Salesforce's 2026 State of Sales: AI Agents Are Now the #1 Growth Tactic

A fresh survey of 4,000+ global sales professionals confirms AI agents have crossed from 'nice to have' to mission-critical — 54% of sellers are already using them, and top performers are 1.7x more likely to deploy prospecting agents than underperformers. The real kicker: Salesforce's own team used agents to contact 130,000 untouched leads in four months, generating 3,200 opportunities. For GTM engineers, this is the clearest data yet that agentic outbound isn't a future bet — it's the current gap between quota hitters and quota missers.