What does the evolution of Sales tell us about “what’s coming next”?

Hey there, 👋 sorry I haven’t written here in a while!

Truthfully, I don’t have a great excuse.

Sooo instead of me making up an excuse (and you pretending it’s a good one) … let’s skip that and jump right back into the good stuff 👇️ 

What does the evolution of sales tell us about “what’s coming next”?

As the founder of a Sales Tech company, this is kinda embarrassing to admit … but I’ve been confused as heck about the current state of sales.

The same playbooks that we all used in 2020—massive cold email sequences and expert webinars—don’t work anymore. And remember when interactive demos exploded in 2023? Yeah, that doesn’t work anymore. Maybe it never did?

So as a way to explore what comes next, I did some research and wrote this post last week about how B2B sales has changed in the last 20 years.

And one thing became blindingly obvious.

In short, there has been a trend towards buyers expecting value earlier in the process. By ‘value’, I mean giving the buyer ways they can solve their problem, or otherwise get promoted faster (this might just mean helping them look smart).

• 20 years ago: “field sales” and perpetual licenses were king. As a seller, you might meet with someone for months before ever showing them your product. This was normal. And at the time, since trust was harder to build in an age without thousands of online product reviews, this was actually what buyers wanted.

  • Notable Companies: Oracle, IBM, SAP

• 10 years ago: “inbound” and ABM rose to prominence. Buyers expected value earlier in the sales process, either in the form of self-serve content (Hubspot was the GOAT at this, and taught thousands of Marketers how to do marketing), or personalized content based on the company they worked at.

  • Notable Companies: HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce

• 5 years ago: PLG (“product-led growth”) took off. It was so hot, there were VC firms whose entire thesis was to invest in PLG-driven companies. Buyers started asking to get their hands on the product value before paying for it.

  • Notable Companies: Slack, Zoom, Calendly

• Today: AI is enabling GTM teams to send personalized messaging at scale. And “social selling” (aka, building trust through social media) is hot.

  • Notable Companies: Clay, Gong, Lavender

Here’s the only problem with what’s hot in 2025 … we seem to have forgotten to bring value.

AI personalization and social selling are great. But they’re only great if they can be used to help buyers achieve value earlier in the process.

And THAT is where I think we’re headed next.

AI personalization and social selling will begin to deliver on their promise. They’ll start to deliver value to buyers earlier in the process.

What exactly does that look like tactically?

I’m not 100% sure 🤷‍♂️ 

One hypothesis I have is that buyers won’t put up with talking to an underprepared, domain-weak AE or SDR much longer.

Instead, I expect companies will find ways to connect their buyers with trusted, domain-specific experts that can deliver value from the first conversation. Whether that expert comes in the form of written content, conversations with an AI, or conversations with a human, I’m not sure.

But many of you are much, much smarter than me.

I’m excited and curious to hear what you think.

Speaking of bringing value earlier in the process …

While writing this, I couldn’t help but laugh.

Just this week, Ciro updated our pricing to give users waaay more value earlier in the buying process.

Maybe I should start taking my own advice sometimes 😉 

Starting this week, Ciro now gives all users 1,000 contacts analyzed free every month. This previously cost $49/mo. Now it’s entirely free.

If you haven’t yet checked it out, get started and create your own free account here.