▸▸▸ Explore the latest trends in 'State of Sales'
Learn how top sellers are driving growth in 2026 — from AI agent use cases to revenue strategies.

• AI and agents
• Data cleanup
• Elevating the sales rep experience
• Simplifying tech stacks
• Paving new paths to growth
• Providing reps with pay and support
• The era of limited capacity is over
• FAQs

Sales teams don’t have unlimited money and time. Agents help us sell more without burning out. Here’s what our report revealed about agents supporting the sales process:

Companies that will win more deals in 2026 are using AI to help reps sell more without hitting a wall. Being able to give your sales team a boost is a major advantage, as many Australian growing businesses adjust to the changing business environment shaped by the latest Federal Budget , including new tax settings and energy rebates .

The gains from AI are most commonly reported in marketing and sales, making revenue leaders some of the biggest immediate beneficiaries.

This suggests that, once teams adopt AI agents, they quickly become part of the core sales workflow, helping teams keep up with higher customer expectations and growing workloads.

This reveals that sales teams are deploying sales agents from one end of the sales process to the other.

Sales professionals also say AI agents boost win rates, shorten sales cycles, and save costs.

This is what it all comes down to: Agents helping reps hit their aggressive quotas. When agents handle the friction, reps feel more confident in their ability to close. This momentum is also reflected directly in Australia’s tech sector, where AI-driven start-up funding rose by one billion last year.

AI is the secret weapon for elite teams. For example, at Salesforce, we used an Engagement agent to sweep up the millions of low-score leads we historically couldn't afford to work, creating 3,200 opportunities in four months. See the power of prospecting agents in action.

An agent is only as good as the context you give it. If your data is trapped in silos —spread across collaboration apps, email, and documents—your agents will fail. These sales statistics show that leaders are waking up to this reality and prioritising the foundational work of cleaning up their data.

In our Salesforce State of Data and Analytics report, we found that customers say that, if they feed their agents incomplete context, they get error-ridden feedback.

Think about the gold mine in your emails, call transcripts, and PDF contracts. Tapping into this context is key to delivering the highly personalised outreach customers now demand.

Customers expect us to know them instantly. We can only do that if our data isn't stuck in silos.

Inaccessible data is the hidden enemy of the unified customer view, costing everyone revenue and slowing down deals.

We are seeing a move toward sales software with built-in security and privacy controls that allow us to mine customer data for insights, while protecting it at the same time.

Our users report that, if an agent can't see the full customer history because it's in a different app, it can't provide a relevant point of view.

Since teams are already concerned about AI accuracy, we’ve seen more businesses see clean data now. It’s no longer just an IT concern – it’s core to their entire operation.

These sales statistics show how sales teams are using AI and agents to take manual work off reps’ plates, driving them to more sophisticated and rewarding work.

This is the critical headwind we are fighting. We need agents to maintain sales velocity and prevent opportunities from stalling.

This finding from Gartner’s 2025 Sales Survey highlights the pressure that sellers are under to deliver personalised experiences to customers. Thankfully, agents are uniquely positioned to deliver this personalised outreach, provided they have secure access to customer data.

That means hours spent on stuff like hunting for the right pitch deck, manually entering customer notes into their software, or chasing down internal approvals instead of talking to customers. At Salesforce, we’re bringing on agents to take on this admin and rigour, so our reps can get back to building relationships.

This directly supports the capacity crisis messaging. Sellers are drowning in complexity, and they need help simplifying their daily work.

This finding from Gartner’s Sales Survey is why many teams are encouraging their reps to carve out time every day to experiment with AI and discover the best use cases for them personally to become more productive and successful in their jobs.

This is telling. People are rightly concerned that AI will take their jobs. However, we’re also seeing that AI is giving reps opportunities and supporting them in their careers. Our report reveals that reps with agents have more opportunities to mentor colleagues, pursue leadership opportunities, and work on cross-functional projects.

With AI and agents doing the heavy-lifting on tasks like prospecting and drafting call summaries, human reps get to spend more time connecting with customers, which is the reason most people got into sales in the first place.

We know coaching works, but managers are often too stretched to do it effectively for every rep, on every call. So it’s no wonder sales teams are tapping agents to help.

This is an elegant solution to the above problem. Agents can facilitate roleplays and provide real-time feedback, acting as an always-on mentor. Watch a demo of agents coaching reps.

The biggest drag on productivity right now is complexity. These sales statistics show why we need to aggressively consolidate the tech stack and provide reps with a single, streamlined experience as they go through their day.

When businesses help sales teams to consolidate their work onto a unified platform, reps can get alerts, guidance, and access to data where they already work.

When sellers are constantly switching between platforms to find information or complete tasks, it slows them down and makes it harder to focus on selling.

This insight from the Gartner Sales Survey makes our job as leaders clear: We have to consolidate our tech to simplify the workflow and remove complexity, or we risk undermining the productivity of our entire sales force.

Given the challenges above, from disconnected data to overwhelmed reps, sales leaders know that centralising tools is the path to better AI and faster growth.

The State of Sales report shows that growth isn't just about filling your sales pipeline and closing deals. It’s also about how you take your offer to market. Due to this, we are seeing a rising emphasis on usage-based models, partner selling, and sales planning.

This is because customers want to understand and see value quickly. One-off pricing doesn’t always deliver that.

Sales pros with usage say it’s easier to show ROI, retain customers, and close deals. However, taking advantage of usage revenue models is easier said than done. Get our free guide on billing for usage the easy way.

This highlights the complexity of delivering usage pricing, which requires tracking usage.

We know partners are a must-have; the key is how we engage them. To scale efficiently, we must treat partners as an extension of our own team. Learn 6 ways to scale your partner ecosystem with CRM data and AI.

This widespread adoption of partner ecosystems underscores the need for partner relationship management software that gives partners the tools they need to be successful.

We treat partners like extensions of our own sales team, giving them the same context and intelligence our internal reps receive. It’s also critical to boost the efficiency of channel managers, who can use AI to tackle ongoing support requests.

This is exactly what it sounds like: a return to fundamentals. In a tight market, pre-work and strategy are essential.

Sales leaders are leaning on technology to create models of revenue strategies and test "what-if" scenarios, transforming a time-consuming exercise into a strategic advantage. Discover how sales planning software can help.

For too long, the sales professional experience was secondary to process. The data is clear: to retain top talent, leaders must prioritise career growth, pay transparency, and community.

This is a big issue because it comes down to trust. We must use technology to automate calculations and improve visibility into pay.

Despite its importance, providing transparency in pay is easier said than done. Thankfully, incentive compensation management software makes it possible to show up-to-date commission calculations to reps as they sell.

This is the single biggest threat to retention. We must focus on building a clear career path, and AI is helping by freeing reps to pursue strategic projects.

Belonging to a sales community gives reps an edge by providing them with opportunities to learn, connect, and grow.

I believe that belonging to a community is one of the biggest changes a seller can make – not only to develop their career, but also to get more meaning out of their work.