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If we were to look at Don Draper from “Mad Men” and consider him at his core as an ad man, then Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff emerges as a true sales virtuoso. Recently, he has been passionately advocating for AI agents and Salesforce's newly launched AgentForce platform. It's no secret that Benioff is renowned for his enthusiasm about Salesforce's latest offerings. During the company's latest quarterly results presentation, he not only shared the numbers to justify his excitement but also revealed some remarkable insights.

Releasing Numbers to Back Up the Excitement

In just one quarter, Salesforce closed an astounding 200 deals for AgentForce. This significant achievement has led the company to plan the recruitment of 1,400 salespeople to handle the growing number of deals. As Benioff stated during the quarterly conference call, “AgentForce just became available on October 24th, and we're already witnessing this incredible velocity, with more than 200 Agentforce deals in Q3 alone.” The pipeline for potential transactions in future quarters is in the thousands. Notable companies like FedEx, Adecco, Accenture, ACE Hardware, IBM, and RBC Wealth Management have already embraced AgentForce.The company's expectations for its fiscal year have also seen an upward revision. It now aims to generate between $37.8 to $38 billion in revenue, representing an 8% to 9% increase over the previous year. This growth is largely attributed to the strength of its AI products.

The Vision and Potential of AI Agents

Benioff recently shared with Techcrunch his vision of Salesforce customers deploying one billion AI agents within the next year. He emphasized that these agents are not just tools but becoming collaborators, working tirelessly 24/7 to analyze data, make decisions, and take action. Salesforce has quickly become the largest supplier of digital labor, and this is just the beginning.However, we must wait and see how much of this vision materializes. LLM-based technology still faces challenges, particularly in addressing the hallucination problem that plagues it. Benioff believes that AgentForce's ability to train on up to 300 petabytes of actual company data managed by Salesforce will lead to remarkably low hallucinogenic performance.Other startups are also working on crucial LLM issues to transform AI agents into actual digital collaborators, such as memory and state.

Chasing the Killer Enterprise AI App

Salesforce is not alone in its pursuit of the killer enterprise AI app. Startups offering SDR technology have witnessed significant growth in 2024, attracting substantial venture capital investment and generating initial revenue. This area presents an opportunity for enterprises to explore and allocate their AI budgets. Incumbents like Salesforce, HubSpot, and ZoomInfo hold a distinct advantage as they possess the customer data needed to train the bots. The same holds true for customer service bots.

Equipping Sales Humans with AI

As Salesforce COO Brian Millham explained on the call, to capture the increased demand for Agentforce, the company is hiring 1,400 AEs globally in the fourth quarter. Additionally, new sales SDR agents and sales coaching agents are being used to enhance every seller's capabilities. This approach showcases Salesforce's commitment to leveraging AI to empower its sales team while also adapting to the changing landscape of enterprise AI.In conclusion, as we enter the year of AI, it is clear that enterprises have found a direction for their AI investments. AI agents for sales and customer service are emerging as key areas of focus, and companies like Salesforce are at the forefront of this transformation. While there are still challenges to overcome, the potential for AI to drive growth and innovation is undeniable.