In 2025, B2B organizations will finally take advantage of AI
B2B leaders have spent much of the past year trying to do just that benefit from genAI technology and find new ways to differentiate themselves. In 2025, the true power of genAI as a driver of growth will be tested. The responsibility of marketing, sales and product executives will intensify as companies turn to these functions to drive their organization’s most important genAI initiatives.
Forrester’s 2025 predictions for B2B marketing, sales, and product teams prepare organizations for the good, the bad, and even the ugly outcomes of trying to create value from this emerging technology. Here’s what you need to know ahead of the new year:
The good: AI colleagues will emerge as valuable team members in two out of five organizations.
As AI assistants get smarter, B2B organizations should continue to leverage their growing automation capabilities to help employees do their jobs better. Forrester Marketing Research 2024 shows that investment in B2B conversation automation solutions will continue to grow, with 64% of global B2B marketing leaders planning to increase spending on the technology in the coming year. It’s time for workers to shed the narrative—and the fear—that AI assistants will replace their jobs, at least for now. Improved predictive, conversational, and creation capabilities will evolve AI colleagues into autonomous and adaptable agents. Embrace the good and start relying on AI to boost productivity.
The Bad: Active selling time will decrease by 10% as genAI productivity initiatives fail.
Organizations will continue to increase their investments in AI in pursuit of a positive return on investment (ROI). Investments won’t all be financial: Adopting genAI technology and adapting to new value-adding methods will initially create more internal work. Sales leaders have pushed salespeople to capture interactions, a requirement for genAI value, yet pipeline analysis from our activity studies shows that this effort has often failed. The expectation of productivity within the year will lead organizations to cut back on hiring, forcing sales teams to work harder. Be prepared to step back and focus on organizing your data. This will allow you to take two steps forward with genAI.
The bad: CMOs and CSOs will aim for reorganization, but half will fail to fix what ails them.
Organizations are forced to use transformation projects, change management requirements and AI-driven disruption to drive growth. With only 12% of marketing leaders in Forrester’s Q4 2023 Organizational Design and Process Marketing Demand Survey believing their teams’ current organizational design will help them effectively achieve revenue goals in the coming year, many will attempt a restructuring to address this lack of capacity. But simply moving roles under different titles is a superficial change that does more harm than good. Focus instead on late changes: Reset strategy and planning to become customer-centric; fix broken revenue processesimproving operational efficiency, building stakeholder trust and enhancing talent for combining human and machine skills. Successful companies will change the skills and abilities required for a role, not just the title.
In 2025, B2B organizations will strap end the AI advantage. Successful companies will address infrastructure challenges and realign resources, while also resisting the need to lay off staff to meet pressure for financial returns.
Download our free B2B Predictions guide, which covers more of our top predictions for 2025. Find additional free resources, including webinars, at Predictions 2025 hub.
This post was written by Principal Analyst Seth Marrs and originally appeared here.
