The Future of Sales: Reinvention for the modern age of industry

B2B customers now expect the speed, simplicity and transparency they experience in consumer platforms. Research from Genesys finds that 97% of customers want seamless, consistent, omnichannel experiences without having to repeat themselves across channels. CMSWire highlights how consumers rank transparency and empathy among their top drivers of brand loyalty.

But meeting these expectations is only the baseline. The real opportunity is to lead the category, outperform best-in-class peers and redefine what excellence looks like in industrial B2B sales. 

Internally, however, many organizations are still navigating a maze of legacy systems, fragmented data and disconnected teams, turning even routine sales into slow, resource-heavy efforts.

Meanwhile, the external environment is becoming more volatile:

• According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025, geopolitical conflict and state-based instability are seen as the most immediate global risk — with direct implications for supply chain continuity.
• Maersk similarly notes that geopolitical disruption, trade tensions and material shortages are making global supply chains more fragile and harder to forecast.
• Labor shortages add to the pressure. The National Association of Manufacturers predicts U.S. factories alone will need to fill 3.8 million jobs in the next decade amid increased nearshoring efforts. 

Layer on top of that a wave of rapidly evolving buyer expectations driven by digital-native behavior and AI adoption. Accenture reports that more than half of consumers are now comfortable using conversational AI to engage with brands, underscoring the demand for fast, personalized and tech-enabled sales interactions. 

This shift isn't theoretical. We’ve seen it reshape entire industries:

• Xometry turned custom manufacturing into an on-demand ecommerce experience, delivering instant RFQs and fulfillment visibility.
• Airbus has integrated digital twins and predictive maintenance into its post-sales service model, transforming ongoing support into a competitive differentiator.
• Polestar reimagined automotive sales with a direct-to-consumer model that emphasizes digital-first engagement, allowing customers to configure and order vehicles online, bypassing traditional dealership dependency.

These aren’t edge cases. At Valtech, we believe the solution is not incremental optimization, but a fundamental redesign — a shift we call The Future of Sales. It’s not a nice to have. It’s already here.

And the companies embracing it today are setting the pace for everyone else. 

The Future of Sales isn’t just about selling smarter. It’s about selling in a way that’s faster, more human, more connected, and ultimately more valuable and more rewarding.

The challenge: A fragmented sales landscape

Let’s be honest. For many industrial companies, the current state of sales is a patchwork of processes and platforms.

Original equipment (OE) sales, service sales and partner-led sales often operate in silos, with different systems, KPIs and engagement styles. This leads to inefficiencies, duplicated work and inconsistent experiences, especially when a buyer’s journey spans multiple divisions, platforms and service lines.

These silos actively hold businesses back from delivering on customer expectations. Even internally, sales teams often struggle to navigate a disjointed toolchain — CRM, CPQ, ERP, custom Excel trackers — that complicate lead qualification, slow down quoting and obscure performance tracking.

All the while, customers and partners grow increasingly impatient, digital-first competitors gain ground, and market volatility adds urgency.

The shift: From transactions to lifecycle value

The Future of Sales isn’t a new CRM or one more digital touchpoint. It’s a complete shift in mindset and operating model, from one focused on transactions to one designed to deliver value throughout the customer and partner lifecycle.

That means treating the sales process not as a linear funnel but as a continuous journey, from the first inquiry, through order execution, and well into the in-use phase, where service, spare parts, upgrades and long-term engagement reside.

Modern industrial buyers don’t want to restart their journeys with every new inquiry. They want continuity, context and clarity. That’s why the Future of Sales integrates:

• Lead-to-cash orchestration. This aligns sales, engineering, operations and service on a connected workflow.
• In-use engagement. This enables ongoing customer success through self-service, spare parts access and proactive support.
• Partner collaboration. This empowers distributors, service providers and integrators with shared tools, data and visibility.

In short, it’s about delivering one unified experience — even when dozens of internal teams and external actors are involved — and maximizing lifetime sales by creating consistent, value-driven relationships that extend far beyond the initial deal.

Smart sales powered by data & AI

To support this vision, data and AI must move from being nice-to-haves to acting as strategic infrastructure:

• Use AI to qualify leads based on behavior, intent and fit.
• Automatically route inquiries to the right team based on context and workload.
• Enable predictive quoting, guided configuration and proactive service.
• Track and optimize conversion from inquiry to order using data-driven insights.

Of course, none of this works without clean, connected data. That’s where composable architecture plays a vital role. Composability makes it possible to decouple front-end experiences from legacy systems, standardize APIs, and plug in new tools or vendors without starting from scratch.

Digital core: The rise of industrial ecommerce

Ecommerce has long been misunderstood in industrial contexts. Many still think of it as a B2C gimmick or a spare parts catalog. But for modern manufacturers, ecommerce is becoming the transactional core of lifecycle sales.

It’s where configuration meets transaction, where parts meet pricing, where onboarding meets automation. And when executed correctly, ecommerce becomes a self-service platform for:

• Configuring and quoting solutions
• Tracking orders, shipments and delivery status
• Accessing technical documentation and contracts
• Reordering parts based on usage data
• Initiating service or warranty claims
• Managing account-specific content and pricing

Ecommerce doesn’t replace the salesperson. It enhances the salesperson’s role, freeing them to focus on strategic engagement. More importantly, it offers customers and partners the speed, autonomy and clarity they increasingly expect.

Ecosystem first: Empowering partners

For most industrials, the front line includes a wide network of distributors, service partners and integrators. These partners often represent your brand, deliver your services and support your products, but they’re frequently left out of digital initiatives.

The Future of Sales includes them by design. That means:

The bottom line

The Future of Sales is a strategic shift in how industrials grow, compete and create value. It’s about:

• Moving from siloed transactions to connected journeys.
• Turning data into decisions and decisions into outcomes.
• Empowering not just internal teams but the entire ecosystem.
• Making it radically easier for customers and partners to engage.

In a world defined by uncertainty, how easy you are to do business with becomes your strongest differentiator. Your organization’s transformation starts by aligning what you want to deliver with what you’re able to execute across experience, tech and capability. Learn how we help manufacturers transform and leap ahead.