15 Sales Development Experts on How to Make Outbound Work in 2025 and Beyond

Sales development is hard. Response rates are declining. Attention spans are shrinking. Everyone’s inbox is overflowing.

And it’s only getting worse with AI taking over cold outreach and email providers cracking down on mass emailing.

But with every challenge comes opportunity.

To help you navigate the evolving landscape, we asked 15 sales development experts to share their predictions and practical tips for making outbound sales work — no matter the year.

Key sales development trends and predictions

Standing out from the crowd has been a challenge for years – and with the rise of AI and growing competition, it can feel almost impossible. In response, SDRs are rethinking their strategies and finding more creative ways to connect with buyers.

Here are some of the most important trends shaping modern sales development:

• The usual way of personalizing things is changing to emphasize building real relationships, as buyers want genuine connections. This shift is making people rethink how they've been personalizing things for a long time.
• Salespeople are using social selling to get noticed in a busy market. They see the need for new ways to catch people's attention and engage with potential customers effectively.
• SDRs are moving towards an "allbound" approach for generating demand. This means working together on different fronts for a more complete and effective way to reach out.

Now, let’s hear about these (and more) trends directly from the experts!

1. Start with buyer-centricity

The key trend that seems to become only more prominent, buyer-centricity, should be at the core of everything we, sellers, do. Think of the age-old approach to assessing your cold emails, asking yourself whether you would open it if you were the recipient, and apply it to every other aspect of your sales development efforts.

Kyle Coleman, Global VP Marketing  ClickUp, perfectly voiced it in his exclusive comment:

“We need to be really honest with ourselves, inspect the various sales processes/methodologies we have, and ensure that we're architecting them for buyers. This is a pretty different mindset from what defined popular sales strategies 10-20 years ago, and we all need to adjust.”

2. No more quality vs quantity dilemma

Sales development, especially outbound, has always been about balancing the quantity of the prospects you reach out to with their quality. According to Rahul Wadhwa, the Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer at Blue, we should forget about this dilemma – in 2025 and beyond, salespeople will need both to succeed.

“SDRs leveraging AI are on track to become ten times more effective, matching the productivity of top-tier AEs, earning them the title of ‘10x SDRs.’ This tech-empowered approach will enable personalized, high-quality engagement on a large scale, signaling the end of the traditional quality-quantity trade-off.”

3. Human connections over AI

The latest AI advances seem to have solved this problem, allowing SDRs for more relevant engagement at scale. Yet, it also undeniably amplified the noise in the market, according to David Bentham, VP of Sales at DinMo:

But personalization, especially automated, can’t fix the poor outreach problem. As algorithms and automation inundate the space, SDRs are more compelled to reintroduce a human touch to their approach. As Kimberly Pencille Collins, VP, Strategy + Enablement at #samsales Consulting, put it:

“With the increased use of AI, being human and authentically connecting in sales conversations will become more important than ever in 2024.”

No matter how advanced, AI can never build personal relationships and connect with your buyers on emotional level – the task that Michael Hanson, Founder & CEO at Growth Genie, sees as the key to surviving for SDRs:

“With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, sellers that act like robots reading off scripts, sending templated emails will be replaced by robots.”

And not only that, introducing a more “human” approach to outreach is vital to stand out in the future, as Helena Klaus, Founder of Sales in DACH, shares:

4. Precision and relevance rule supreme

Aside from the genuine personalization and overall human touch, effective cold outreach should be laser-focused and tailored to the needs and interests of a certain audience. Otherwise, you won’t be able to break through the noise of AI-generated mass outreach, according to Chris Ritson, Sales Trainer and SDR Leadership Coach:

“With the introduction of AI, automation gone crazy and now the changes Google and Yahoo made to email the future of SDR belongs to those who can be relevant to the people they reach out to everyday.”

Needless to say, high-volume outreach won’t be effective in the future. On the quality vs quantity dilemma, Jacob Karp, Strategic Sales Director Schellman, suggests prioritizing quality at all times:

“Volume-based prospecting will continue to have low success rates. Prospects and buyers are nearly unreachable after years of poorly created, volume-based outreach.”

Precision in your choice of prospects (especially for account-based outreach) and hyper-personalized messaging are the two pillars of effective sales development, according to Thibault Brioland, CEO & Co-founder at Humanlinker:

“It's all about precision and personalized outreach. Prioritize quality, embrace personalization, and increase appointments. Create messages that are tailored to their needs, their web presence and their personality. Welcome to hyper-personalization at scale, where quality and personalization drive success.”

5. Embracing tech-assisted sales

People getting immune to generic, mass outreach isn’t the only downside of automation. As inboxes get more crowded, email providers keep looking for ways to fight back, including the additional anti-spam measures that came into effect last year. Yet, Troy Munson, CEO at Dimmo, doesn’t see it as the “death” to outboound:

“I think there will be new email deliverability companies that will compete with Outreach and SalesLoft so people can mass email but do so safely.”

As with the new deliverability tech, salespeople will eventually need to make AI a part of their workflows, without compromising on quality. So the concept of “people with robots” rather than people vs robots is what Stephanie White, Senior Director, Sales Enablement Medallia, sees as the logical next step of sales tech evolution:

“We'll stop thinking about people versus robots, and begin to more widely embrace people with robots. AI will become more prevalent in the tools and tech already used in businesses. Ability to adapt quickly to changing customer needs will be critical.”

6. The evolution of engagement strategies

Along with the sales tech, the strategies and tactics used by SDRs will evolve to cater to the current needs of both a seller and the buyer. Leslie Venetz, founder of The Sales-Led GTM Agency, sums it up pretty well:

“We'll see Value Based Segmentation become a more popular strategy for personalization at scale. We'll see personality insights emerge as the new frontier of personalization. We'll see more folks returning to cold calling as a valuable channel.”

Recognizing the difficulty in standing out, more sales professionals will turn to social selling as a means to break through the noise. Sales reps will tap into nearbound channels, like social networks, to connect with prospects more effectively, according to Will Taylor, CPO  AudienceLed:

“The only way to break through noise is NOT by playing on the same field, with the same tactics, as the thousands of others. Instead, using nearbound strategies in existing, trusted networks will gather warm introductions (or intel + influence) in order to build a defensible business and close revenue faster.”

As a result, the metrics salespeople use to track their performance need to change too. Eimri Bar, Head of Marketing  Yess, shares his opinion on the new KPIs for sales development teams, perfectly defined as “trust points”:

The old KPIs are about 'Touchpoints'

• Impersonal ads
• Ebook downloads
• Cold call attempts
• Empty email follow-ups
• Empty social media engagement

The new KPIs are about 'Trust Points':

• Showcasing expertise through personal branding
• Genuine engagement on social media
• Facilitating relevant connections
• Meaningful conversations
• Value-driven content
• Micro offline events
• Podcast invitations

Indeed, more than ever, expertise & relationships drive sales forward. Sales teams are discovering that helping customers meet their needs not only distinguishes them in a crowded market but also builds trust and lasting relationships, as pointed out by Vaibhav Namburi, Founder at SmartLead:

“Social validation will prove to be your differentiator when going head-to-head with competition. Customers aren't just buying good offers, but guarantees.”

Preparing for what’s next

While we still have 11 full months to see how sales development evolves and how many of our predictions come true, one thing is certain — buyer-centricity will be the main theme in everything we do. 

From your very first interaction with the prospect to the experience you offer during customer onboarding, prioritizing the needs and preferences of your buyer and adjusting your tactics accordingly will give you a competitive edge and posision yourself as a trusted advisor, not just another seller. And the more complex and long-winded your sales process is, the more important this will be.