Microsoft and Salesforce Compete with New AI Agents for Sales Automation

Salesforce gives AI agents the power to be proactive and autonomous like never before

Proactive, automated bots could address the ongoing skills shortage Salesforce has announced a significant upgrade which enables its AI agents to operate autonomously, moving beyond reactive chat-based interactions to increasingly powerful and proactive bots. The company's announcement centers around the next generation of Agentforce - Agentforce 2dx, which provides improvements to efficiency, agility and scale, as well as integrating with existing data systems, business logic and user interfaces. "Companies today have more work than workers, and Agentforce is stepping in to fill the gap," noted Adam Evans, EVP and GM of Salesforce's AI Platform. "Unlike traditional AI chatbots, which require manual prompts or rigid programming, agentic AI dynamically responds to live data and evolving business needs." To coincide with the launch of its improve agentic AI, Salesforce has also made AgentExchange available - an online marketplace for companies to share ready-to-use templates and actions. From launch, AgentExchange will include more than 200 partners with "hundreds" of ready-made security-reviewed actions. The timing of this announcement can't be overlooked, with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently revealing his vision for AI agents - the leader believes that all future CEOs will need to manage both human workers and AI agents simultaneously. AI agents have become a popular focus for technology firms in recent months, with the last few days alone seeing major announcements from Microsoft and AWS. Fresh from the launch of its latest sales-focused agents, the former recently released research showing almost three quarters (72%) of leaders expected AI agents to be fully integrated across their operations soon, with 21% anticipating this to be within the next 12 months, and 39% within two years. The latter has reportedly kicked off plans for a new division solely focused on AI agents, believed to be led by AWS AI and Data VP Swami Sivasubramanian, reporting directly to the cloud computing giant's CEO, Matt Garman.

How Microsoft's new AI sales agents will help your team close deals faster

The agents will integrate with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat - and connect with two industry-leading CRMs. AI agents are revolutionizing the workplace by performing actions autonomously for workers and, in turn, streamlining operations. Microsoft has sprinkled agents throughout its offerings to help workers across different industries, and the newest addition includes sales. On Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled Sales Agent, which can help sales teams close more deals faster by researching leads, setting up meetings, reaching out to customers, and even closing sales for low-impact leads, according to Microsoft's blog post. The agent uses the company's CRM, company data, and Microsoft 365 data to inform its responses. Also: The future of sales? These AI agents offer 24/7 ABC energy for SMBs Microsoft also launched Sales Chat which, as the name implies, is an AI-chat interface where the sales team can access all the information they need from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, the web, and more. Microsoft says this tool should help teams spend less time "digging" and more time selling. According to Microsoft, to access the information, users can use simple conversational prompts, such as "Give me a list of deals that are at risk of falling through" or "What should I know going into tomorrow's meeting with this customer?" Furthermore, users can connect Sales Agent and Sales Chat to Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, two industry-leading CRMs, to close deals without accessing the CRM themselves. The agents will also integrate with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat for a seamless experience. Users can access the agents via public preview in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat starting in May. Microsoft also announced Microsoft AI Accelerator for Sales, a program to help customers optimize their sales operations. Microsoft describes it as "an exclusive program designed to help more customers experience a new way of working with copilot and agents, transform your sales organization, and migrate off legacy CRM vendors." Also: Goodbye Gemini, hello Pixel Sense? What we know about Google's AI assistant for Pixel 10 The program includes access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, pre-built and custom agents, Dynamics 365 Sales, and AI model fine-tuning. Perhaps the most useful tool is the ability to work with Microsoft's AI experts to aid the transition. The program will be available for customers on April 1.

Microsoft teases sales agent automation for M365 and D365

Redmond says you could ask one for a 'list of deals ... at risk of falling through' Microsoft today announced two software agents that automate certain business functions for Dynamics 365, its enterprise resource planning and customer relationship suite, and Microsoft 365, its cloud productivity suite. They're not presently available but will reach public preview in May, the software giant insists. Redmond is also launching a program called Microsoft AI Accelerator for Sales, to help business customers ditch legacy CRM systems and implement agents and AI services within sales organizations. That happens on April 1, 2025, which - coincidentally - is April Fool's Day in North America, Europe, and parts of South America. In addition, the Windows-cloud-AI impresario published a set of testimonials titled "Agents of Change" from more than two dozen customers that have found Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio worthwhile. The goal, presumably, is to convince skeptics and the subscription shy that AI agents can perform meaningful business operations. Agents extend the natural language processing capabilities of large language models with code plumbing that connects to applications and interfaces. They make it possible to issue a text command to a Copilot-enabled app like Outlook and have the underlying AI model carry out the described task. The idea is that this is more efficient than manual interface navigation and button clicking. With varying degrees of success, agents can also automate more complicated tasks, like booking flight tickets with an airline, given appropriate setup and permissions. Microsoft's new agents include Sales Agent and Sales Chat Agent, accessible via Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat. If you were hoping for product naming with a bit more humanity, well, remember how things went with Tay. Sales Agent "can work autonomously around the clock to grow your pipeline - researching leads, setting up meetings, and reaching out to customers," said Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer for Microsoft's AI at Work group, in a post provided to The Register that makes us wonder whether Redmond's agents respect business hours with their robo-outreach. Compare that to Sales Chat Agent, which "gives sales reps actionable takeaways from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, and the web - so they can spend less time digging and more time selling." These agents can work with both structured data, like CRM records, and unstructured data, like Outlook email messages, and can "reason" over accessible factoids in pursuit of some goal. Spataro suggests prompts like "give me a list of deals that are at risk of falling through," "what should I know going into tomorrow's meeting with this customer?" or "help me create a plan to close this deal" are the sorts of interactions that would work with Sales Chat Agent. Among the various Agents of Change blurbs from those sold on agents, beauty brand Estée Lauder's dalliance with Copilot Studio sees three pages of attention lavished on the firm's ConsumerIQ agent. The customer success tract describes a scenario in which an influencer is gushing about an organic lip gloss on TikTok, which is a thing that evidently happens. Estée Lauder's ConsumerIQ agent, it is suggested, could let the company's marketing team "tap into the company's decades of data to learn how customers use lip gloss in markets around the world" so they could bring their own version to market. "This is now as simple as asking a question and getting an answer," said Jayesh Mehta, a brand technology leader at Estée Lauder and a member of its AI Task Force, in a statement. "Bringing the information [to] the fingertips as opposed to waiting for somebody to go research and bring that output three days later." Microsoft claims that almost 70 percent of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot and that more than 160,000 organizations have used Copilot Studio to date, collectively creating more than 400,000 custom agents in the past three months. That's allegedly up 2x quarter-over-quarter, which may or may not be impressive. Creating custom agents is one thing, adopting them for regular usage is another. As a counterpoint to such bullish celebration, a recent report from investment firm TD Cowen claims Microsoft has cancelled data center leases in the US, a move said to signal a downward revision of AI demand projections. ®

Microsoft unveils even more AI agents - this time to help you clinch that big sale

New Microsoft AI Accelerator for Sales offers greater Copilot access and help Microsoft has unveiled a host of new AI agents aimed at supporting salespeople in their quest to chase leads and close deals like never before. The company has announced two new agents and a new accelerator program all directed at helping sales as the rise in AI agents continues. "Our ambition is to empower every employee with a Copilot and transform every business process with agents," noted Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work. "Today we are announcing two new agents that apply this ambition to sales - the revenue engine for every business - and can be used right in the flow of work." First up is the Sales Development Agent, which Microsoft says can help "turn contacts into qualified leads", automating the process of developing leads and crafting customer outreach. The agent can autonomously work all day (and night) researching leads, setting up meetings, and even reaching out to customers using a company's existing CRM set-up alongside company data (such as price sheets), as well as Microsoft 365 data such as emails and meeting notes to make sure each message is accurate. Microsoft says that for some low-impact leads, it can even complete a sale. Similarly, the new Sales Chat Agent looks to get sales done faster, giving employees access to customer insights much quicker and easier. Using natural language prompts, the agent gives sales reps actionable takeaways from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, and the web, so they can spend less time researching, and more time selling Both agents can be fine-tuned to every organization's particular needs, and will be accessible within Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat, as well as connecting to both Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, meaning salespeople can get deals done without ever needing to open their CRM. Finally, Microsoft AI Accelerator for Sales, available from April 1, 2025, gives members access to the company's latest AI products and services, alongside access to AI experts at Microsoft to help customers migrate from legacy CRM systems and aid with seller adoption, plus "premium support" and fine-tuning of the agents for even unique business needs.

Microsoft unveils AI agents for sales, striking back at Salesforce

Microsoft announced two AI agents for sales that double as a competitive response to Salesforce in an area where both companies are placing big bets. Sales Agent and Sales Chat, unveiled Wednesday morning, are designed to work in conjunction with Microsoft's own Dynamics 365 business applications and with Salesforce, whose CEO, Marc Benioff, has criticized Microsoft's AI initiatives while rolling out Salesforce's competing Agentforce platform. The company also introduced a new program intended, in part, to help businesses "migrate off legacy CRM vendors," without citing Salesforce by name in that case. Both new Microsoft agents automate data retrieval and customer outreach for sales. "They connect to both Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, so sales reps can nurture and close deals without even opening their CRM," wrote Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer for Microsoft AI at Work, in a post Wednesday. "And they can be fine-tuned to connect to all your business data, ensuring accurate, actionable responses." Microsoft says the new agents will be available in public preview in May, accessed via Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat for businesses. The announcement follows Microsoft's introduction last fall of ten AI agents for its Dynamics 365 applications, including a prior version of its sales agent. Along with its new sales agents, Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new program called the "Microsoft AI Accelerator for Sales," to help businesses create and implement agents, with help from Microsoft AI experts. The program is "designed to help more customers experience a new way of working with copilot and agents, transform your sales organization and migrate off legacy CRM vendors," wrote Bryan Goode, Microsoft corporate vice president of Business Applications and Platform, in a post Wednesday. Benioff has been vocal in his criticism of Microsoft's AI investments, questioning the long-term value of its capital spending and calling Microsoft a "reseller of OpenAI." He also criticized Microsoft's Copilot, comparing it to the infamous "Clippy" assistant and suggesting it exposes user data to security risks. "Be aware of the false agent," Benioff told analysts last week. "Go out there and take a look who is really talking about it and who's really delivering." Brian Millham, Salesforce president and COO, said on the same call that Agentforce was deployed by thousands of brands in its first quarter of availability, describing adoption as faster than the company expected. However, the company's revenue forecast for the year was lower than expectations, which Reuters attributed in part to slower-than-anticipated adoption of Agentforce. Oracle, IBM, and ServiceNow are among the other major companies developing and offering agentic AI technology for sales and business applications. Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft's chief communications officer, observed in a LinkedIn post last month that Benioff's "borderline obsession" with Microsoft's AI initiatives follows a playbook that the Salesforce CEO published many years ago -- positioning one's company as or against the market leader to create drama and media attention. "It can be, as Marc notes, great marketing in the short term to highlight competitors," Shaw wrote at the time. "Of course, the challenge is that long term success requires actual competition. We're still waiting." Microsoft released a list of two dozen customer case studies Wednesday in an effort to show how its corporate customers are using Copilot and agents. The company says more than 160,000 organizations have used its Copilot Studio to create more than 400,000 custom agents in the past three months. Despite the competitive jabs, Microsoft and Salesforce seem to have similar visions for the potential of AI agents to change the nature of work and the workforce. The core idea is to augment human capabilities and automate tasks to boost productivity, efficiency, and overall business results. "What we are seeing is Copilot, plus agents, disrupting business applications," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the company's Jan. 29 earnings call.

Microsoft Eyes Salesforce Users with new AI Sales Agents in Copilot

These agents can operate within Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. Microsoft has announced two new AI sales agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot to help sales teams manage leads and close deals efficiently. The newly introduced Sales Agent and Sales Chat will be available in public preview in May. According to Microsoft, these agents can operate within Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. "They (agents) connect to both Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, so sales reps can nurture and close deals without even opening their CRM," the company said in its blog post. Sales Agent autonomously manages leads, converting contacts into qualified prospects and ensuring that no potential deal is overlooked. It can research leads, schedule meetings, and engage customers, drawing on CRM data, company pricing sheets, and Microsoft 365 resources such as emails and meetings. In some cases, it can also complete low-impact sales independently. Sales Chat accelerates the sales cycle by providing sales representatives with insights from CRM data, emails, pitch decks, and meetings. Users can prompt the AI for real-time data, such as identifying deals at risk or preparing for customer meetings. "Our ambition is to empower every employee with a Copilot and transform every business process with agents," said Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work, Microsoft. Microsoft said that nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies are already using Copilot. Over the past quarter, businesses have built more than 400,000 custom agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio. Companies across industries, including Vodafone and Campari Group, have reported efficiency gains. Vodafone anticipates doubling or tripling its requests for proposals, while Campari Group has cut marketing campaign copy costs by 18%. "We've seen tremendous growth since migrating from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Sales. Our sales organisation has experienced an increase of 133% year-over-year revenue per head with 111% year-over-year growth overall. When we layered on Microsoft 365 Copilot, sellers realised 30 minutes of time saved per day, while pipeline generation has increased by 20%," said Richard Thompson, CEO of ANS. Microsoft also announced the AI Accelerator for Sales program, starting April 2025. This initiative will provide AI migration support for businesses transitioning from legacy CRM systems and assist with seller adoption. Companies participating in the program will receive expert guidance on fine-tuning AI agents to their specific needs. Meanwhile, Salesforce recently launched Agentforce 2dx, the latest version of its digital labour platform, to offer better autonomous AI agent capabilities. The update enables AI agents to operate proactively, working behind the scenes without continuous human oversight. Organisations can integrate these agents into existing data systems, business logic, and user interfaces to streamline workflows and automate business processes. Agentforce 2dx moves beyond traditional user-initiated chat interactions, allowing AI agents to anticipate business needs and take action dynamically. This expansion supports efficiency and scalability in customer and employee workflows. Agentforce 2dx will be available to all users in April 2025, with some features already rolling out.

Microsoft Unveils AI Sales Agents: Automating Sales from Lead to Close

To support the adoption of these new AI agents, Microsoft is launching the AI Accelerator for Sales program. This program will begin on April 1. It will offer expertise in CRM migration, seller adoption, and AI agent customization. The goal is to ensure that businesses can effectively integrate and utilize these tools. Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work at Microsoft, detailed the new tools in a blog post. He explained that the AI agents are specialized AI systems. They are paired with other components. This allows them to find information and take action in the real world. Microsoft claims that Sales Agent can operate autonomously to grow the sales team's lead pipeline. It can research potential leads and set up meetings. It can also reach out to customers. The company even suggests that the AI agent might be able to complete a sale for some low-impact leads. The AI agent gathers information from an enterprise's (CRM) system. It also uses core business data, such as price sheets, and information from the web. To complete tasks, it can access Microsoft 365 data. This includes emails and meetings. It can personalize responses. This prevents it from sounding like an automated email. Microsoft believes this agent will free up sales executives' time. This allows them to focus on closing larger deals. Sales Chat can accelerate the sales cycle. It provides sales executives with actionable takeaways. These takeaways come from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, and the Internet. It saves hours that would otherwise be spent on research. The chat tool accepts text prompts. It also supports natural language prompts. The company says it can help users quickly become familiar with new accounts.

Microsoft's New AI-Powered Sales Agents Will Help Businesses Close Deals

These agents connect to both Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce Microsoft unveiled two new artificial intelligence (AI) agents for enterprises on Wednesday. These agents are adept in various tasks in sales operations, and can assist professionals by automating time-consuming workloads. The company introduced these two AI agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, and businesses can now access them and integrate them into their business data. The two agents are called Sales Agent and Sales Chat, and the Redmond-based tech giant claims that they can help in converting contacts into qualified leads and speed up the sales cycle. In a blog post, Microsoft's Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work detailed the two new tools that can help sales teams in a wide range of tasks. While the company did not explicitly mention it, the AI agents are likely powered by Copilot. Notably, AI agents are specialised AI systems paired with other components that allow them to not only find information but also to take actions in the real world. Microsoft claimed that Sales Agent can operate autonomously to grow the sales team's lead pipeline. It can research potential leads, set up meetings with the contacts, and reach out to customers. The tech giant also claimed that the AI agent might be able to complete a sale for some low-impact leads. The AI agent sources information from an enterprise's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, core business data such as price sheets, and the web. To complete tasks, it can also access Microsoft 365 data such as emails and meetings. It can also personalise responses and avoid sounding like an automated email. Microsoft believes this AI agent will free up sales executives' time to let them focus on closing big deals. The second AI agent is dubbed Sales Chat. It can accelerate the sales cycle by giving sales executives actionable takeaways from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, and the Internet, and save hours that would be spent in research. The chat tool accepts text prompts and supports natural language prompts. The company says it can also get up to speed on new accounts. Microsoft said the new AI agents will be available in public preview in May and can be accessed via the 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat for business. They connect to both Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce and can be fine-tuned to connect to all business data of an enterprise.

Microsoft Pitches New AI Agents As Ways To Leave Salesforce, CRMs

'They connect to both Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, so sales reps can nurture and close deals without even opening their CRM,' says Jared Spataro, Microsoft CMO for AI at work. Microsoft appears to be clapping back at artificial intelligence business applications rivals, namely Salesforce, with a set of offers aimed at speeding up sales teams on AI products. The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant first plans to allow access to an artificial intelligence accelerator program for sales teams on April 1, followed by public previews for two new AI agent offers in May, according to a statement Wednesday. But the statement uses Salesforce by name, alongside Microsoft's own customer relationship management (CRM) offer Dynamics 365, as an example of software sales representatives will no longer have to open once they start using Sales Development Agent and Sales Chat Agent. "They connect to both Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, so sales reps can nurture and close deals without even opening their CRM," Jared Spataro, Microsoft's chief marketing officer for AI at work, said in the statement. "They can be fine-tuned to connect to all your business data, ensuring accurate, actionable responses." [RELATED: Microsoft To Grant Users More Access To Autonomous AI Agent Capabilities] CRN has reached out to Microsoft for comment. The Microsoft statement even includes a quote from Richard Thompson, CEO of British solution provider ANS, on revenue growth experienced after migrating from Salesforce to Microsoft's CRM. "We've seen tremendous growth since migrating from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Sales," Thompson said in the statement. "Our sales organization has experienced an increase of 133 percent year-over-year revenue per head with 111 percent year-over-year growth overall. When we layered on Microsoft 365 Copilot, sellers realized 30 minutes of time saved per day, while pipeline generation has increased by 20 percent." Marc Benioff, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Salesforce, dismissed concerns that agentic artificial intelligence could mark the end of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications as a "Microsoft narrative" and put down the tech giant's Copilot AI offerings as "repackaged" ChatGPT during his company's latest quarterly earnings call Wednesday. The question from an analyst appeared to come from statements Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a podcast in December, when Nadella said that business apps will "collapse" in the agent era. "They are essentially CRUD databases with a bunch of business logic," Nadella said. "The business logic is all going to these agents. And these agents are going to be multi-repo CRUD (create, read, update and delete), right? So they're not going to discriminate between what the backend is. They're going to update multiple databases and all the logic will be in the AI tier, so to speak. And once the AI tier becomes the place where all the logic is, then people will start replacing the backends." On the Salesforce call, Benioff said that agentic AI "doesn't operate by itself." "It operates with data, with a data cloud that has to be federated through your company to all your data sources," he said, appearing to reference his company's own Data Cloud offer. During the call, Benioff also put down rival AI agents as imitations of what Salesforce offers. "Beware the false agents," he said. "Go out there and take a look. Who's really talking about it and who's really delivering. ... We are the No. 1 AI CRM. We are the leader of the digital labor revolution." The Microsoft AI Accelerator for Sales aims to bring sales teams AI products, expertise and services, with access to Microsoft AI experts for leaving legacy CRM systems. The accelerator will also help with fine-tuning AI agent output to meet business needs, according to Microsoft. One of the new AI agents set for public preview in May, Sales Development Agent, promises to complete sales for low-impact leads, turn contracts into qualified leads and work autonomously to research leads, set up meetings, reach out to customers and perform other tasks to grow the sales pipeline. This agent leverages price sheets and other company data in the CRM, web data and other Microsoft 365 data including emails and meetings to personalize responses, according to Microsoft. The other AI agent set for public preview in May is the Sales Chat Agent, which aims to give sales reps actionable takeaways from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails and the web. Reps can ask the agent questions in natural language, prompting for a list of deals at risk of falling through, what to know before a meeting with a customer and for a plan for closing a deal, among other examples. Users can access the agents through Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat, according to Microsoft.