Salesforce Agentforce: How Autonomous Agents Could Revolutionize Sales

Agentforce allows organizations to build and manage autonomous agents for tasks across various business departments. In fact, there’s an “Agentforce in every app”, with the potential to build Service Agents, Marketing Agents, Commerce Agents, Platform Agents – and, of course, Sales Agents.  

There are two types of Sales Agents launching – Agentforce SDR and Agentforce Sales Coach. We take a look at two use cases for each of them – across different communication channels and languages, and at different stages in the opportunity lifecycle – all the while highlighting what makes agents remarkable compared to previous iterations of tools for sellers.

Agentforce SDR

Agentforce SDR: Email Channel

• Send email: To start this engagement, the agent knows to reach out to the prospect, with a call to action, e.g. set up a meeting. Note that the signature clearly states that this is an agent acting on behalf of the seller, following Salesforce’s messaging that agents are there not to impersonate/replace sellers but are there to augment their work. 
• Nudge customers: Based on the agent’s rules of engagement (e.g. once every 3 days), it sends different email copies to elicit a response.

• Answer questions: If the customer responds, the agent will either answer the query or change tact. In the example below, the customer is asking about pricing. However, the agent is not allowed to discuss pricing (guardrails), but in fact, is allowed to talk about packaging (topics). Again, the agent is set on the call to action, i.e. booking a meeting. 
• Handle objections: The agent can also identify objections, such as comparisons to competitors. In this example, the agent responds with an alternative to a free trial – and, once again, attempts to get the customer to take the call to action.  

• Book meeting: The agent can provide the seller’s availability, and when the customer selects a date and time. The agent then books the meeting and sends a meeting invite to both the customer and seller. 
• Hand-off to seller: As part of the clean handoff, behind the scenes, the seller receives a notification that a new meeting has been scheduled with the agent producing a summary of what was talked about (including any objections or challenges that may come up in conversation), and a proposed meeting agenda.

Agentforce SDR: WhatsApp Channel

In this example, you will see that it happens in Spanish. During agent setup, you can select the language/s that the agent operates in. You only need to train the agent once (in one language) and it can apply that knowledge across different languages.  

• Initial outreach: The agent sends a message to a customer. Note that although the customer can respond “stop” to end communications, the agent can also understand natural language, e.g. “Don’t message me anymore”. 
• Answer questions: Hand-off to seller (just like the email channel use case). 

Agentforce SDR Setup

1. Set agent baselines: After enabling the required features, you then set an avatar. Assign feature permissions (Salesforce automatically assigns what’s required, which you can amend). Set an email account and phone number – these are the account and messaging services that your agent will use. Pick a manager for the agent (a Salesforce user) who is responsible for training the agent and monitoring its usage and outputs (point #5).
2. Customize your agent: Default settings for the following are set, which can be amended: 
   • Language
   • Tone – casual, formal, etc.
   • Rules of engagement – the number of attempts the agent can make to complete its task (i.e. X number max, every X days). 
   • Topics – what the agent is allowed to do, e.g. book meeting. Any requests outside of the agent’s assigned topics will be passed over to a human user. 
   • Lead assignment – the parameters around when an agent can initiate assignment (e.g. Leads <$10k).

3. Provide knowledge to train the agent: Select documents that detail the knowledge that the agent should use in order to reason and take the best action/provide accurate answers. The window that opens enables you to search through your org’s file repository, even displaying suggested documents. 
4. Assign feature permissions for the manager: Salesforce can automatically assign to the manager what’s set for the agent, or you can review and amend. 
5. Monitor performance: Each agent has a dashboard, which you can visit at this stage, or later.

Agentforce Sales Coach

Salesforce believes that every seller needs a coach to enable them to work smarter and maximize their impact. With Agentforce Sales Coach augments the work that sales managers do, consistently and in a non-judgmental way. It’s always up to speed on what’s going on with opportunities, thanks to the CRM data it can reason with.

Example 1: Opportunity Discovery Stage

Enriching the “Guidance for Success” on the opportunity path, the coach agent appears on the opportunity record and prompts the seller to practice their pitch. 

This launches a built-in interface to record the practice pitch with a camera and microphone enabled (no third-party tools required).

Once recorded, the pitch is submitted to the coach for feedback – providing a deal summary, feedback on my pitch, areas that need attention, and next steps (which looks into the opportunity timeline and identifies missed steps and overdue tasks). This rich feedback is based on opportunity data, a prompt that’s provided out of the box, and with the support of an LLM.

Example 2: Opportunity Negotiation Stage

The seller can prepare for negotiation by practicing role-play with the coach. Tips and best practices on how to do an effective negotiation are provided before they get started. Coach plays the role of the prospective customer, and the seller converses with the coach responding (asking questions and making objections) just like what could happen in real life. 

Again, coach gives feedback – a combination of the session just recorded, the latest data from the opportunity, and an LLM. At this opportunity stage, the feedback has additional sections: An overall impression of how the conversation went, what went well, and growth opportunities (areas of improvement).

Summary

While some may view Agentforce as another iteration of sales tools, its autonomous capabilities and potential to transform sales operations could make it a historic development for Salesforce and the industry at large.