KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE AEO SALES FORUM 2025

By Philippa Christer, Montgomery Group. 

Collaborate to innovate was this year’s AEO Forums theme, and that’s exactly what we did during the fantastic sales stream.

The day kicked off with “The buyer's view: mastering buyer insights”. We heard wise words directly from the mouths of our customers and learnt pet hates for a buyer, and key tips to spark their interest to sign that contract.

Key tips:

• Go on the journey with the buyer and be patient. Understand what’s going on and why the decisions might take time. Don’t push so hard you damage your relationship.
• Reminder that there are 11.2 people on average involved in the buying process – engage all stakeholders early on.
• Felicia’s golden tip was ‘bring me something I want to listen to’ and ‘remember this is a 2 way conversation. Don’t over pitch me’.
• Isabel reminded us that if your customer is a repeat one, then the exhibition is working and there is every opportunity for an upsell. They are spending in an area they feel works for them, so give them more options.
• Remember for new customers – pitching actively to remove something in the budget to allow your show to fit in. Think about how to do this and ask the questions to really understand objectives and why they are choosing other options.
• Partnerships, partnerships, partnerships! Work with your customer to come up with new ideas. It’s win win. They get more and you get more interesting activations on the show floor. How apt for our theme! Collaborate to innovate!

We then heard from three superstar sales leaders who shared their wealth of experience in running high performing teams and creating collaborative and empowering cultures to ensure success in the session ‘High-impact leadership - running an effective sales team’ where we discussed:

• Importance of mastering the art of constructive feedback.
• Importance of instilling confidence in each team member and communicating a vision they can believe in.
• Miranda Martin reminded us to lead by example and always be laser focused on your numbers. Be human and have fun.
• Federico’s tip for the day was ‘trust your team and embrace the mistakes. Empower them to learn and thrive’.
• Alexi showcased the importance of sales architecture. Have the right structure and the right people in the right place.

This session was followed by Andrew Davis showing us how to embrace and collaborate with AI in the session, Doing more with less: optimising sales with AI. An area we are all playing with but perhaps not enough. Stark warning from Andrew that this is the same as the internet coming into our lives. Those that don’t get on board now will be the equivalent to those who choose not to engage with the internet. Key helpful tips to push your innovative thinking and efficiency:

• AI will release us from the day to day allowing us to build stronger relationships in business.
• Become a blackbelt – start training now, or others will get blackbelts before you and take your job.
• Be focused! This separates the black belts from the white belts
• Quick win – add the number 001 800 242 8478 to your phone. This is ChatGPT WhatsApp number. Ask it for help on the move in a quick and efficient way!
• AI should be viewed as an assistant. Set up lots of assistants in your account and train them individually in specific areas related to your job.
• How can AI help? Idea generation, content generation, optimising, analysing data, reformatting, summarising, educating, asking questions.
• Ask it questions to qualify your leads, suggest discovery questions, automate pre sales research.
• Lots of choice all with different abilities – ChapGPT, Apple Intelligence, Gemini, Deepseek, Hubpost, Claude, Canva, Runway, 11Elevenlabs, LinkedIn Navigator, Copilot, Einstein.
• Lead gen AI – Cognism, Gong, LeadIQ, Apollo.io, Clay, Rivalsense, LeadiQ.

Paul Cruise from Flume then energetically took us through an age old problem for sales people in his presentation on ‘Overcoming indecision & ghosting: keeping deals on track’.

• Top tip: Give them a ‘meal’ not a ‘menu’  - will help you personalise the offering and guide your customer to create the right package. Don’t just chuck a list of offerings for them to pick.
• Shift your point of view to make it easy for the buyer to say yes to you.
• Pull all stakeholders in - always ask, ‘who else should we involve?’ and not ‘who else should I speak to?’.
• Remember firstly, there is a fear from the buyer of making the wrong decision, fear of change, and challenges selling internally.
• Paul highlighted the need to see personal value in the role of the customer and how the product or service can help them achieve their goals. Always remember your customer is thinking ‘sell me something that will help me hit my number’.
• Paul emphasised the importance of differentiating your offering from competitors and providing compelling reasons for change.  You are working in a space where your customer doesn’t want to change as it comes with risk for them. Get them to realise that they need to change to succeed in their own goals.

We finished the day with some laughter and energy as we played with LinkedIn and actively took part in the session ‘Becoming a LinkedIn Social Selling Pro.’ Statistics highlight that social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities and are 51% more likely to hit targets. So here’s some top tips to help you reach your numbers:

• Don’t be too salesy in your approach, consider this as networking and make it personal.
• Review and optimise LinkedIn profile to better appeal to ideal customer profile.
• Develop a content strategy to post more valuable, engaging content consistently.
• Implement a plan to proactively grow and engage a high-quality network on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the sales stream at the AEO Forums this year. It truly lived up to the theme as everyone so actively contributed in terms of panels, presentations, questions from the audience and ongoing chat in the bar afterwards. There is no doubt the topics, ideas, and tips and tricks buzzing round the room during the day will resonate back into the work place and help drive sales innovation with the industry for 2025.

I hope this article helps as a reminder to those who attended the AEO Forums this year, sparks the interest of those who didn’t make it this year, and helps everyone smash those targets, so we can ensure this wonderful industry powers into the future.