What do the best salespeople do in 2025?

The pace of change in SaaS sales is accelerating.

The best salespeople in 2025 must go beyond traditional tactics.

This is a summary of a talk I gave to the Sales Team of a SaaS company (premium B2B eCommerce solution) with offices throughout Europe.

I spend a lot of time looking at, discussing with, and coaching B2B businesses, and there are some pretty clear indications (at least for me) of what really good salespeople do. 

Here are my 5 most important points.

🎯 They ruthlessly prioritize their pipeline

Top reps ask tough questions early (budget, timeline, authority), and if any red flags emerge, they politely move on. They keep their pipeline lean and mean, focusing only on deals they know have a solid chance of closing.

1. Laser-Focused ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): Identify and stick to the Ideal Customer Profile; be ruthless about leads that don’t fit.
2. Data-Driven Decision-Making: Consistently monitors KPIs, conversion rates, and pipeline velocity.
3. Early, Honest Qualification: Quickly disqualify deals that won’t close. Your time is precious.
4. Continuous Reassessment: Routinely review and reshuffle your pipeline as conditions change.
5. Quality Over Quantity: Fewer high-quality deals trump a large pool of mediocre ones.

Stats from another global SaaS company, where it was obvious that the top performers “frontloaded” their work and did much more work early on to qualify (and disqualify) their deals and champions.

💡Top tip: ask tough questions early. You’re a professional (?), and it’s your job to qualify the deal!

I wrote about how to get to a NO earlier in the sales cycle and how to think about your ICP here (Swedish):

Hacking Sales 🔥 Snabbare nej i säljcykeln

Hacking Sales 🔥 Idealkund & ICP

🏛️ They become Outcome Architects, 
not Product Pushers

A great rep would never say, “We have real-time dashboards.” Instead, they say, “Right now, it takes your team 6 hours each week to compile reports. With our solution, you’ll have instant access to insights, freeing up those 6 hours for strategic analysis—enabling you to spot trends early and act faster.” 

1. Jobs-to-Be-Done Mindset: Understand the customer’s real goals and map features directly to those goals.
2. Paint a Tangible Future State: Show customers what “life after implementation” looks like—improved efficiency, increased revenue, and better employee satisfaction.
3. Metrics Matter: Attach measurable outcomes to every proposal (e.g., “cut manual reporting time by 50%”).
4. Value Packaging: Present capabilities as a coherent story of how the customer’s work improves, not just a list of features.
5. Co-Creation of Success: Involve customers in defining the outcomes they’ll measure.

💡Top tip: to understand what outcomes are important to the customer – run better discovery meetings than anyone else!

Here’s my structure (I’ll go into detail at another time), and how I run my meetings to get what I want with time to spare:

I wrote about discovery here (Swedish):

Hacking Sales 🔥 Discovery-samtal

💡They shape the narrative 
and inspire a new perspective

Instead of just meeting the customer’s stated need (“We need a better CRM”), a great rep says: “Many companies in your space are stuck managing contacts rather than relationships. What if you could anticipate customer needs before they arise? Let’s talk about how we can get you from reactive data entry to proactive relationship building.”

1. Challenge the Status Quo: Use insights to make customers question their current approach.
2. Offer a Fresh Narrative: Position your solution as the key to unlocking growth, automation, or efficiency they haven’t considered.
3. Strategic Alignment: Understand the customer’s top-level priorities and anchor your story to those big-picture goals.
4. Thought Leadership: Don’t be a yes-person; share industry trends and visionary ideas that elevate the conversation.
5. Emotional & Logical Appeal: Weave in stories and evidence that resonate both at a strategic and human level.

💡Top tip: find a topic that matters to your customer and change their thinking. reframe the problem. Change the game without the competition knowing.

I wrote about how to provoke your customer here (Swedish).

Hacking Sales 🔥 Provocera din kund

🗺️ They make the buyer’s journey 
frictionless and even enjoyable

A top rep doesn’t just send “checking in” emails. They say: “Based on our last conversation, I’ve highlighted a clear implementation timeline for your IT team and attached a success story from a similar company. Let’s schedule a 15-minute chat with your procurement lead to finalize terms next week.”

1. Buyer-Centric Process Mapping: Understand each step the buyer must go through—procurement, legal, IT sign-off—and proactively simplify it.
2. Multithreading Relationships: Involve multiple stakeholders early to build consensus and reduce dependencies.
3. Transparency and Clarity: Always define next steps, timelines, and responsibilities. No guesswork for the customer.
4. Masterful Follow-Ups: Each follow-up provides value—new insights, clarifying documents, and relevant case studies.
5. Celebrating Small Wins: Recognize every milestone in the buying journey to keep momentum positive.

Customers hate buying products. And many of us just make it harder.

💡Top tip: stop thinking about your sales process. Start obsessing about the customer’s buying journey

I wrote a few posts on this topic (Swedish):

Hacking Sales 🔥 Kunden avgör hur du säljer

Hacking Sales 🔥 Sensemaking

Hacking Sales 🔥 Säljproces

🤖 They leverage technology and data to supercharge their efficiency 

A great rep automates their post-demo follow-ups using an AI-driven email sequence that personalizes messaging based on the prospect’s role and engagement data. Meanwhile, they track deal velocity in a dashboard that predicts which deals need attention. They spend less time on admin tasks and more time on strategic selling.

1. Beyond CRM: Use scheduling tools, AI-driven analytics, and prospecting platforms to gain an edge.
2. Data-Backed Iteration: Analyze win/loss data, conversion metrics, and funnel stages to constantly refine the approach.
3. Automation for Repetitive Tasks: Free up time from admin work to spend on strategic selling.
4. Personalized Outreach at Scale: Leverage AI to tailor messages without manual grunt work.
5. Embrace Continuous Learning: Stay updated on new tools, experiment, and adopt what works.

💡Top tip: don’t wait for management to implement stuff. Automate what you can, hire AI agents, and dominate both your CRM and your calendar. You can be 5X more productive next quarter. 

Wrap-Up

Score yourself from 1-5 on each point and get back to me with your reflections.

Nothing of this is rocket science.

But the best salespeople spend more time thinking about HOW they sell than WHATthey sell. Like a good athlete, they reflect, iterate, learn and improve.

Let’s make 2025 the year when you level up 🚀