Sales Transformation
The 5 Power Moves for Sales Success in 2025
Struggling with longer sales cycles and buyer paralysis? Winning sales teams use these five elements to thrive in challenging markets.
Sales cycles are longer, more influencers are involved, and buyer paralysis is the new status quo. Yet some sales teams are smashing their revenue plans by 118%, almost doubling the quota attainment of their less successful peers and halving potential no-decision rates.
What are they doing differently? It’s a rare combination of talent, skill set, mindset, methodology, coaching, and technology.
At our sales growth breakfast event in Sydney, we heard from a number of sales leaders who are thriving in this challenging market. Here’s how their teams are putting these essential elements to work.
1. Skills: The 4 Cs of Sales Success
Globally, 75% of sales leaders acknowledge they need different skills to be successful as sellers in the current market. Those in APAC have told us improving their sales team’s competencies and capabilities is their number one priority.
“We need different skills to be successful as sellers,” sales transformation expert Martin Sparkes says. “We're expected to work on our own, and collaborate in a group. We're expected to sell digitally, and build rapport face-to-face. This is a hybrid set of skills.”
He defines the ideal hybrid skill set as the 4 Cs: Credibility, Courage, Curiosity, and Collaboration.
Credibility comes from knowing your products and the needs of your industry and prospects. It takes courage to connect with a growing number of decision-makers in a lengthy sales process, as well as curiosity to ask the right questions. And you need to be able to collaborate internally and externally to identify and develop the right solution.
“Some of these things are skills, and some are traits—they’re preferences or ways of working,” says Sparkes. “If people like doing these things, and if they have the skills to do them well, they’re more likely to be successful sellers.”
2. Mindset: Mapping the Ideal DNA
Skills and competencies are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, it’s traits and drivers that will determine success. Korn Ferry brings all these elements together in success profiles, which draw on millions of data points to define what it takes to succeed in a specific role and industry.
Sparkes gives the example of a team of 70 sellers, who were struggling to cross-sell. After completing psychometric tests, each seller received a development report that identified gaps and offered suggestions for improvement.
“What we found across the board was a lack of curiosity and persistence,” he says. “But those who were top performers also aligned best with the success profiles for their roles.”
3. Methodology: Consistent Processes Win the Deal
Imagine fully integrating your account management, opportunity management, marketing, service, and customer journey teams with one methodology.
That’s what best-in-class organizations do differently: they have a common language, and their leaders coach towards consistent sales processes. This allows them to act as a solutions consultant rather than an order taker—which, in turn, helps them win consistently and predictably.
Toll Global Forwarding doubled down on strengthening its sales team by investing its Global Sales Academy in a multi-year partnership with Korn Ferry—spanning training, coaching, tools, and methodologies. For its Focus 5 Program, the sales team is now incentivized to laser-focus on five opportunities they believe they can close in the next 30 to 60 days.
“The program has driven a significant change in sales performance over the last two years. We had a $300 million uplift in revenue while the market was in a downturn,” Toll Global Forwarding President Matthew Warrington told attendees during the breakfast event.
4. Coaching: Personalizing the Learning Journey
Cochlear Vice President of Global Sales Excellence Allison Pezzullo says the hardest thing about implementing a global sales transformation is “changing people’s behavior and mindset.”
Dynamic coaching can lead to sustained culture change. Cochlear’s mantra of “learn, embed, measure, sustain” has aligned 700 sellers to a single sales methodology.
“We ask our sales managers to coach to a competency framework and give them Key Performance Indicators around coaching sessions,” explains Pezzullo. “The culture shift is the biggest change, and it’s starting to result in measurable outcomes.”
Too often, sales leaders coach to lagging metrics rather than behaviors. “Organizations that are doing well, especially in tough times, have doubled down on coaching how to navigate the sale—rather than reviewing how many deals you won,” says Sparkes.
5. Technology: Freeing Time for Sales Conversations
AI is unlikely to replace a seller anytime soon, given the importance of genuine human relationships in B2B selling. However, roles are definitely set to be augmented with AI. And the sellers who will win are more likely to utilize AI because it will give them more time in front of customers.
“Sellers currently spend 50% to 60% of their time on admin tasks. That time could be better spent on higher value tasks such as one-to-one coaching or customer engagement,” says Sparkes.
Korn Ferry recently signed a partnership with Agentforce, integrating Korn Ferry Sell with Salesforce’s AI engine. The platform can automatically enter contact details and roles into a sales opportunity plan (a “Blue Sheet”) and prompt the seller through the optimal sales strategy based on the data provided. As well as saving valuable time, it can effectively coach your sellers through your sales methodology.
Sales Effectiveness
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Transform Sales to Stay Ahead
A challenging sales environment is the ideal time to invest in growth. Buyer processes are not going to get any less complex. The growing number of buyers and influencers are taking longer to work through their decisions. Today’s seller needs the skills and tools to help buying committees shift collectively from “status quo” to “recognizing the need to change” when making a decision to purchase.
By investing in coaching, technology, and methodologies, and empowering your teams with the right skills and mindset, you can transform your sales function—and drive tangible revenue growth. Start by understanding where your teams and individuals are today and how you can hire or develop from within to fill best practice gaps.
Learn more about Korn Ferry Sell and what it has to offer.
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