8 B2B Sales Examples That Actually Work (And Why) in 2025

Your team is chasing leads, booking calls, and running demos—yet deals keep stalling. Pipelines look full, but revenue says otherwise.

Or the opposite is true: despite what seems like a high-octane lead gen operation, your pipeline is thin.

So how can you identify issues and fix your faulty sales process?

We’ve broken down eight real-world B2B sales examples across SaaS, manufacturing, and services, all of which you can copy, adapt, and scale.

What Makes a B2B Sale Successful?

Before you grab ideas from the case studies, know this: the best B2B sales teams share a pattern. They diagnose problems, align messaging, and scale personalization without losing the human touch.

Pain Points First, Pitch Second

Overlooking pains is usually the result of one of two faulty approaches (and sometimes a mix).

The first is selling by the old playbooks, particularly running lead generation campaigns without knowing intent signals before a deal enters your sales pipeline. 

The second is the all too regular sales rep mistake of pitching product features versus leading with problems.

The lesson? Successful sales teams continuously collect and study pain points—proven by a 6sense study of 2,509 B2B buyers. An incredible 69% of sales decisions are made before buyers even talk to a sales rep, with 81% of buyers already having a preferred vendor at first contact. 

Here’s what you can do to surface pain points fast:

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  Collect buyer intent data from a wide variety of sources.

  
  
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  Inspect your CRM data for stalled opportunities and identify the reasons behind them.

  
  
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  Define three to five buying triggers for your ideal customer profile (budget approval, new leadership, regulatory change) that signal when best to engage a prospect.

  
  

When you start with pain, your pitch shifts from “Here’s what our product does” to “Here’s how we’ll close your $2M revenue gap in the next two quarters.” Features become proof points in a tailored solution, and a sales rep owns the problem.

Multiple Decision-Makers, One Message

It’s not uncommon for a simple purchase to involve upwards of four or five stakeholders. If we zoom out to other verticals, the number can be in the double figures.

In 2025, the average B2B deal involves 13 stakeholders, according to Forrester. CFOs, CTOs, end users, procurement—they all have a vote, and each sees risk differently for the same product.

That’s why winning teams adapt the same core sales message for each role:

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  CFO: ROI, total cost of ownership, risk mitigation

  
  
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  CTO: Integration, security, tech debt reduction

  
  
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  End-user: Ease of use, time savings, fewer headaches

  
  

To coordinate your messaging, start by mapping out buyer personas through tools like Lucidchart or HubSpot’s Make My Persona. Then, align communication across marketing, sales, and customer success so your company conveys a unified message through different channels.

Automation That Feels Personal

In the era of AI, you cannot afford not to automate a large chunk of your sales activities. You need tools to find intent signals, match them to buyer personas, deliver personalized messages, and assign leads based on sales rep capacity.

Teams that are reluctant to incorporate AI are losing revenue—a finding reported in the State of Sales report. What’s fascinating is that quality isn’t sacrificed when personalization is automated—it’s enhanced.

With AI BDRs like Artisan’s Ava combined with your CRM data, you can uncover anonymous website visits, product usage, intent data, and trigger human-like outreach for high‑value personas.

Multi‑Channel Orchestration

Single‑channel reps get ignored. Multi‑channel sellers get meetings.

Sure, we can rant about it as much as we want, but a recent Gong study makes the power of multi-channel clear. Leaving a voicemail doubles the reply rates (2.73% to 5.87%) of initial outreach emails. 

8 B2B Sales Examples (And What You Can Steal From Each)

Let’s look at some real-world examples of how B2B companies have improved their sales results, often with only minor changes to their strategy and workflow. 

1. Modernized Pipeline Management: How Unity Improved Win Rate by 29.9%

Unity is the world-renowned platform for real-time 3D content creation across games, AR/VR, film, architecture, and more. They used Clari’s revenue platform to improve their win rate by 29.9%. 

Pain: Sales forecasting and pipeline visibility were fragmented because Unity relied on a mix of Salesforce dashboards and spreadsheets. This disconnected approach led to forecast uncertainty and missed opportunities.

Decision: They implemented Clari’s revenue platform to modernize forecasting, pipeline management, and visibility across sales operations.

Results:

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  Win rate improved by 29.9%

  
  
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  Slipped deals decreased by 30.2%

  
  
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  Average deal size (ASP) increased by 209%

  
  
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  Ops team saved four hours per week and maintained staffing levels

  
  

What you can steal: Is pipeline visibility your pet peeve? Try a full-view analytics platform to improve visibility into pipeline health, deal progress, and forecasting accuracy.

Ideal for:  Best for enterprise and mid-market sales teams managing large, complex deal pipelines with multiple stakeholders and long sales cycles.

2. AI-Driven Lead Scoring: How Grammarly Used Salesforce AI Scoring to Lift Conversions 80%

Well, you know Grammarly; it’s a global SaaS company offering AI-powered writing grammar checks to consumers and businesses. What you might not know is that they used AI to boost conversions by a whopping 80%. 

Pain: Their inbound funnel was clogged with low-quality leads, causing delays in reaching the prospects most likely to convert.

Decision: Marketing and sales leadership agreed to use AI to qualify and prioritize leads based on actual buying signals.

Action: They deployed Salesforce Einstein for behavioral lead scoring, pushing high-fit leads to sales instantly while routing others into nurture campaigns.

Results: 80% increase in conversion rates; marketing-to-sales handoffs became faster and more accurate.

What you can steal: Use AI scoring to flag leads who are actually ready to buy—and get reps talking to them first.

Ideal for: Ideal for SaaS and tech companies with high inbound lead volume to prioritize and fast-track high-intent prospects.

3. Going Digital for Quoting Processes: A $1.2M Time-Saving Move 

A $2B US-based industrial manufacturer (name undisclosed) selling high-volume components to enterprise buyers saved 12,000 sales hours per quarter. 

Pain: Complex, manual quoting dramatically slowed deals. Sales reps spent hours exchanging emails with customers just to finalize terms.

Decision: Management saw that salespeople were spending more time on admin than selling and pushed to digitize the quoting process.

Action: They partnered with Object Edge to replatform e-commerce and move quoting online, adding dynamic pricing and instant approvals.

Results: Saved 12,000 sales hours per quarter, equivalent to ~$1.2M annually, while accelerating the buying cycle.

What you can steal: Map your most time-intensive sales processes and automate them, with the help of a knowledgeable third party if needed. 

Ideal for: Perfect for B2B manufacturers and distributors with complex pricing and quoting workflows that slow down deal completion.

4. Unified Sales and Marketing Tech Stack: 9x Revenue Growth with the HubSpot CRM Playbook

Allied Wire and Cable is a US-based industrial cable and wire distributor, serving aerospace, military, and OEM clients. They increased marketing-attributed revenue by a factor of almost 10 by unifying their sales and marketing stack. 

Pain: Their sales and marketing teams were trapped in tool chaos: disconnected marketing automation, siloed CRM data, and weak ROI tracking. They were losing money without a clear understanding of the broken parts.

Decision: Leadership realized they couldn’t scale without a unified view of customers and a way to automate high-volume campaigns.

Action: The team consolidated into HubSpot CRM, built 150+ automated workflows, and integrated all marketing and sales touchpoints into one system.

Results: 

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  9x increase in marketing-attributed revenue

  
  
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  50% boost in customer satisfaction

  
  
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  6x higher email open rates

  
  
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  Unsubscribes have gone down

  
  

What you can steal: Unify your tech stack so sales and marketing share a single source of truth. Then, automate repetitive work so reps focus on closing.

Ideal for: Startups and mid-size companies in industrial, manufacturing, or distribution sectors looking to integrate sales and marketing into one cohesive system.

5. AI-Driven Sales Enablement and Onboarding: PitchBook Boosts Efficiency with Gong

PitchBook is a financial data and analytics provider for venture capital, private equity, and M&A professionals. They used Gong to drive significant efficiency improvements. 

Pain: Onboarding and coaching new reps took months, with inconsistent processes across teams.

Decision: Sales leadership wanted a repeatable, data-backed coaching process that could scale across a growing team.

Action: Integrated Gong for AI-driven call analysis, real-time feedback, and playbook standardization.

Results: 10x faster coaching cycles; 3–5 hours saved per week per rep during onboarding.

What you can steal: Use conversation intelligence to scale your best plays and get new reps revenue-ready in weeks.

Ideal for: Built for mid-size and large sales organizations that need to reduce ramp-up time, improve coaching consistency, and scale best practices.

6. AI-Powered Outbound: bioaccess Scales Lead Gen with Ava by Artisan

Bioaccess is a biotech company connecting research institutions with specialized lab equipment providers. They partnered with Artisan to automate and scale their outbound outreach. 

Pain: Manual outbound efforts couldn’t keep up with the pipeline goals of a lean team.

Decision: Leadership decided to fully automate prospecting so the sales team could focus only on conversations with promising leads. 

Action: Bioaccess implemented Ava, Artisan’s AI business development representative (BDR), to handle lead discovery, enrichment, outreach, and follow-ups 24/7.

Results: 1.2% positive reply rate on cold outreach with zero added headcount; fully automated lead generation.

What you can steal: Shift your focus from manual outbound sales to AI-driven workflows. Let AI handle the repetitive prospecting so your human reps spend their time in conversations that move deals forward.

Ideal for: Designed for lean B2B teams and startups that need a full outbound pipeline without increasing headcount.

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

7. Sales Forecasting Impact: Cutting Time to Revenue by 20%

A $31 million software automation company (name undisclosed) contacted Revegy to re-engineer their sales forecasting process, resulting in a reduction in time to revenue (lead to closed deal) of 20%. 

Pain: Forecasting was imprecise and slow, which hindered strategic planning and slowed time to revenue.

Action: Implemented Revegy’s platform, which centralizes data and defines clear stages in the forecasting process.

Results: Forecast accuracy improved by 25%, and time to recognize revenue dropped by 20%.

What you can steal: Fix data gaps and align forecasting stages in one clear system. Accuracy and speed both climb when your forecast process is unified.

Ideal for: Great for mid-size companies looking to improve forecast accuracy and accelerate revenue timelines.

8. Manufacturer Digitalization: How MacDon’s Digital Portal Drove 20% Sales Growth

MacDon is a Canadian manufacturer of agricultural harvesting equipment, selling through a global dealer network. They implemented a digital portal that increased sales revenue by 20%. 

Pain: Dealers had to use an outdated portal and order manually, leading to delays, errors, and lost reorders, especially during peak seasons.

Decision: To keep pace with digital-savvy competitors, MacDon committed to modernizing its dealer experience with a frictionless online platform.

Action: Launched a self-service portal with real-time inventory, dealer-specific pricing, and mobile-friendly ordering, powered by Liferay.

Results: 20% sales growth, 50% jump in e-commerce transactions, and doubled site visits in the first year. On top of that, call, fax, and in-person orders have decreased thanks to self-service and online options.

What you can steal: If you sell through distributors or dealers, remove friction with role-based pricing, inventory visibility, and 24/7 ordering.

Ideal for: Manufacturing companies selling through dealer or distributor networks that want to streamline ordering and boost recurring sales.

What These Examples Have in Common

Different industries. Different problems. But all the preceding examples share the same DNA. They found a constraint, changed their thinking of how they sell, and found productivity tools to upgrade sales processes.

They Start With the Business Problem

Some examples have shown how important it is to identify your prospects’ pain points and tailor your sales tactics accordingly, while the rest pointed out internal restrictions that beg for a redo. When both are solved, companies generate more revenue, reduce busywork, and increase pipeline visibility.

Your sales become predictable and scalable.

They Use Tools That Scale With Them

From HubSpot CRM automation to AI scoring and Clari’s revenue platform, each win came from systemizing what works. Instead of relying on heroic individual effort, they baked the process into their tech.

Here’s a rundown of the apps companies used to increase sales and drive efficiency: 

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  CRM and marketing automation to unify truth (HubSpot, Salesforce)

  
  
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  AI lead scoring to prioritize action (Salesforce Einstein)

  
  
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  Conversation intelligence for consistent sales rep coaching (Gong)

  
  
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  Digital commerce platforms to remove friction (Liferay, Object Edge)

  
  
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  AI sales assistants to put outbound sales on autopilot without human intervention (Artisan’s AI BDR Ava)

  
  
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  Generative AI to mimic your tone of voice and train AI to craft personalized sales emails at scale

  
  

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

They Focus on Relationships, Not Just Touchpoints

The best results didn’t come because teams hit more touchpoints blindly. They hit the right ones at the right time. 

You can improve the quality of your touchpoints by: 

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  Multi-threading into buying groups (Unity, MacDon)

  
  
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  Personalizing engagement based on role and stage (Grammarly, PitchBook, bioaccess)

  
  
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  Following up strategically, triggered by real buying signals (bioaccess, MacDon)

  
  

Build trust through relevance, not volume. If your outreach cadence doesn’t adapt to the deal’s stage or buyer persona, you’re burning your prospects, even if you’re operating the best possible sales stack.

How to Identify Opportunities to Improve Sales

Identifying the best opportunities to boost sales involves four steps:

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   Audit your current sales cycle.

   
   
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   Map your stakeholders.

   
   
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   Automate follow-ups. 

   
   
4. 

   Track the right metrics. 

   
   

Let’s look at each one in depth. 

1. Audit Your Current Sales Cycle

You can’t fix what you don’t see. 

Pull up your last quarter’s deals and look for friction:

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  Are reply rates low on the first outreach?

  
  
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  Are deals stalling between demo and proposal?

  
  
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  Is time to close creeping up?

  
  
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  Are late-stage deals slipping into next quarter?

  
  
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  Are you inflating the pipeline with low-quality leads?

  
  
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  Are you sure your sales reps convey the same messaging?

  
  
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  What do your best sales reps do that others don’t to close more deals?

  
  
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  How many hours on mundane work are wasted?

  
  
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  What does your lead nurturing look like?

  
  
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  How many attempts does a sales rep take before closing a deal?

  
  
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  Is your outbound intent-driven and personalized?

  
  
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  Do you have sufficient dashboards to highlight these issues?

  
  

Yes, it’s a lot to dig, but there aren’t shortcuts when you’re leading with data. And when you do find the friction, you’ll notice something. Many deal delays aren’t because your product isn’t a fit—they’re because you didn’t engage the right people early enough, which takes us to the next step.

2. Map Your Stakeholders

Map every stakeholder who can accelerate or stall your deal. Remember that selling to one contact in B2B is a surefire way to a lost opportunity.

Identify who influences, who buys, and who blocks. 

Assign role-specific value messages, such as ROI for the CFO, ease of integration for the CTO, and workflow efficiency for end-users. Then, use your CRM to track engagement by persona so you can see gaps at a glance.

And once you know who you’re targeting, the next step is to ensure your sales reps keep those relationships warm.

Automate Follow-Ups (The Smart Way)

Fortunately for all salespeople, warming up conversations isn’t rocket science. 

Here are three steps for effective warmup: 

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  Trigger sequences based on real buying signals (proposal views, pricing page visits, new stakeholder activity).

  
  
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  Build content waterfalls that add new value with each touch, like industry proof for the analyst, ROI data for finance, and integration steps for IT.

  
  
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  Use smart delay logic so timing feels organic, not robotic. 

  
  

You can automate nurturing tasks with tools like:

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  Artisan: Trigger follow-ups and outreach steps based on live intent signals, automate LinkedIn and email cadences, and apply delay logic tied to real buyer behavior.

  
  
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  Clay: Pull fresh prospect data in real time, enrich records, and push them straight into sequences when a trigger is met.

  
  
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  HubSpot Sequences: Automate multi-channel follow-up from your CRM, with personalization tokens and branching logic based on engagement.

  
  
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  Groove: Use this native Salesforce integration for automated follow-up workflows without the need for constant context switching.

  
  

Track the Right Metrics

Vanity metrics in your sales dashboard are the fastest way to throw the sales team off course. They look impressive in numbers, but don’t translate into revenue.

Here are the worst-offending vanity metrics: 

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  Total outbound emails sent

  
  
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  Number of calls made

  
  
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  LinkedIn connection requests sent

  
  
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  CRM log-ins or tasks completed

  
  
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  Meetings booked without qualification

  
  
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  Net new leads added to a CRM

  
  

Instead, focus on numbers that tie directly to revenue and deal velocity:

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  Meetings booked to opportunities created 

  
  
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  Opportunity-to-close rate

  
  
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  Average sales cycle length 

  
  
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  Average deal size 

  
  
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  Forecast accuracy vs. actual revenue

  
  

Review these sales metrics weekly/biweekly. If a metric dips, look through the data—figure out the cause before it becomes a quarterly loss.

Why Tools Like Artisan Help You Repeat the Win

You can use separate tools for prospecting, lead engagement, email warm-up, intent data discovery, pipeline management, outbound sales analytics, and so on. 

Or you can hire an AI BDR that handles everything on autopilot. Artisan is one of the leading AI sales automation platforms, and it has an array of powerful features. 

Built for Multi-Channel Sales

When email and LinkedIn live in separate tools, campaigns get sloppy. Artisan orchestrates email and LinkedIn outreach from one dashboard and pushes leads straight into your CRM so every touchpoint is synced, sequenced, and measured.

Ava: Your AI SDR

Ava is your AI SDR who works around the clock. She scrapes new leads, monitors company news and personal LinkedIn accounts, and reads trends. Ava matches this data with your buyer personas and offers great-fit prospects to your outbound campaigns.

Fresh, Accurate Data

Artisan prospects from a database of over 300 million B2B, local, and ecommerce leads. Lead profiles are regularly enriched and verified, and users have full access to an extensive set of filtering tools. 

You Don’t Need Luck, You Need a Smarter Stack

To power up your sales engine in 2025, you’ve got to lean heavily into data, automation, and personalization. The best examples of B2B sales make extensive use of all three. 

But that doesn’t mean purchasing a giant tech stack. Next-gen AI tools like Artisan consolidate all the tools you need to run outbound at scale, with full automation built in. 

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo