Jason M. Lemkin argues AI agents solve a core sales problem: no lead gets ignored. They handle low-value questions instantly, re-engage stale prospects, and let humans focus on deals that matter. Products like AgentForce and Qualified show agents often outperform average reps.
It's because we leave— there's no lead left behind. This is the flip side. But, um, I didn't completely get why it works for us until I had a meeting this week, even after all these months, even after AgentForce, Monaco, Artisan, Qualified, Momentum, all these— why does it work? But I was meeting this week with the CEO and CRO of a, of a great public company with thousands of sellers, thousands of sellers. And we were talking about agents and AI and, you know, some folks, some folks do get a one-on-one version of this, of the show. And the first question the CEO and the CRO had is that, what do you think we should do first? And they had some Agentic products, but they said, what do you think you should do first in order? And I went through, I went through a series of what I thought they should do first. First, do something so that everyone can instantly get great quality questions answered on your website, going to what we've just talked about, right? Make sure they can instantly get an appointment set with sales, right? And I kept going through different things. And then I realized, I went through all the things I said, you know what? You know why all of our agents work in go-to-market and sales? It's because we leave— there's no lead left behind. This is the flip side. We talk about how agents give you more coverage. We talk about how agents don't mind the B leads, but it's simpler than that. If all— if you deploy some of just some of what we do in AI agents, and then Amelia can share some details better than I can. Here's what you know. Anyone that has an issue like with that 3% Stripe fee gets to talk to an agent and then a human. Anyone that wants to know if they can get a discount, whether they get one or not, can find out in real time. Any, any sponsor that clearly doesn't have enough budget to be at SaaStr can still find out if they can sponsor. But a human might be like, they raised $2 million at Demo Day, like we don't want them. But the agent, the agent doesn't judge. Bootstrap, the agent doesn't judge any issue. And then, you know, and then for our use of AgentForce or others, you know, we were inspired by Marc Benioff to go back to our prior leads and prior ones that no one had touched. Right. And so clearly we have evidence that in many cases our agents do better than a mediocre human. I know it's a triggering way to say it, but it is true. But even if it, even if it's not, it may be simpler than that. It may be just if you touch every single lead, every prospect, every customer the way they want to be interacted with in real time, you have to do better. That's all these agents have to do to add value to the organization is that there's no lead, no prospect, no customer left behind, whether it's in pre-sales, sales, customer success. We can talk more about QBR, AI, but no one gets left behind. I think it's that simple. What do you think, Amelia? I know I'm slow, but this was my aha moment.
