Ensuring that Leads are worked in a timely manner, either by sales or sales development reps, is a goal as old as time across companies of all sizes and industries, and for both sales and marketing teams. So, wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry about any Leads getting cold, and instead being able to focus on empowering your team to advance the sales pipeline? As of today, this is a real possibility, and it’s powered by Agentforce!
In this post, we’ll delve into how Agentforce for Sales helps you build pipelines with ease and how to get started, from setting it up to tailoring it to your organization’s needs – with clicks, not necessarily code. This is, however, just one of its capabilities, with sales coaching also covered as part of the same offering.
Agentforce for Sales to the Rescue
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and everyone working in the Salesforce ecosystem will probably say that 2024 has been the year of Agentforce – even though it was only announced in September. This offering is sure to forever change the way both internal and external users leverage generative AI to optimize their way of working, while getting a chance to focus on meaningful interactions rather than repetitive tasks.
Agentforce for Sales is generally available and able to help you nurture leads as of today. This is for either the Salesforce customers who purchase the Agentforce SKU or those who opted to make use of the free Salesforce Foundations offering, which is part of Salesforce’s effort to democratize key functionality across different clouds.
It should come as no surprise that Agentforce pricing also falls within the consumption-based model. Agentforce consumes one Conversation out of the entitlement as soon as the first email is sent out, and the overall functionality is available for the Lead object as of now.
One thousand conversations are included in Salesforce Foundations, which you can use to test out the functionality prior to making a purchasing decision, giving your organization a solid initial volume to start with.
As the name suggests, Agentforce’s goal is to act just as a sales development representative would, by performing the initial inbound nurturing of Leads coming into Salesforce one way or the other – whether it’s via marketing events, imports, or manual creation.
There has been a significant shift; instead of simply assisting human reps in their tasks, Agentforce will be able to work autonomously, around the clock, within pre-established guardrails. It will be capable of conducting external communications, all while considering the customer’s intent every step of the way.
From answering initial questions to booking meetings, Agentforce goes through records at lightning speed, while looping in your team in time to take an engaged Lead further and continue the conversation with the prospect.
Powered by Salesforce’s Atlas Reasoning Engine, and with your data fully protected by the Einstein Trust Layer, agents could provide the perfect way for your company to fully automate the initial stages of the funnel with confidence, and at scale. Let’s dive into setting this up for your instance!
Complete the Prerequisites
Once you have access to Agentforce for Sales, either through Foundations or the dedicated SKUs, it’s time to get started via the new Agentforce SDR Setup page,
Either way, the first step is to ensure all dependent features are turned on and configured properly before proceeding.
These are Einstein Generative AI, Einstein Copilot, Einstein Activity Capture, Sales Engagement, Salesforce Inbox, Automated Actions, and last but not least, Data Cloud. A frequently asked question here is whether Data Cloud is really needed – the short answer is yes, and it makes the experience so much better, as you will discover when we get to the Agent Builder.
While the focus is definitely setting up the new agent, this may also be a great time for you to consider some – or all – prerequisite functionality, and perhaps expand their use beyond this step. For example, Sales Engagement enables your users to build step-by-step cadences to optimize their outreach tasks. And Einstein Activity Capture (on top of the actual email and meeting capture) has very handy functionality that allows your team to establish insights in the form of keywords and phrases to be tracked across email communications.
Once all required supporting features are enabled, it’s time to actually create the user record for the Agent. While, in some ways, this will be just like any other Salesforce user – in the sense that a license, profile, and permissions will be needed – Salesforce provides a new Einstein Agent license type, as well as an out-of-the-box Einstein Agent User Profile your user should be assigned to.
The Agentforce SDR Agent permission set also has to be assigned, and you have the option to do so directly from this page by clicking the button and selecting your Agent user to assign the permission set. In addition to permissions, don’t forget to create an Einstein Activity Capture configuration (if you haven’t already) and add the user.
Moving on from Agent permissions, it’s time to consider what your team should be able to do when it comes to the Agent. Here, you can assign the Configure Agentforce SDR Agent, Sales Engagement Cadence Creator, and Automated Actions User permission sets, which will enable certain users to make changes to the Agent. You can also extend the ability for users to assign Leads to the Agent.
While there is a fourth step highlighted, this concludes the actions you can take on this page, since, as of now, the true interactive part begins: completing the one-time setup experience directly in Agent Builder, where you will be redirected with the click of a button.
Make Agentforce Your Own
As promised, Salesforce makes setting up Agentforce easy from start to finish, and this includes the part of configuration happening within the Agent Builder. You will have to go through each step of the way and input or choose the options according to your particular use case and criteria – and it starts with reviewing the out-of-the-box Topics and related Actions.
Topics and Actions go hand in hand for each Agent – they represent the jobs to be done, alongside the practical steps required for these jobs to be completed. Ultimately, a Topic can have one or multiple Actions assigned, and the Agent will reason based on the input it receives, which Topic, and more specifically, which Action will be taken considering the context. Clear instructions are paramount to ensure the Agent has enough information to make the right decision each time.
The following step is where you will need to consider the Agent’s role and share more information about your company so that the Agent can start learning more about your business – ultimately, it will represent your business, just as a human SDR does during customer conversations. Don’t forget to also select the dedicated user you created before continuing!
Another handy attribute you will be able to determine is the language. For now, English is the only supported language option.
If you have been wondering what Data Cloud has to do with your Agent, this is where you can grasp the positive impact it will have when enabled and used to educate your Agent on internal processes – as with a human rep.
Through the use of Einstein Data Libraries and retrieval augmented generation (RAG), the same documents and knowledge articles you are already using for your internal teams can be processed. This means that the Agent has a lower chance of hallucinating, while being grounded in your company’s particularities, processes, and best practices.
If you’re already familiar with Lead or Case assignment rules, the Agent Engagement Rules are, to an extent, very similar, as this is where you can decide exactly which Leads (unless assigned manually if users are permitted) will be passed to the Agent to work on.
The Lead Owner, however, will not be changed – allowing the team to keep track and report on all of the Leads they own. As with a flow, you can choose if you’d like these to be triggered upon Creation or Creation and Update, and determine the criteria using fields from the record, and even custom filter logic if needed.
This is also where you will have to connect the email account the Agent will be using, as well as its working hours and the occurrence of outreach attempts.
Then you can create your agent!
You can always go back to Agent Builder to make changes to your initial customization after the one-time setup experience.
Test and Further Customize the Agent
As with any other process or new feature in Salesforce, it’s paramount to test your Agent. The more you test, the easier you can spot any inconsistencies and amend the instructions. You can test the full end-to-end interaction with the agent by manually activating it on a Lead record through the “Activate Agentforce SDR” and replying to it via email.
You should also customize and test the Prompt Templates. Even though the out-of-the-box Prompt Templates provided by Salesforce help you get started, you should still review the instructions and data available in the Prompt Template Workspace and amend them to make sense for your context. Whether it’s the formatting, the CRM data it’s grounded in, or even the model for that matter, here is where you can make those changes and test the output with one or more lead records.
Once happy that all Prompt Templates are updated in accordance with your requirements and work as intended, you can go back to Agent Builder and Activate your own autonomous SDR Agent!
Review Agent Activity and Usage
With your Agent up and running, sales teams can still intervene at any time or directly join the meeting if one is scheduled. As you would expect, with a little help from Einstein Activity Capture and Inbox, the entire history of emails, replies, and meetings will be available in the Activity History on the Lead.
This way, as soon as the human representative jumps in, they have the full context of the conversation, and can seamlessly take over and further qualify the Lead, develop a meaningful relationship with the prospect, and ideally convert it into a new Opportunity!
Realistically speaking, that’s not what will happen every time, as there will be Leads who will not engage or will prefer to opt out of communications. However, the sales team will get the chance to focus on warmer Leads from the start, while Agentforce can filter out the uninterested ones for them.
Additionally, if the Lead Owner decides to take over the Lead before all Agentforce activities are completed, they have the option to do so by simply canceling outreach, which will be possible on the next scheduled email visible in the Activity Timeline.
From an administrative perspective, don’t forget to familiarize yourself with the consumption cards, which you can find in Your Account App. Usage is available in Digital Wallet, where you will be able to review how many Conversations units were consumed, how many Einstein Requests, and of course how many Data Services Credits are left. As mentioned above, a Conversation is counted as soon as the first email is sent by the agent, but note that if you stop the outreach and then restart it, another unit will be consumed.
What’s Next?
As you would expect, enhancements are by no means slowing down with the general availability of the Agent; there is so much more to come considering the infinite realm of possibilities that an Agentforce implementation could lead to.
One of these enhancements, which will be made available shortly after general availability, is a neat single view, where all Leads worked on by the Agent can be reviewed alongside related KPIs. Your team will be able to deep dive into each record, filter, and even take immediate action to either override, cancel, or reschedule outreach activities. Stay tuned!
You will also be able to configure Agentforce for Sales to outreach in different languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese. Lastly, Agentforce for Sales will soon gain a new pre-built outbound prospecting skill, enabling it to continuously discover and engage new leads that match your ICP.
Final Thoughts
All in all, it is clear that Agentforce will fundamentally shift both users’ ways of working within Salesforce, and their expectations of the implementation. In a context where the use of generative AI is more and more prevalent in driving successful business outcomes, the Agent seems to be a good first step for organizations in becoming familiar with and uncovering the true potential of the collaboration between agents and humans, all while ensuring no Lead gets cold due to lack of outreach.
Are you looking forward to getting hands-on with Agentforce for Sales? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
