The Future of Sales Enablement: 7 trends to watch in 2025

Sales enablement is shifting—fast. Instead of just training reps and managing content libraries, the focus for enablement teams is moving toward helping buyers navigate complex purchase decisions.

Modern buyers spend less time with sales reps and more time researching on their own. They need the right content, tools, and insights to sell internally to their teams. 

Add the possibilities created by AI into the mix, and sales enablement is transforming into a buyer-focused strategy.

To help you stay ahead, we’ve identified seven key trends shaping sales enablement in 2025—plus actionable tactics to implement them and maximize your impact.

1. Buyer, not seller enablement

A 2020 report from Gartner predicted that 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers would take place in digital channels by 2025. 

Well, that future is here, and face time is limited. B2B buyers only spend 17% of their purchase journey with sales reps—which emphasizes the importance of having a strong self-service model. 

This data reinforces what we already know: sales enablement is shifting to buyer enablement. 

Buyers today care most about the sales experience. They want a personalized demo over generic slide decks. They seek out transparent content that supports their own research process. According to data from Salesforce, 73% of customers expect better personalization from a brand as technology advances. 

Buyers also want deep partnerships with their sales teams. They want consistency, authenticity, and trustworthiness. 

As Alex Kracov, CEO & Co-Founder of Dock, says:

“The vibe you’re presenting is just as important as what you’re selling.” — Alex Kracov, CEO of Dock

Solution: Prioritize buyer enablement

Buyer enablement is creating the content, tools, and processes that make it easy for your buyers to buy. 

When 75% of buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience, it’s up to enablement teams to set up a personalized self-service opportunity. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Help the buyer reach their goals: Get to know your buyer’s goals and present a use case that connects their challenges to your solution. Be honest about product fit, even if that means recommending a competitor. Ultimately, you want your customers to renew their contracts, and that’s less likely to happen if they aren’t a good fit to begin with. 
• Support the buyer’s research: Buyers conduct in-depth research before talking to sales. You can help your buyer collect information by creating external collateral such as ROI studies, competitor side-by-sides, and product feature demos. It also helps them make their case internally if you’re upfront and transparent about pricing. 
• Let buyers try before buying: Give pathways for buyers to see how the product will work for them. This could be through proof of concepts, free trials, or demo recordings.

The Buyer Enablement Revolution (and why sales rooms are the answer)

2. Fewer opportunities for sales training and collaboration 

Sales teams are being asked to do more with less. Training budgets are shrinking, hiring is slowing, and remote work makes collaboration harder. Without proper training and coaching, reps struggle to ramp up quickly and stay aligned on messaging and process.

At the same time, sales leaders have less visibility into rep activity, making it harder to spot gaps or provide targeted support. With fewer structured training opportunities, teams risk inconsistency in how they approach deals—hurting both win rates and customer experience.

The challenge isn’t just about onboarding new reps—it’s about maintaining a high-performing sales team in an environment with fewer resources and less hands-on coaching.

Solution: Empower reps with templates 

Reps shouldn’t have to rely on memory, guesswork, or constant coaching to navigate the sales process.

Dock’s digital sales rooms help enablement teams create a standardized, repeatable, and buyer-friendly sales process. 

With pre-built templates, leaders can shape messaging, provide the right content at each stage, and ensure reps stay aligned—without sacrificing personalization. Reps can then tailor sales rooms to each buyer’s needs while keeping the process consistent.

Beyond streamlining deals, sales rooms double as a training tool. Leaders get full visibility into how reps use templates, track buyer engagement, and identify coaching opportunities. Instead of reactive training, managers can refine strategies based on real-world data—helping reps close deals faster and more effectively.

Andrew Hollis, Director of Sales at Nectar, says,

"The first follow-up that a new rep gives is of the same tier as someone that's been here for two years using Dock every single day because they're copying that template."

3. Increased revenue tracking & attribution scrutiny

As budgets tighten and sales cycles stretch longer, every dollar spent on sales enablement is under the microscope. Leaders aren’t just looking at overall revenue—they want to see exactly how enablement efforts contribute to closed deals.

With more stakeholders involved in budget decisions, enablement teams must prove their ROI. 

That means showing clear data on how training, content, and sales tools are driving results. Without hard evidence, enablement risks budget cuts and reduced influence in shaping the sales process.

Solution: Use a sales CMS to track enablement’s impact on revenue 

To prove the value of enablement, you need clear data on how content influences deals. Dock gives enablement teams full visibility into how reps and buyers engage with sales materials—making it easy to track what’s working and what’s not.

With Dock’s content management system, all sales and enablement materials live in one place, ensuring reps always have the latest resources at their fingertips. 

And instead of sending scattered documents and lost links, sales teams can seamlessly share proposals, case studies, demo videos, and more—all within a centralized, trackable sales room.

Dock’s analytics then track every interaction. Whether a buyer watches a demo, opens a case study, or revisits a proposal, enablement teams get real-time insights into engagement. These analytics help identify which content drives deals forward and which assets reps use most—allowing teams to refine their approach and optimize their collateral.

By connecting content engagement to revenue outcomes, Dock enables enablement leaders to prove their impact with data, improve reporting, and make a stronger case for continued investment in sales enablement programs.

4. Revenue, not sales enablement

Sales enablement can’t just serve sales anymore—it needs to support the entire revenue team.

The traditional sales pipeline was simple: Marketing generated leads, Sales closed deals, and Customer Success handled renewals. But today’s B2B buying journey is anything but linear. Buyers engage with multiple teams—sometimes starting with Customer Success, Product Marketing, or even Support before ever speaking to Sales.

This shift means every revenue-facing team plays a role in driving growth. 

• Marketing needs enablement to craft content that resonates with buyers at every stage. 
• Sales needs structured tools to keep deals moving. 
• Customer Success needs insights to drive retention and expansion. 

Without a unified enablement strategy, teams work in silos, leading to inconsistent messaging, misaligned priorities, and lost revenue opportunities.

Sales enablement must evolve into revenue enablement—a system that supports every team involved in the customer lifecycle, ensuring seamless collaboration, better buyer experiences, and stronger revenue outcomes.

Solution: Centralized enablement and cross-team collaboration

Revenue growth requires cross-team collaboration. 

On a recent episode of Grow and Tell, Lish Barber, Director of Enablement at Sigma Computing, explained how her team meets with RevOps and product marketing teams bi-weekly to roadmap together.

“The reality is, [with] the work we’re trying to do, whether it’s a problem we’re solving that’s being driven from sales leadership that might need PMM support or product is launching a new thing that will need sales enablement support, our roadmaps overlap.”

The key to breaking down silos is having shared tools where all revenue teams can collaborate together. 

Dock lets Sales, CS, and Marketing align on buyer needs—ensuring a seamless handoff from deal closing to onboarding to renewals.

With Dock, teams can:

• Standardize enablement content across the entire revenue org.
• Track buyer engagement to see what resonates at different stages.
• Improve customer onboarding by keeping key stakeholders aligned.

When every team is working from the same source of truth, enablement supports revenue growth—not just sales.

5. Renewals > New business

Another sales enablement trend we’re seeing is the shift in focus to renewals over new deals. 

According to G2, the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the win rate of selling to a new customer is only 5-20%.

The overall shift of sales teams becoming revenue teams is trickling down into every part of the buyer’s journey, from onboarding to renewals. 

Throughout the customer lifecycle, sales enablement teams are putting more resources into onboarding and customer experience to improve retention and reduce churn. 

Ultimately, the sales team’s job doesn’t end once a customer signs the contract. 

Solution: Align Sales Enablement & Customer Success

To increase renewals, Enablement and Customer Success need to work together to ensure customers stay engaged, see value, and continue to grow with your product.

Enablement teams should think beyond sales reps and start creating customer enablement content that supports the entire customer journey. 

And if CS knows which product features or sales materials resonated most during the buying process, they can tailor onboarding and support to reinforce those key value points. 

Likewise, when renewal conversations come up, CS can provide sales with insights on which features customers use most—or where they might need additional solutions. This intelligence can help Enablement craft targeted cross-sell and upsell content that aligns with customer goals.

6. Consolidation of revenue tool stacks

Sales enablement software was built for sellers—focusing only on sales training and content management. 

But as buyer enablement becomes the priority, legacy tools like CMS and LMS systems fall short.

• They fail buyers because these tools weren’t designed for how modern buyers make decisions. Buyers expect personalized, transparent, and accessible information, but traditional CMS platforms force sellers to sift through bloated content libraries and send assets one-by-one instead of surfacing what’s most relevant to their needs.
• They fail Customer Success, because Sales might store content in a CMS that CS never uses, while CS manages onboarding in a project management tool that Sales can’t access.

The outdated sales CMS and LMS combo leads to messy handoffs, lost insights, and an inconsistent buyer experience.

Lish Barber put it bluntly:

“The reality is, most salespeople use maybe 10 slides during a sales cycle. Do they actually need the 100-slide deck repository?”

Solution: Use a digital deal room to support revenue enablement

Sales and CS shouldn’t be managing deals in separate, disconnected tools. They need a shared platform that aligns every team responsible for revenue.

Dock’s digital deal rooms provide a single workspace where Sales, CS, and Marketing can collaborate. Sales reps track buyer engagement, CS teams seamlessly pick up where Sales left off, and Marketing updates enablement content in real time—all in one place.

With Dock, enablement tools aren’t just for Sales—they support a revenue-wide strategy that connects every team working with your buyers.

7. AI in sales enablement 

We can’t talk about the future of sales enablement without mentioning AI. 

While much of the AI focus so far for enablement teams has been on AI-generated content and automation, its biggest future impact on enablement will likely come from intelligent data analysis, content personalization, and real-time coaching.

One of the most powerful AI use cases is conversational intelligence. Buyers expect a personalized sales experience, and AI-driven conversation analysis helps sales teams deliver just that. Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms can analyze sales calls, detect key themes, and auto-suggest relevant content based on buyer pain points.

AI-driven insights can also improve sales training and coaching. Instead of managers manually reviewing countless sales calls, AI tools can track adherence to playbooks, flag common objections, and provide real-time guidance to ensure reps stay on-message. AI sentiment analysis tools can even identify when a conversation is going south—giving managers the chance to step in and course-correct before a deal is lost.

Beyond conversations, AI is also revolutionizing content management. Instead of forcing reps to dig through outdated CMS systems, AI can surface the right content based on deal stage, industry, and past interactions. It can also analyze content performance, helping enablement teams refine messaging based on what actually drives deals forward.

Solution: Refine and optimize sales conversations with AI tools 

AI should be a core part of your sales enablement strategy—especially for conversation analysis, content personalization, and deal coaching.

• Conversational AI tools like Gong, Dialpad, and RingCentral RingSense analyze sales calls to pinpoint customer pain points and suggest next steps.
• AI-powered content management (like Dock’s content discovery features) surfaces relevant sales materials in real-time, ensuring reps always have the best assets at their fingertips.
• AI playbooks and real-time coaching help reps follow proven sales methodologies, reducing ramp time and increasing consistency across the team.

By integrating AI across sales training, content management, and buyer engagement, sales enablement teams can make smarter decisions, personalize interactions at scale, and help reps close more deals—faster.

📖 Read more: Learn more about the future of AI in sales enablement.

The future of sales enablement is here—is your team ready?

Sales enablement is no longer just about training reps and managing content—it’s about empowering the entire revenue team and giving buyers the tools they need to make informed decisions.

Here’s what’s shaping the future of enablement:

• Buyer enablement is the new priority—sales teams must shift from pushing content to curating personalized, self-serve experiences.
• Collaboration looks different—with fewer training opportunities, leaders need scalable tools like sales room templates to keep reps aligned.
• Proof of ROI matters more than ever—with tighter budgets, enablement teams must prove their impact on revenue.
• Sales and CS must work as one—a smooth handoff between teams is critical for renewals and expansion.
• Enablement platforms must evolve—legacy CMS tools aren’t built for modern sales motions; revenue teams need connected, AI-powered solutions.
• AI is the new co-pilot—from sales call analysis to content discovery, AI is optimizing every part of the sales process.

To stay ahead, enablement leaders need tools that unify revenue teams, track engagement, and support buyers throughout the entire journey.

Dock’s digital sales rooms and workspace templates help sales and CS teams collaborate seamlessly, track buyer engagement, and personalize the buying experience—all in one place.

Want to learn more about how Dock can help you prepare for the future of sales enablement? You can schedule a demo with our sales team or get started for free.