AI has become a marketing buzzword for new phone features, content creation apps, and even in major sports broadcasts like basketball, football, American football, and hockey. But unlike some technologies, the buzz has real merit. This is the case when it comes to AI in B2B sales.gettyIn 2025, B2B sellers and sales managers find themselves in a new arena where hitting quarterly sales quotas takes more than savvy selling skills. B2B sales 2025 is all about AI and automation as more organizations look to artificial intelligence to help them reach their sales goals.AI has become a marketing buzzword for new phone features, content creation apps, and even in major sports broadcasts like basketball, football, American football, and hockey. But unlike some technologies, the buzz has real merit. This is the case when it comes to AI in B2B sales.From empowering sellers by putting information at their fingertips to taking autonomous action, adoption of B2B sales AI features and capabilities will help organizations win more business and gain competitive edge. But not all AI lives up to the hype because the success of AI initiatives lies in thoughtful adoption, connection of business data, and practical use cases.AI poised to make its mark on B2B sales in 2025Despite the AI hype, sales organizations have been slow to adopt the technology. A McKinsey & Company survey last April found that only 21% had enabled generative AI for B2B buying and selling and just 22% had piloted specific use cases.That appears likely to change quickly in 2025, as companies begin ramping up their AI initiatives to increase sales productivity.McKinsey forecasts that generative AI could open up around $1 trillion worth of productivity gains across sales and marketing. Thats on top of the productivity boosts theyve gotten from traditional analytics and AI applications. Here are three critical AI trends that should top of mind for B2B sales teams in 2025:Plan for a future of AI agents: Staying up to date and determining how AI agents can benefit sales and how they should be adopted must be a strategic organizational priority.Generative AI benefits hinge on quality data: The key to successfully leveraging AI is data. With high-quality and connected data, AI algorithms have more to draw from to provide more valuable outputs to sellers.Determine the ROI of AI investments: The ROI of AI initiatives must be clear for ongoing success and organizational buy-in.1. AI agents for B2B sales emerge as top 2025 trendToday, AI agents often are more hype than anything else, but the long-term potential for autonomous AI agents in B2B sales is massive. Organizations that understand the potential and plan for the future will gain a dramatic advantage. Their sellers will be able to operate more efficiently, with the right insights.A global Capgemini survey last year found that 82% of organizations plan to integrate AI agents into their business operations within one to three years.An AI agent is essentially a program with the ability to make rational decisions and take autonomous actions by interacting with its environment, data sources, and other factors. Self-driving cars are an easy-to-understand example the platform uses real-time data, sensors, and machine learning to determine the next-best action.AI agents for B2B sales promise to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of sellers and sales operations, everything from lead generation and sales forecasting to personalized outreach, pipeline management, churn prediction and more.The power of these agents lies in the ability to surface information and act without direct user input, providing sellers and sales managers with actions or insights they didnt know they needed.Moreover, the output of these agents is contextual and less structured than traditional systems so it can extend far past traditional sales insights.2. B2B sales: Generative AI benefits depend on quality dataWhen it comes to AI-generated material, quality is the key. Theres no question that modern technology has the power to create content, copy, images, video, and more, but the novel nature of early AI generated content has faded. Impossible images composed of impossible beings doing impossible things might be interesting, but is it something a business should attach their brand to? Probably not.Most of us, including buyers and business leaders, have been bombarded by an avalanche of garbage AI content that failed to be relevant, contextual, or helpful. In the wake of these experiences, sales organizations need to take heed.But make no mistake: Generative AI for B2B sales, when harnessed correctly, is a game changer.Gartner predicts that by 2028, 60% of B2B seller work will be done through conversational user interfaces via generative AI sales technologiesup from less than 5% in 2023.The key to successfully leveraging AI is data, including customer data, sales data, and ERP data. Data is the fuel for effective AI initiatives. As long as data is high-quality and connected, AI algorithms have more to draw from to provide more valuable outputs.With that said, practical adoption of generative AI for B2B sales should focus on use cases that make sellers more effective or reduce effort. Its also critical that any content or insights AI generates have can provide users with oversight as well as insight into the origin of the output.B2B sales organizations can effectively harness generative AI to propel sales success and reduce time-to-engage as long as data is connected and outputs are provided to users in their daily workflows. Use cases can be broken down into two categories: generative content and generative insights.Generative content use cases for sales organizations are usually best focused on email creation and call scripts. In both, content needs to be tuned to each customer and contact. This includes things like correspondence cadence, tone, length, and other preferences. Sellers should be able to review and refine this content. Smaller sales organizations might also consider generative marketing collateral or advertising, but might risk losing control of their brand and overall quality.Generative insights use cases are valuable but must be contextual to business needs. Things like opportunity highlights or account summaries are great for most B2B business scenarios, but organizations can take generative insights to the next level by focusing on key groups, segments, or industries. The more that generative insights are tied to contextual needs of each opportunity, the better. In all cases, data, practical implementation, and oversight is key to success.3. AI in B2B sales: Whats the ROI?B2B sales is fundamentally a results-demanded position. Each seller holds a quota, each manager holds the quota for their team, and the trend continues up the chain to the top. And most every seller has been given a tool that failed to help them reach their goals and only slowed them down.Traditional CRM systems are a great example of this, becoming systems of record for sellers and equated to tedious data entry. But newer systems using AI can have the same flaw.Poorly implemented AI capabilities that arent routed in data or connection provide sellers with false flags. These signals add noise and detract from value. Sales organizations need to take a strong look at the true value and ROI of their AI initiatives.An EY survey of 500 senior leaders across industries found that only 36% are investing fully in data infrastructureincluding quality, accessibility and governance of data.For AI capabilities to add real value, sales organizations must ensure that opportunity scoring, deal recommendations, lead insights, and other features are relevant and rooted in data. The best approach is often systems that are designed to work together, with a common data model.For ongoing success, sales leaders need to ensure that AI capabilities are truly helping sellers. This can be done with basic qualitative research like seller interviews and win/loss buyer analysis, but should also be reinforced with clear, quantitative data analysis including win rate, time to close, lead qualification, and more.AI ROI is an overarching trend, but will become a critical factor in ongoing organizational buy-in and success. If youve failed to provide measurable results, determine factors that can measured and take corrective action in 2025.Sales success in a brave new worldWhile AI is bringing fundamental changes to the old art of selling, some things remain constant. B2B sellers must be confident, knowledgeable, empathetic, and charismatic. Behind the scenes and bravado of every seller lies a where the rubber meets the road mindsetthe knowledge that sales goals need to be attained, customer needs must be met, and quotas must be hit.Sales organizations that implement AI thoughtfully and dont take their eye of this results-driven mindset will get the most out of the technology. When AI is based on quality data and embedded into critical sales processes sellers use daily, it can help sales teams achieve real success.Run at your best. Get a free trial of SAP Sales Cloud HERE.This story also appears on The Future of Commerce.