Every sales professional has the same experience: The end of the quarter looms, and you’re still waiting for leads to convert into paying customers. As a business owner, I’ve been there too — juggling multiple clients, pitching new writing projects, and managing endless follow-ups.
But, the days of manually managing business may be over. AI sales agents are reshaping the landscape, automating the sales process, and guaranteeing that no lead goes cold. These agents can even do your homework for you, finding prospects who match your ideal customer persona.
With lofty promises, I wanted to see what AI sales agents can actually accomplish today. Below I’ll talk about how AI sales agents work, their use cases, and how they can level up the sales process.
Table of Contents
- What is an AI Sales Agent?
- How AI Sales Agents Work
- Benefits of AI Sales Agents
- Types of AI Sales Agents
- Sales AI Agent Usecases
- The Best AI Sales Agents
- Optimize with AI Sales Agent
What is an AI Sales Agent?
A typical sales lifecycle requires an entire team to move through multiple stages — prospecting leads, qualifying customers, answering inquiries, and closing deals. Working through that process manually takes a significant amount of time. An AI sales agent is designed to automate and streamline this workflow, eliminating repetitive tasks and boosting productivity.
By leveraging machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and predictive analytics, AI sales agents can operate autonomously. This digital agency can engage with prospects, qualify leads, and even close sales with little to no human intervention.
Now, how is this different from workflow automation? Well, AI’s ability to learn from past interactions allows it to perform its functions independently. A human sales rep just needs to write a kickoff prompt (and offer optional additional guidance to refine the process). From there, AI can start research and do outreach without a human babysitter, a less cumbersome process for the human reps.
Free Report: Smarter Selling with AI
New data and insights from 600+ sales pros on how they’re using AI and the results they’ve seen.
- How Sales Teams are Using AI
- Giving Time Back to Sales Reps
- Keeping Up with AI Trends
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
You're all set!
Click this link to access this resource at any time.
How AI Sales Agents Work
AI sales agents gather and centralize customer data from CRMs, website activity, and other digital touchpoints. The agent can then create a 360-degree profile of each prospect.
AI then uses natural language processing to interpret messages, detect buyer intent, and engage in meaningful conversations. With this data, machine learning models predict lead behavior, assigning scores based on engagement history and prioritizing high-potential prospects.
Once a lead is identified, the AI agent automates outreach, scheduling, and follow-ups to ensure continuous engagement. Throughout the process, the AI analyzes sales interactions in real time, providing insights and recommendations to optimize messaging. With multiple selling reps under its belt, an AI agent learns, refining their lead qualification and engagement strategies.
Benefits of AI Sales Agents
1. AI never sleeps.
Potential buyers can visit your site at any time of the day — their needs don’t stop after business hours. However, you may not have reps available 24/7. That’s where AI sales agents can help.
Your AI reps never “clock out.” They’re able to carry out the designated task (whether it’s to respond to inquiries or follow up with prospects) at any time of the day.
I have seen businesses lose potential deals simply because they did not follow up fast enough. Remember, and are even willing to pay extra for “immediate service.” Any form of delay can make the difference between your offering and a competitor. AI sales agents can help you maintain that vigilance.
2. Human reps can spend more time on strategic tasks.
, director at Sterling Recruitment, notes that sales teams often need to choose between accurate reporting and high sales activity. That’s especially true when many reps hate burning hours on admin.
“Would you prefer your BDM to be 120% to target YTD or have Salesforce 100% accurate and up to date? You’re probably thinking, ‘I want both,’ but more often than not, you need to make a choice because that is reality,” Gallantree writes on .
AI sales rep can help teams get the best of both world. Agentic AI can take over repetitive, admoinistrative tasks so that human reps can focus on complex negotiations, relationship building and actually closing high-value deals.
The sales professionals we surveyed for our agree. They reported that AI tools allow them to spend more time doing the one thing they were hired for — selling.
3. Customers leave happier.
As I mentioned earlier, today’s customers expect immediate, personalized service. Anything less can cost businesses valuable sales. Therefore, a smooth, tailored sales experience isn’t just a bonus. It’s a necessity for customer satisfaction.
According to Salesforce, , and AI sales agents make this possible at scale. Agents can analyze customer preferences, anticipate questions, and provide instant, relevant responses. These tools can also research prospects and use that information to customize outreach.
This level of personalization makes interactions more engaging and builds trust. Goodwill ultimately leads to higher conversion rates and stronger customer loyalty.
Types of AI Sales Agents
AI sales agents come in different forms, each designed to automate specific parts of the sales process. Here are the three most popular agents used by reps today.
1. AI Chatbots
AI chatbots are already everywhere. Every time I shop online, I see a popup that asks me if I need any additonal assitance. I’ve also noticed new AI chatbots available on social media, so I can talk to a robot if I ever get lonely. I’m already primed for chatbot interactions, just like every other digital consumer today.
AI chatbots are designed to engage with potential customers in real time. They can answer basic product questions and even book meetings for a demo. Some of these conversational chatbots are also designed to qualify leads and transfer high-potential prospects to human reps to seal the deal.
Best for: If your business receives high volumes of inquiries, an AI chatbot would guarantee that your prospects receive instant responses. You can then set up workflows that transfer qualified leads to your human sales teams.
2. AI Voice Assistants
Even if you dread the phone, cold calling is still an important part of sales today. AI can help make the process more informed and efficient. In fact, 73% of salespeople who use AI/automation to assist with cold and warm calling say it somewhat to significantly improves conversation quality.
Most of the reps we surveyed use AI to help with research and outreach. However, AI agents can go even further. In fact, some agents can actually make the calls. Built on speech synthesis, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Natural Language Generation (NLU) technology, these agents can handle inbound and outbound calls using natural-sounding speech.
There’s still an adoption curve here. Robocalling and spam calls have left me and others unwilling to pick up the phone. If I received an AI call, I would be equally impressed and freaked out. So, use voice technology sparing.
AI voice assistants work best for impersonal or transactional calls, such as appointment reminders, order confirmations, or simple inquiries. For relationship-driven sales, I strongly believe it is crucial to maintain human touchpoints to build trust and rapport.
If your team uses this type of AI tech, make sure you communicate that the receiver is speaking with a voice assistant, as Josh Braun advocates in the image below. This transparency helps manage expectations and builds trust with the customer.
Best for: Companies that rely heavily on phone-based sales and appointment scheduling, which are often transactional and repetitive.
2. AI Assistants
This crop of AI sales agents helps their human agents perform very specific tasks. They act as smart digital assistants rather than standalone agents, working behind the scenes to support reps with daily sales activities. That can include personalizing email campaigns, generating sales insights, streamlining the onboarding process, and much more.
I’ve found that AI assistants help the most with research. I can load my ideal customer persona into a chatbot like Google Gemini and ask the system to find me companies that match that description. From there, I can have AI help me find human decision-makers on those teams and craft a compelling message that catches their attention.
Best for: Sales teams looking to reduce administrative workload, improve lead prioritization, and gain AI-powered insights to enhance their selling strategy.
Free Report: Smarter Selling with AI
New data and insights from 600+ sales pros on how they’re using AI and the results they’ve seen.
- How Sales Teams are Using AI
- Giving Time Back to Sales Reps
- Keeping Up with AI Trends
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
You're all set!
Click this link to access this resource at any time.
Sales AI Agent Usecases
1. Lead Qualification and Nurturing
With predictive analytics, AI sales agents can reduce the people-hours spent on sorting through unqualified leads. In our 2024 AI in B2B Sales report, we discovered that this was the second most popular AI use case in B2B sales.
“It used to be the case that dedicating an agent to an individual customer at each point of their sales journey was cost-prohibitive. But with the latest developments in gen AI agents, now you can do it,” stated Jorge Amar, senior partner at McKinsey, .
Now, businesses can integrate different types of AI sales agents across different levels of the customer’s journey. Additionally, AI-driven lead-scoring models, such as those offered in , can analyze various inputs to determine the likelihood of the prospect becoming a customer.
2. Automating Follow-ups and Reminders
I can’t count how many times I’ve told myself, “I’ll follow up later,” only to realize days later that I completely forgot. It happens to the best of us — humans are forgetful.
But AI? It never forgets. It’s like having the most reliable assistant who always remembers when to send that follow-up email or text. And follow-ups matter.
Research shows that , yet 50% of leads are never contacted a second time. While the reasons may vary, I’d bet that forgetfulness — and just plain busyness — are big culprits.
This is where AI sales agents shine. They can send timely follow-ups and appointment reminders via email, text, or even voice calls to make sure no lead falls through the cracks.
With unlimited time and access to the right data, AI sales agents can catch intent signals that human reps may miss. Businesses can even set up AI-driven workflows that trigger automated follow-ups based on customer behavior — like when a prospect downloads a whitepaper or abandons a shopping cart.
2. Sales Analytics
AI-powered sales analytics tools analyze past sales data, market trends, and customer interactions to predict future revenue and recommend sales strategies. According to our report, data analysis is the second most popular task salespeople use AI for.
For example, let’s say an AI sales agent analyzes a CRM. The agent finds that teams who make the most of the CRM’s generative AI content creator have higher customer satisfaction and a lower attrition rate. Your team can then spotlight this feature in product demos and run a campaign to increase utilization.
AI sales agents will need access to the right data in order to make these real-time insights. CRMs like offer these integrations to empower data-conscious decisions.
The Best AI Sales Agents
1.
AI sales agents aren’t ready out of the box. They need access to data to understand your team’s approach to selling. That’s why I love Breeze. If you already use 探花精选, your prospecting agent already has access to your CRM’s valuable data — no complex setup or training required. Breeze learns from your successful sales patterns and automatically adapts to those insights.
I demoed Breeze so I can show you how it works. I can select which account I want to research in my CRM. Breeze then pulls information about their interactions with my business from my CRM, as well as information from the prospect’s websites and recent news.
I can then open up the account and see an AI generated overview synthesizing that information. When I’m ready to reach out, an AI email writer can take the intelligence and write a first draft that I can send or tweak. AI-powered prospecting helps sales teams work smarter, not harder.
2.
Roomie AI is designed to streamline prospect engagement by automating account planning, lead prioritization, and personalized outreach. It detects buying trends and fills in missing details to accelerate account planning.
With AI-powered personalization, Roomie crafts outreach messages based on real-time signals and enhances prospecting by surfacing high-converting contacts from its 200+ million database.
My favorite thing about this tool is its signal hunting feature. Rather than manually piecing together information on a company — who the decision-makers are, what their challenges are, and how to approach them — Roomie AI builds account plans 100x faster by pulling in the most relevant data.
Roomie AI also actively looks for signs that a prospect is ready to buy and then engages them autonomously.
Watch the 5-minute demo of Roomie AI below.
<iframe title=“vimeo-player” src=“https://player.vimeo.com/video/1059867530?h=9c446190dd” width=“640” height=“360” frameborder=“0” allowfullscreen></iframe>
3.
In August 2024, Salesforce of two autonomous AI sales agents called Einstein Sales Development Rep (SDR) Agent and Einstein Sales Coach Agent.
While the Einstein SDR Agent nurtures inbound prospects around the clock with minimal human intervention, the Einstein Sales Coach Agent helps sales teams refine their skills by facilitating role-play sessions tailored to specific deals. These simulations allow reps to practice pitching, handle objections, and sharpen their negotiation tactics before engaging with real customers.
I loved that Einstein Sales Coach Agent can adapt its training style to the learner. There’s no one-size-fits-all coaching method. Instead, the AI provides customized and contextual coaching that adapts to real deals, real objections, and real customer interactions.
4.
Artisan’s Ava is designed to act as a fully autonomous AI sales agent, handling everything from lead qualification to personalized outreach. Unlike other assistive AI sales agents, Ava operates independently without human intervention.
Ava mines data on the prospects, crafts personalized messages, runs email campaigns, and delivers qualified leads straight to your inbox.
My favorite part? The Artisan Sales platform already provides a built-in database of over 300 million verified B2B contacts. It also provides a simple LinkedIn automation that allows Ava to send connection requests and messages on your team’s behalf.
5.
Embedded within Microsoft 365, Copilot is a role-based sales agent that simplifies tasks, personalizes interactions, and streamlines workflows. It can generate content, note insights during calls, and update records.
My biggest issue with this tool? Copilot for Sales feels too embedded within the Microsoft ecosystem. That may limit flexibility especially if a sales team relies on other CRMs like 探花精选. If you rely on data from multiple sources, you may need extra workarounds to get the platform’s full benefits.
Optimize with AI Sales Agent
Yes, even with advancements in AI, you still need human sales reps. However, AI sales agents can help those reps achieve extraordinary results. They can research faster, customize their messaging based on a prospect’s business, and leverage data from your CRM.
Teams that know how to partner with AI agents will have an incredible advantage, that’s especially true as adoption increases. Start working with AI as a partner today to stay ahead of the curve.
Free Report: Smarter Selling with AI
New data and insights from 600+ sales pros on how they’re using AI and the results they’ve seen.
- How Sales Teams are Using AI
- Giving Time Back to Sales Reps
- Keeping Up with AI Trends
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
You're all set!
Click this link to access this resource at any time.