Five Challenges Sales Operations Teams Need to Overcome in 2025

In the modern sales landscape, achieving alignment between strategic goals and day-to-day execution is one of the biggest challenges for B2B organizations. As the sales environment continues to evolve—with trends like digital-first buyer behavior and omnichannel expectations—companies must rethink how they empower their sales teams.  This blog explores five challenges B2B sales reps are facing in 2025, and effective pricing strategies and tools to overcome them.

Closing the Strategy-to-Execution Gap

The strategy-to-execution gap refers to the disconnect between corporate goals and the actions sales teams take to achieve them. This gap emerges due to challenges such as conflicting strategies, a lack of tailored guidance, and overwhelmed sales teams managing dozens of accounts.

Sales teams may simultaneously be tasked with increasing revenue, improving margins, and clearing aging inventory—objectives that often conflict and dilute focus. Addressing these challenges requires data-driven, prescriptive guidance that translates broad strategies into specific, prioritized actions for sales reps.

Five Challenges Sales Operations Teams Need to Overcome in 2025

Sales operations teams must address critical hurdles head-on and equip their salesforce with the tools and insights needed to thrive. Below, we outline five key challenges these teams will need to overcome in 2025:

1. Struggling to Prioritize Win-Back Opportunities

One of the biggest struggles for sales teams is identifying which lost customers or declining categories should be prioritized for recovery. Without clear guidance, these opportunities often go untapped, leaving significant revenue on the table.

2. Navigating Volatility and Competition with Precision

Market volatility and increased competition demand highly targeted growth campaigns. However, sales teams traditionally lack the tools to identify specific product and geographic opportunities, leading to missed chances to capitalize on regional growth potential.

3. Inaccurate Quotes and Lengthy Turnaround Times

With customer expectations at an all-time high, a frictionless buying experience is crucial to winning more business. The largest roadblock, for customers, sellers, and partners alike, is often getting an accurate quote quickly.

4. Fighting Margin Erosion with Outdated Pricing Strategies

Ever-changing market conditions and outdated pricing strategies result in margin erosion. Sales teams will continue to struggle with maintaining profitability if they add unnecessary complexity to pricing decisions.

5. Maximizing Whitespace Opportunities for New Accounts

Identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities with new accounts is a traditionally complex process due to scattered data and limited insights. Without actionable guidance, sales teams risk wasting time on ineffective pitches, slowing revenue growth.

Transforming Sales Ops for 2025

In the face of these challenges, B2B companies must rethink how they equip sales teams to drive action throughout the customer lifecycle. Winning teams move beyond traditional methods like spreadsheets, embracing more efficient, strategic approaches. 

Accelerate Revenue with Targeted Sales Actions

Zilliant Revenue Intelligence empowers sales teams to quickly identify data-driven opportunities and tackle the highest revenue-generating activities with confidence. Powered by AI and data intelligence, Zilliant’s Revenue Intelligence solutions highlight upsell and cross-sell opportunities, proactively identify areas where customer spend is declining, and help combat common distribution and manufacturing challenges – such as inventory management, contract compliance, and self-service recommendations.  By transforming insights into account-specific actions, operations teams can seamlessly influence sales with meaningful data that accelerates revenue. 

Streamline the Sales Process

Zilliant CPQ simplifies and accelerates the quoting process, enabling businesses to deliver fast, accurately priced quotes that win more deals and enhance the buying experience. Designed for manufacturing and distribution, it features guided selling, optimized pricing, and dynamic cost estimations to reduce errors, streamline complex configurations, and eliminate revenue leakage. With robust ERP and CRM integrations, Zilliant CPQ improves the customer experience with interactive visualization and self-service to ensure your business maintains a competitive edge. 

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced environment, reactive sales processes are no longer sufficient; companies need to build an agile and resilient sales organization. Those that embrace data-driven strategies and equip their teams with the right tools will lead the way in transforming the sales experience.

By closing the loop between strategy and execution, companies achieve measurable outcomes, including:

• Higher revenue growth.
• Improved sales efficiency.
• Stronger customer relationships.

Ready to drive meaningful results and empower your sales team? Discover how Zilliant Revenue Intelligence and Zilliant CPQ can help you future-proof your sales strategy.