The Ultimate Sales Transformation:
How to Prepare Your Team for AI

After 20-plus years of helping companies streamline and overhaul their sales operations, we were confronted with the need to modernise and future-proof our own business. Process complexity and tech debt were slowing us down, hurting both customer and seller experiences.

We knew that if we wanted to leverage the power of AI (especially agentic AI) and simplify processes for our sellers and customers, we would need to rebuild Sales Cloud, our core CRM, from the ground up. That transformation journey began in 2023, and were already seeing increased revenue, higher customer satisfaction, and faster time to close.

In this guide, well share how we did it, what we learnt, and our tips for executing a sales transformation journey of your own.

Startups might rely on easy solutions early on, but over time, these result in disconnected processes and tools. That means a lot of ad hoc fixes and manual work a sign your business is ripe for sales transformation.

We regularly conduct internal surveys to gauge seller experience, and noticed that they revealed persistent issues: slow quote generation and approvals, confusing products and pricing, and insufficient seller enablement.

Further interviews and surveys revealed the core issues: outdated tech and processes. Sales Cloud, our core CRM, had become overly complex due to extensive development and integrations. This patchwork system made our sales process cumbersome and slow while also making it difficult for us to effectively utilise AI.

With evidence that theres a problem, you have to dig into the specifics. The following actions can help clarify those problems into an actionable framework.

Starting in 2023, we conducted extensive internal research with sellers, leaders, and ops teams to identify problems and map solutions. We compiled feedback and iterated on our transformation plan, then shared it with leadership for approval.

We needed a unified platform to consolidate functionality and data across our products: Sales Cloud (CRM), Revenue Cloud (quote-to-cash), and Salesforce Spiff (incentive compensation). That meant rebuilding Salesforce technology with a single platform vision, allowing us to streamline workflows for our sales teams and giving us the foundation to build out AI capabilities including agentic AI.

Importantly, this rebuild prioritised Slack as our virtual office the place where our teams could address deal issues together and share ideas in real time, enabling them to close faster.

Solution in hand, we went to executives for their feedback.

Executive buy-in secured, its time to lay out the steps towards change. Heres our pilot-to-execution approach with change management best practices and key considerations.

Form a core team with leaders from sales, operations, admin/IT, finance, and legal to spearhead the transformation, ensuring diverse perspectives are included. Quick note: Dont include more than one person from each department. The bigger the team, the slower youll be able to execute.

Here are the elements you need to consider as you dig in:

The next step in the sales transformation is the fun part: bringing in agentic AI, like what we offer with Agentforce. Agentforce is already making waves across industries , unlocking higher levels of productivity for sales teams by taking on manual tasks so humans can focus on high-value work like relationship-building and strategy.

Before you start using agentic AI, find where it can have the biggest impact based on your problem and solution mapping. What manual, cumbersome process can you offload to AI sales agents? Or, to be more forward-looking: Where do you need to scale quickly?

It can be helpful to use this framework: AI agent capabilities what we call skills within Agentforce slot into sales teams to work a lot like humans. Some skills focus entirely on one area in their department, like capturing and organising data. Others work cross-functionally, doing work across the business (by connecting service and sales teams, for instance). And some come with a highly specialised skill set configured for a specific use case.

With Agentforce for Sales, built on the Salesforce Platform, there are several sales skills available out of the box that can be customised and deployed in under 30 minutes . Once built and deployed in Salesforce, these are also available directly in Slack where sales teams conduct critical deal work.

Additionally, Agentforce skills can be built and configured on the platform to meet specific use cases, leveraging pre-existing workflows.

An analysis of the lead-to-cash flow revealed our quoting process as a key area for productivity improvement. Configuring quotes for complex deals was not only time-consuming, but they took forever to get approved. To address these delays, a pilot group tested a customised Agentforce quoting skill, which built quotes using plain-language prompts.

Weve already seen big wins. With access to up-to-date product and pricing information as well as built-in finance guidelines Agentforce can generate and deliver finance-approved quotes within minutes.

Weve deployed other prebuilt Agentforce skills, too and are seeing rapid scaling as reps and agents work seamlessly together to prospect and prepare for sales calls.

Sales transformation, while complex and costly, necessitates clear metrics and regular reviews to identify successes and obstacles. Below, we outline the metrics you need to track and when you need to track them.

At this point, you should have dashboards and reporting structures in place to help you to track critical transformation KPIs (this was part of your work in step 3). Report on these to your core transformation team and key stakeholders monthly (at a minimum).

Were only two years into our multi-year transformation, but were already seeing significant wins and gathering many insights. Below are some high-level learnings you can apply as you begin your own transformation.

• Keep stakeholders to a minimum. The more people you have in the review chain, the slower the transformation process.
• Keep your team motivated and engaged with regular kudos.
• Consult your salespeople and customers regularly. Their POV is essential in understanding gaps, pain points and successes.

• Structure your transformation plan so you can achieve quick wins while you roll out time-intensive changes.
• Phase roll-out to avoid overwhelm.
• Beware of adding too much to sellers' workflows (like feedback or surveys). It will make engagement difficult.

• Keep the future in mind: How can you make yourself ready for future tech like agentic AI and avoid the need to add point solutions?
• Balance OOTB tech features with customisation. Lean on your tech provider to understand what customisation you need and whats a nice-to-have.
• Start building enablement plans early and iterate often to ensure high tool adoption and engagement.