Last month, Salesforce announced Einstein Service Agent, an autonomous customer service agent that promises to eliminate the need to preprogram every possible scenario.
Yesterday, the company unveiled two autonomous agents for Sales:
Einstein SDR Agent, designed to help sellers qualify inbound leads and manage the early stages of the engagement
Einstein Sales Coach, which supports sellers throughout the entire deal process
In just a few months, the market for autonomous SDR technology has become quite crowded. I have identified over 30 vendors. However, few of these companies are transparent about how their technology works or what results can be expected.
That's why I really appreciated that Ketan Karkhanis didn't try to oversell us in his pre-brief.
Salesforce's announcement stands out in two ways:
It has taken a deliberate approach to delivering technology packaged to help salespeople
It is creating specialized/micro agents focused on key jobs to be done (JTBD), not just a general assistant
Salesforce is aggressively progressing through the stages of AI technology, from chatbots to copilots and now to autonomous agents and agentic systems.
Looking forward to Dreamforce next month!