BrazilTrends shaping the commercial excellence landscape in 2025
A study from Vesper Commercial Excellence of 130 sales and marketing leaders from around Europe has shed light on the key trends reshaping the commercial landscape. The results show the need for businesses to understand and adapt to shifting dynamics in order to maintain a competitive edge.
Commercial leaders are grappling with a rapidly evolving commercial landscape, which holds both opportunities and challenges in many industries. In order to stay ahead, businesses need to be proactive in adapting their sales and marketing functions.
Following its analysis of all insights, Vesper Commercial Excellence said that five strategic trends emerged as especially significant to the respondents: Employee well-being, customer experience management (CXM), data and AI, and the tight labor market. These trends impact everything from company culture and training to leadership strategies and customer experience.
Employee well-being
One major trend in the commercial landscape is an increasing focus on employee well-being. Many organizations now recognize the strong correlation between a healthy, happy workforce and increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, and improved talent retention. Much of this is built on the lessons on work culture learned during and after the pandemic.
This trend is driven by a growing awareness of mental health and evolving work expectations, including flexible hours and hybrid work models. Companies are adapting by incorporating well-being initiatives into their culture, training programs, and compensation packages. Despite solid progress, still more can be done to better measure the impact of well-being programs, dial in the complexities of hybrid work, and better address employee retention in a competitive market.
Customer experience management
Another important trend for businesses is customer experience management (CXM). With increasing digitalization, customers expect personalized and seamless experiences across all touchpoints. Organizations have responded to this demand by prioritizing CXM in their value propositions, commercial strategies, and customer lifecycle management.
This involves building a customer-centric culture, training sales teams to deliver personalized interactions, and leveraging data to understand and anticipate customer needs. While CXM offers significant potential, companies still face a lot of challenges, like effectively segmenting customers, managing operational complexity, and integrating data to successfully personalize the customer journey.
Data driven ways of working
The proliferation of data is transforming how businesses operate, particularly in the commercial function. With such large amounts of data, organizations are increasingly leveraging data-driven insights to inform decision-making, optimize operations, and personalize customer experiences.
That means investing in tools and systems to collect, analyze, and interpret vast amounts of data. Data-driven ways of working are impacting strategic positioning, training programs, sales target management, and sales process frameworks.
But there are also some difficulties here, too: Many companies often struggle with translating data into actionable insights, ensuring the quality and usability of their data, addressing knowledge gaps in big data expertise, and navigating regulatory and ethical considerations.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The AI revolution has not left the commercial landscape untouched. Innovative new tools are helping businesses automate tasks, enhance predictive capabilities, and unlock new business models.
AI is impacting areas like value propositions, strategic positioning, training programs, customer experience, and sales performance management. Companies are also increasingly using AI to automate routine tasks and thereby potentially save on labor costs.
Despite the transformative potential of AI, organizations also must navigate some obstacles. Those include navigating regulatory and ethical implications, having the right leadership support, addressing knowledge gaps, and building and implementing AI solutions, which can be wildly expensive.
The tight labor market
In most European markets, there are currently more job openings than available workers, which is creating significant challenges for commercial organizations. Competition for talent is fierce and wages are increasing in order to attract that talent. In a nutshell, it is getting harder and more expensive to find the right talent
Companies are facing difficulties in both recruiting and retaining the talent they need. In order to a try to stay ahead of the curve, many companies have been offering better compensation packages, focusing on training and upskilling existing employees, and fostering a positive work culture.
Conclusion
In its closing remarks, Vesper Commercial Excellence said that these trends are at the top of agendas in sales and marketing teams around the continent. Successfully navigating these evolving dynamics will be crucial for organizations seeking to thrive in the coming year and beyond.
“The dynamic and rapidly evolving nature of the commercial landscape presents both opportunities and challenges for leaders across industries,” said Gerben Willemsen, managing partner of Vesper Commercial Excellence.
“Our research revealed a wealth of information about how commercial leaders are navigating the complexities of today's markets. And while some organizations are proactively addressing these trends, a substantial number still need to take urgent action to ensure future business success. The report provides tangible and actionable insights, which are useful for commercial leaders.”
