What’s going to drive sales success in 2026?
After a long, hot summer, schools are finally back. B&Q is ripping out lawnmower displays to make space for Christmas lights.
September means work is back, and for many it’s time to start planning for 2026. What are going to be the big sales trends that drive success in the coming year?
Business Confidence
With the economy bumping along the bottom, 2025 hasn’t been a great year for driving revenue. Consumer confidence hasn’t yet recovered from the shocks of utility price increases and interest rate hikes three years ago. There’s been a slight easing of interest rates, but against this food inflation remains stubbornly high. At the same time, business confidence is low, with many worried that the government’s next budget will see tax increases on top of the burden of National Insurance rises that are still filtering through.
There are few signals that 2026 will be any better.
But, as always, a tough market is one where the gap between winners and losers will widen. Great businesses are still thriving, so building strategies that drive effectiveness and sales success will give you that platform for growth when the tide finally turns. You can’t affect market confidence, but you can have confidence in the quality of your own sales engine.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
No strategy conversation is complete without mention of AI, and its impact can’t be ignored. Some larger enterprises are racing ahead with Agentic AI and Sales Enablement, allowing them to target the efforts of their sales people better and speed up the pace of deals. But for the majority, application of AI in 2026 will remain focused on efficiency. Using AI to research customers, construct email campaigns and automate low level processing tasks is as revolutionary as it’s likely to get in the short term.
Alongside this, sales leaders will be worrying about how to ringfence client data and sensitive sales information while getting the best out of AI. There’ll be almost as much time spent on figuring out internal procedures and employee guidelines as there will be on creating slick, replacement sales processes. If you’ve not yet started with AI we recommend you do that in 2026. Just getting yourself familiar with its limitations and joining the conversation will be worthwhile.
But off-the-shelf solutions that properly talk to the rest of your systems are unlikely to be available for smaller organisations in the coming year.
The human touch
The counter-balance to the rise of AI is that sales is still about people. Research repeatedly shows that the best sales people close bigger deals, faster than their peers. People still buy from people. Not only this, but the mass of available information sources means that decision makers expect information and insight to be personalised to them.
It’s no longer enough to use generic presentations and flyers to engage buyers. Information has to be tailored to individual points in the customer journey, with solutions expressed in ways that speak to individuals. If you’re selling to medium-large customers then expect to hear more about Account Based Marketing (ABM) in 2026.
You don’t need expensive systems to figure out exactly what it is your best sales people do – and encourage them to share that with the rest of your team. These people-based approaches are a simple win and very often overlooked.
The war for talent
The strange thing about today’s sales marketplace is that sluggish growth isn’t equating to a surplus of great sales people. You’d typically expect a flat market to result in right-sizing and redundancies, leaving recruiters with a wide range of talent. In fact the opposite is happening. We’re repeatedly hearing of recruiting managers hiking starting salaries by 20% just to attract a shortlist.
More telling is how frequently we’re seeing people just not turn up for interview. You know it’s a recruiters’ market when that’s happening. If you get past all this then the quality on show is less than convincing. A surprising number of applicants turn up to interview unable to really sell their own achievements. Few can articulate the personal impact that makes you want to hire them.
Others are so overdosed on working from home that they’ve lost sight of what a sales job really entails. Yes, we have had conversations with sales people who refuse to travel to customers!
Retention and training
What a shortage of talent means is that organisations are doubling down on their in-house talent pipelines and we expect to see this grow in 2026. The disruption of patching up your team while plodding through a lengthy and fruitless recruitment campaign is too damaging to your sales line. Better to recruit less experienced people with the right attitude and train them up.
You can expect to see continued focus on employer brand, with companies keen to share what they stand for as well as the enhanced terms and conditions employees can expect to enjoy. Training and development will continue to become more personalised, with organisations moving away from regimented training courses to create learning frameworks where individuals set their own goals.
With information so readily available, it will be skills like agility and leadership that identify winning sales organisations in 2026. Developing your best talent and finding ways for those people to grow, while staying with you, will be key to success in the new year.
2026. The more things change……..
…the more they stay the same. Everything is changing, with new tools, approaches and acronyms appearing at pace.
Yet below that the underlying pillars of success remain: Setting a clear customer strategy, building a winning team and supporting both with effective sales tools and processes.
At Sales:Untangled we thrive on helping our clients build winning sales strategies and get the most out of their sales people. Chat to us to see how we can help you.