to Write like You (or better).

AI can be your extremely fast, personal writing assistant.

But only if you train it like you would a real employee.

Both OpenAI and Claude now let you customize your AI, and define writing styles like witty, informational, chatty, etc. Feed ChatGPT or Claude samples of your best emails and ask it to analyze your voice, tone, and structure.

Then set guidelines like "Write responses using an informal, upbeat tone and short sentences, like these examples."

And give as much context as possible: “Write an email to Bob. Bob is a CMO at a 50 person CPG company. I had a meeting with him last week where we covered XYZ. In the email, I want to add these 3 follow ups, and ask if he’s available this Monday.“

My friend Jordan put together a list of 6 AI writing rules here:

The key is avoiding obvious AI tells. Things like em-dashes, lots of emojis, or big corporate words you’d never use.

2. Personalize, but do it well.

Everyone's personalizing emails now.

But most are fully automating it with AI, and it’s bad.

Bad personalization is often worse than no personalization. When you mention someone's LinkedIn post and or a fact about them, then immediately pitch your product, it feels fake and manipulative. Especially when the fact you said is made up.

Here’s a screenshot of a recent email I got from a large B2B sales data provider:

I could tell it was written by AI immediately because of the em-dash at the end. And once I knew it was AI generated, I lost all trust in the person who sent it to me.

Do they actually enjoy strolling on the Riverwalk? Maybe. But most likely its a lie, generated by AI.

So instead of doing fake personalization with AI, do real research, get specific, and find something about the prospect that actually matters to your pitch.

3. Focus on Quality > Quantity

The days of spray-and-pray email blasts are quickly coming to an end.

Every person on earth with a few hundred dollars can blast thousands of generic cold emails a day. Which means you’re competing in a very crowded space.

This makes 1 to 1 manual outreach so much more effective.

The future of outbound is all about intent and relevance. Target fewer prospects with highly relevant, well-timed messages.

Try tactics that can't be mass-produced easily.

• Record a 60-second personalized video.

• Send a LinkedIn voice note referencing their recent post.

• Send one-off cold emails that clearly show you did real research.

It’s easier to spot real effort these days, and prospects respect it.

4. Video & Content Are a Part of The Sales Stack

Video and content are becoming essential in sales.

Research shows 98% of buyers watch explainer videos to learn more about products, and 87% of buyers have been convinced to buy a product after watching a video about it.

Video is quicker, more digestible, and can start the buying process without a meeting.

Here’s what you can do:

• Create short demo videos that prospects can watch on their own schedule. Show key features & problems you solve in 2-5 minutes.

• Use personalized video messages with tools like Loom: "Hi Jim, I recorded this 1-minute video to show how your website could use our tool..."

• LinkedIn content. Yes, I know… creating content on LinkedIn can feel cringe. But getting inbounds from a post that took a few minutes to write is not cringe.

Video and content help build trust fast and at scale. Ignoring it is like going fishing with a stick and some string, instead of dynamite.