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According to Salesforce’s 2026 State of Sales Report, 94% of sales leaders with agents say agents are critical to meeting business demands. For the seventh edition of the State of Sales report, Salesforce surveyed 4,050 sales professionals in 22 countries to learn more about:
- AI agent deployment, use cases, and benefits
- Data considerations for improving agent outcomes
- Key revenue models to drive growth
- Tactics to improve the sales rep experience
Also, is your AI project stalled? Blame it on outdated and fragmented workflows and redesign it now
Here are the four key findings from the 2026 State of Sales report:
- Sellers welcome AI agents to their teams. Caught between high customer expectations and limited ability to deliver on them, 9 out of 10 sales teams rely on agents. They report benefits for sales planning, customer retention, and lead generation. 94% of sales leaders with agents say that agents are essential to meeting the demands of their business.
- Deploying AI agents requires better data and fewer tools. Sales teams are integrating data and simplifying technology to improve AI and agent outcomes. Sales reps have data concerns, including manual errors and data duplication. Some say a bloated tech stack is slowing down AI efforts. 84% of teams without an all-in-one platform plan to integrate technology.
- Sales teams leverage three key levers for growth. Looking beyond AI, merchants have identified three key strategies for growth: focus on sales planning, invest in partners, and implement usage-based pricing. 76% of sales leaders say pay-as-you-go pricing is more important to customers than it was last year.
- Besides a paycheck, here’s what salespeople really want: Sales reps want more personalized coaching and greater pay transparency. Leaders are deploying agents and automation to help. Many reps also say the community is the key to success. High performers are 2.5 times more likely to regularly participate in external sales communities.
This article focuses on the first two key findings: the adoption of AI agents and the need for better data and integration tools.
Sellers welcome AI agents to their teams
Salespeople are caught between increasing customer expectations and limited time to meet them, facing a capacity crisis. Customers now expect a clear return on investment (ROI), personalized interactions, and comprehensive education before making a purchase. This delayed customer decision-making and lengthened sales cycles.
And despite challenges, AI agent adoption and budgets are expected to increase significantly in 2026.
The central problem is not a lack of motivation or ability on the part of the personnel, but rather a lack of time. In fact, salespeople spend more than half of their time on non-sales activities such as data entry and prospect research. Given that both work hours and sales force are finite, sales organizations must determine how to maximize results with fewer resources.
Changing customer demands are the biggest challenge in sales.
AI agents: essential to modern sales success
In the face of increasing pressure, sales professionals are increasingly relying on AI agents to stay competitive. These agents work around the clock on behalf of sales teams, and 94% of sales leaders who use agents consider them essential to meeting current business demands. Sales experts report that AI agents significantly improve the human sales experience, driving stronger pipeline growth, more deals closed, and increased revenue. A wide range of reported benefits include:
- Increased productivity and efficiency: Your sales reps will be more productive, your sales planning will be more efficient, and your sales goals will be more likely to be met.
- Better data and customer understanding: AI improves data accuracy and helps salespeople understand their customers better.
- Enhance customer engagement and retention: Agents drive customer retention and engage with prospects that were previously overlooked.
Key areas where AI agents can benefit include data accuracy, sales planning, customer retention, customer and prospect engagement, and cost savings.
AI agents: Deploying sales across the sales cycle
The adoption of AI agents in sales is rapidly increasing, with 9 out of 10 sales teams currently using AI agents or expected to do so within the next two years. AI agents are already transforming the entire sales cycle, enabling agents to overcome capacity constraints and accelerate processes. This is achieved while providing the high level of personalization that customers expect.
Also: MIT study finds AI agents are fast, loose and uncontrollable
Key uses for these agents include streamlining the closing process by creating quotes, improving the customer experience through efficient order fulfillment, and tracking product consumption to enable usage-based pricing. The financial sector is actively recruiting distributors, making up three out of the top five industries using distributors. For example, wealth managers use agents as assistants to schedule meetings and prepare financial reports, freeing up time to focus on client engagement. The rise of AI agents in sales is not a future trend, but a current reality.
Deploying AI agents requires better data and fewer tools
Agents need comprehensive, unified customer and business data to deliver accurate, personalized results. However, achieving this comes with challenges. A whopping 84% of data and analytics leaders feel they need to overhaul their current data strategy to achieve their AI goals.
The need for unified data highlights the harsh realities of data, such as manual errors and problems with duplicate data. Security is also a big concern, with most sales professionals reporting that customers ask detailed questions about data privacy and security. Additionally, more than half of salespeople say security concerns are delaying their AI efforts. This highlights the critical need for sales technology that can securely mine customer data for insights while protecting it. The most common data issues among teams, including agents, are manual errors, duplicate data, security concerns, incomplete data, and corrupted data.
Related Article: These Top 30 AI Agents Offer Different Capabilities and Autonomy
Most sales teams rely on a combination of standalone tools (on average eight per team) rather than a single all-in-one platform. This approach is used by two-thirds of sales teams, leads to technology bloat, and almost half of salespeople report feeling overwhelmed.
Equally concerning is the impact on data. Standalone tools leave your data siled, making it difficult to access and leverage even if the data itself is of high quality. Data and analytics leaders estimate that 19% of their company’s data is inaccessible, and many believe that this inaccessible portion contains the most valuable business insights. This locked-in data severely limits visibility across sales operations, hindering both agent outcomes and AI effectiveness. In fact, 51% of sales leaders using AI say these technology silos are a barrier that slows or limits their AI efforts.
To maximize the benefits of AI and agents, sales teams are focusing on the fundamentals: streamlined technology and high-quality data. Most teams are integrating their technology stacks. More than 80% of teams without a single platform plan to do so. High performers are leading this change, 1.3x more likely to adopt platforms for better AI results and 1.5x more likely to prioritize data health.
10 key points
Here are the 10 key takeaways from the 2026 Sales Status Report:
- 9 out of 10 sales teams currently use agents or plan to use agents within the next two years.
- 94% of sales leaders with agents say agents are essential to meeting business demands.
- High-performing firms are 1.7 times more likely to use exploration agents than low-performing firms.
- High performers are 1.4 times more likely to use an agent for coaching than low performers.
- 84% of teams without an all-in-one platform plan to integrate technology.
- 74% of sales teams implementing AI prioritize data health to support AI.
- 76% of sales leaders say pay-as-you-go pricing is more important to customers than it was last year.
- 91% of salespeople say AI will benefit sales planning.
- 89% of sales professionals say partner sales are becoming increasingly important to achieving revenue goals.
- 32% of sales leaders say their company’s technology stack lacks compensation management capabilities.
Click here to learn more about the 2026 Sales Status Report.
