How Tariffs Are Impacting B2B Revenue Pipelines—and What You Can Do About It
Jun 6, 2025
In today’s connected global economy, changes in trade policy have wide-reaching effects. As we move through 2025, new and expanded tariffs are significantly impacting B2B commerce.
While headlines focus on geopolitics, real tremors are being felt in sales forecasts, pipeline stability, and revenue predictability.
2025 Tariffs and the Economic Domino Effect
The return of aggressive tariff policies in 2025 has stirred conversations across every economic sector. These tariffs, designed to protect domestic industries by increasing import costs, have created significant ripples in the global economy. Understanding the nuanced ways through which these tariffs impact the economy provides insight into the challenges faced by businesses today.
How do tariffs impact the economy today?
Tariffs, essentially taxes on imported goods, aim to make foreign products less competitive compared to domestic offerings. While this policy can benefit local manufacturers, it often sets off a chain reaction of economic shifts. First and foremost, the imposition of tariffs leads to increased prices for imported goods, impacting consumer spending and business operating costs.
Furthermore, as countries react to tariffs, trade relationships may strain, leading to retaliatory measures. The ensuing uncertainty can depreciate currencies, restrict international trade, and contribute to overall economic volatility. Companies exposed to global markets must navigate these complex dynamics, making strategic decisions to adapt to the changing cost structures and supply chain disruptions.
The return of inflation, supply chain volatility, and buyer hesitation
Tariffs drive up the cost of imported goods, fueling inflation. Businesses either absorb these costs or pass them to consumers, reducing purchasing power and demand.
They also create supply chain volatility. Companies face unpredictable costs and disruptions, prompting costly shifts—like finding new suppliers, reconfiguring logistics, or moving production. This often leads to:
Supply chain reconfiguration: Businesses may scramble to diversify their supplier base, explore domestic alternatives, or shift production to other countries to avoid tariff exposure. This transition is often costly and time-consuming.
Increased lead times: Finding new suppliers or re-routing existing logistics can result in longer lead times for products and components, impacting production schedules and delivery commitments.
Inventory adjustments: Companies might opt for smaller, more frequent shipments (just-in-time) to minimize tariff exposure on unsold inventory, shifting from bulk to nimble fulfillment models. This requires greater agility in logistics and inventory management.
These pressures slow buyer decision-making. With rising costs and uncertainty, businesses delay purchases, extend sales cycles, and demand more B2C-like speed and transparency in B2B engagements.
The ripple effect on business confidence and long-term revenue
Beyond the immediate financial crunch, tariffs erode business confidence. The unpredictability of trade policies makes long-term planning incredibly difficult. Companies become hesitant to invest in new projects, expand operations, or commit to significant capital expenditures when the regulatory landscape is constantly shifting. This cautious approach can stifle innovation and impede growth, affecting long-term revenue potential. Additionally, fluctuating market conditions make financial forecasting more challenging, often leading businesses to adopt conservative revenue estimates, thereby shaping cautious investor sentiment.
Ultimately, this ripple effect translates into a direct hit on long-term revenue pipelines.
Tariff Pressure on B2B Businesses — The Revenue Fallout
B2B businesses, particularly mid- to enterprise-size businesses, are experiencing a quiet but significant slowdown. Tariff pressures are trickling down into every part of the sales cycle — dragging out decisions, shrinking margins, and derailing forecasts.
Deal cycles slow, decision-making stalls
In an uncertain economic climate exacerbated by tariffs, B2B deal cycles naturally lengthen. Customers, grappling with their own increased costs and market volatility, become more risk-averse. They scrutinize every purchase, often requiring more internal approvals and extended due diligence.
Heightened scrutiny: Every expenditure, especially large B2B contracts, undergoes more rigorous review.
Delayed decisions: Companies prefer to wait and see how the tariff situation evolves before committing to significant investments.
Increased negotiation: Buyers push harder for price concessions, further squeezing margins.
This results in deals getting stuck in the pipeline for longer, creating bottlenecks and making it harder for sales teams to hit their targets.
How tariffs inflate costs and compress margins
The most direct impact of tariffs on B2B businesses is the inflation of costs. For companies that import raw materials, components, or finished goods, tariffs act as an additional tax.
Direct input cost increases: A manufacturer relying on imported steel, for example, will see the price of that steel jump by the tariff percentage. This directly impacts their cost of goods sold (COGS).
Supply chain cost increases: Even if a business doesn't directly import, their domestic suppliers might, passing on their increased costs. Furthermore, reconfiguring supply chains to avoid tariffs can involve higher transportation costs (e.g., shifting from ocean to air freight), storage, and logistics.
Currency fluctuations: Trade tensions often lead to currency volatility, making international transactions more expensive and unpredictable, further eroding margins for businesses engaged in multi-currency transactions.
The rising cost of goods—driven by tariffs on inputs and finished products—forces companies to either raise their prices (and risk churn) or absorb the costs (and eat into margins). Either choice makes closing deals harder, especially in competitive categories.
The balance between profitability and market share becomes incredibly delicate.
Sales team struggles: low predictability, missed targets
The combined effect of slowed deal cycles and compressed margins creates a challenging environment for sales teams.
Low predictability: Traditional sales forecasting methods, often based on historical data and predictable market conditions, become unreliable. The fluctuating economic landscape, influenced by tariffs, makes it nearly impossible to accurately predict deal closures and revenue.
Missed targets: With deals stalling and margins tightening, sales teams find it increasingly difficult to meet their quotas and revenue targets. This can lead to low morale, increased churn among sales reps, and a general sense of frustration.
Increased administrative burden: Sales reps may spend more time re-forecasting, adjusting proposals, and navigating internal approval processes as deal dynamics change.
The lack of clarity and certainty directly impacts a sales organization's ability to plan, execute, and deliver consistent revenue.
Beyond CRM Reports — Where Pipeline Risk Hides
Most teams still rely on static CRM dashboards and rep-level updates to gauge pipeline health. But in a tariff-driven market, that lens is dangerously limited — and often outright misleading. While CRMs are indispensable for managing customer relationships and tracking deals, they often present an incomplete and misleading picture of pipeline health, especially in the face of external economic shocks like tariffs.
What sales pipeline audits reveal (phantom deals, risk weight)
A thorough pipeline audit looks beyond CRM stage data to expose critical deal health issues:
Phantom deals: Deals that look alive in the CRM but show no recent activity or progress. Reps may keep them open to pad the pipeline, but they rarely close. Audits flag deals stuck too long without updates or buyer engagement.
Inaccurate risk weighting: CRM stages often assign generic probabilities, but not all deals at the same stage carry equal risk. Audits apply data-driven risk scores based on factors like buyer signals, BANT elements, competition, and internal champions.
Stalled deal patterns: Repeated roadblocks—like vague qualification, misaligned messaging, or delayed follow-up—can surface in audit trends. These are especially visible when new external barriers, like tariffs, slow down deals.
Ineffective sales activities: Audits correlate sales efforts with actual deal movement to reveal where reps are spending time on low-impact tasks.
These findings give leadership a clearer picture of true pipeline value and which deals deserve attention, improving forecast accuracy and enabling smarter coaching.
Why traditional pipeline views miss millions
Manual reviews and CRM-based pipeline snapshots can’t keep pace with today’s volatile market conditions—like tariff shocks, pricing swings, or shifts in buyer sentiment. Without AI, these blind spots grow over time, costing teams accuracy, agility, and revenue.
Traditional approaches fall short because they:
Depend on static, manual inputs that are often outdated, incomplete, or overly optimistic
Lack predictive intelligence, offering no forward-looking view of deal risks or trends
Ignore broader patterns across the pipeline, like drops in engagement across a segment or region
Can’t integrate external signals, such as marketing activity, product usage, or economic shifts
Suffer from human bias, where forecasts are influenced more by gut feel than data
In fast-changing environments, especially those disrupted by tariffs or supply chain shifts, traditional reviews offer a limited, backward-looking view—leaving millions in revenue at risk and reducing the ability to pivot proactively.
AI Sales Forecasting: Your Advantage in a Tariff Economy
In an economic climate defined by uncertainty, traditional sales forecasting methods are proving inadequate. This is where AI-powered sales forecasting emerges as a transformative solution, providing the clarity, accuracy, and confidence businesses need to navigate the complexities of a tariff economy.
How AI brings clarity, accuracy, and confidence
AI-driven forecasting tools offer significant advantages by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends invisible to human eyes. These tools can adjust forecasts dynamically based on changing market conditions, providing businesses with more accurate predictions and enhancing confidence in revenue projections.
In essence, AI doesn't just tell you what might happen; it helps you understand why it might happen and what you can do about it.
Aviso’s approach to real-time risk and opportunity detection
Aviso is a leading end-to-end AI-powered revenue intelligence platform that helps businesses navigate dynamic markets with real-time risk and opportunity detection. Key strengths include:
Unified Data Layer: Connects seamlessly with CRMs, ERPs, marketing tools, and other systems to aggregate all revenue-related data—sales activity, engagement, emails, call transcripts, product usage, and market signals—into one centralized view.
Proprietary AI Models: Uses proprietary machine learning trained on extensive B2B data to forecast deal outcomes and adapt to changing market dynamics, including the impact of tariffs and economic shifts.
Time-Series Database: Unlike CRMs, Aviso captures the full historical context of deals and activities. This enables trend analysis, performance tracking, and more accurate modeling across teams, products, and time periods.
Dynamic WinScores: Assigns each deal a real-time probability of closing, continuously updated based on new developments—like competitor moves, stakeholder changes, or macroeconomic signals.
Intelligent Risk Alerts: Detects early warning signs of deal risk such as stalled activity, negative sentiment, or external pressures. Provides actionable insights for sales teams to intervene before deals go cold.
Hidden Opportunity Discovery: Identifies overlooked upsell/cross-sell opportunities and early-stage leads showing strong engagement or fit—based on behavioral and firmographic patterns.
Real-Time Pipeline Dashboards: Delivers a 360° view of forecast accuracy, rep productivity, and pipeline health. Enables RevOps and sales leaders to drill down into segments, deals, or trends for better decision-making.
By combining powerful AI with comprehensive data, Aviso provides a complete, intelligent view of the revenue pipeline, transforming reactive management into proactive strategic execution.
Stack efficiency and team productivity gains (30%+ improvements)
The adoption of AI sales forecasting tools like Aviso delivers tangible benefits in terms of operational efficiency and team productivity, leading to significant improvements that can offset tariff-related pressures. Aviso’s AI-driven recommendations empower sales teams to work smarter and faster, delivering over 30% gains in productivity and stack efficiency.
AI-Powered Predictive Forecasting: Instead of relying solely on rep intuition or manual spreadsheet roll-ups, Aviso uses advanced artificial intelligence to generate highly accurate forecasts — giving revenue leaders a single source of truth across the pipeline.
Actionable Recommendations: AI surfaces the next best actions for each deal—helping reps prioritize time, engage effectively, and move faster toward close.
Smarter Coaching: Managers get real-time visibility into rep performance and deal risks, enabling targeted interventions that drive results.
Streamlined Workflows: Aviso highlights high-impact leads and flags stalled opportunities—cutting through noise and accelerating deal velocity.
Lean Tech Stack: With forecasting, pipeline insights, and revenue intelligence in one platform, Aviso reduces tool sprawl and unlocks measurable cost savings.
In a tariff economy where every dollar counts, these efficiency and productivity gains are not just desirable; they are essential for maintaining competitiveness and profitability.
Submit Your Pipeline and Uncover $15 M in Hidden Revenue
64-hour turnaround. No cost. No risk.
Tariffs Are Rising. So Are Your Blindspots.
New tariffs could be quietly draining millions from your revenue pipeline. Aviso’s free Pipeline Blindspot Assessment helps you uncover what CRMs and manual reviews often miss — in just 64 hours. No consultants. No strings. Just data-backed clarity.
For every $150M in ARR, Aviso identifies at least $15M in hidden revenue opportunities. That’s real upside hiding in plain sight — from tech bloat and inefficiencies to execution gaps across your pipeline.
While advisory firms charge six figures for the assessment of tariff impact on business, Aviso offers a faster, smarter alternative. Here’s how it works:
Submit your sales pipeline data
We connect you with a rep
Our product team analyzes your data
Get a detailed audit in 64 hours
Uncover hidden upside, tech waste, and execution gaps
What to submit, who qualifies, what you’ll get
What to submit:
Submit a form and Opportunity data from the last four quarters (CSV format)
Who qualifies:
B2B companies with $100M+ in ARR
Revenue leaders in SaaS, Cybersecurity, Fintech, Manufacturing, Industrial, and more
Roles: CRO, CFO, CEO, VP Sales, RevOps, Sales Ops
What you’ll get in 64 hours:
5-point Pipeline Health Insights: Monitor pipeline health, track lagging metrics using a 5-point pipeline assessment (coverage, qualification, maturity, spread, and quality), and plan course correction.
Out-Quarter Pipeline Planning: Discover gaps between where your next-quarter pipeline should be and where you are today, and plan the path to close the gap.
AE-Wise Pipeline Analysis: Learn your Q+1, Q+2, and Q+3 coverage by AE, potential pushbacks, and active pipeline to be generated.
Conclusion
Aviso helps you understand the impact of new tariffs on your revenue outlook, revealing blindspots before they become lost revenue.
This is why companies like Honeywell, Lenovo, BMC, and NetApp trust Aviso to confidently navigate uncertainty.
Ready to inspect your pipeline and stop revenue leakage?
