By Jack McDaniel, Senior Value Engineer, Salesloft
The ugly truth hiding in plain sight
Roughly 70% of a seller’s day is still swallowed by admin work, while only about 5% of your total addressable market is actually in‑market this quarter.
That’s a brutal math problem, and it explains why even healthy pipelines spring gaps before revenue ever shows up on the board.
Our latest conversations with CROs keep circling back to the same three questions:
Why are activity numbers flat even after we hired more reps?
Why do reply rates look stuck in single‑digits?
Why are promising deals dying halfway down the funnel?
Spoiler: it’s not a talent issue. It’s a workflow issue. And that’s exactly where Agentic AI steps in.
Meet the three biggest gaps in today’s funnel
Funnel stage
What’s going wrong
The real‑world cost
Top: Activity capture
Managers have no insight or visibility into a sellers workday while they want their reps adhering to a process
Time lost: Admin drags selling time down by 70%
Middle: Buyer personalization
One‑size‑fits‑all emails hit every inbox, and get ignored
Engagement lost: Reply rates stall below the industry average of 10%
Lower: Deal progression & coaching
Leads hand‑off late. Managers find problems after calls end
Revenue lost: Opportunities slip and forecasts wobble
If this looks familiar, you’re not alone. We hear it in nearly every Premier value conversation.
How Agentic AI seals each gap
1. Research, Buyer ID & Auto‑Log Agents
What they do: Pull buyer intel, sync it to CRM, and log activities instantly.
Result: Reps get 40% more activity because agents fill their day with automation¹. While activity ticks up, managers have a clear pane of glass to see how their team spends their day-to-day.
2. Compose (personalization) Agents
What they do: Run an analysis on what the best ways to break into an account. Find the best contacts within that account that will buy. Then, based on that research, draft persona‑ready emails‑on‑demand, built on live account signals.
Result: Teams see a 20% lift in responses without lifting an extra finger.¹
3. Signal & Conversation Agents
What they do: Make your data-silos actionable. Detect intent spikes via website, Salesloft Drift, third-party apps (e.g. 6sense, Demandbase), and then auto-trigger next‑best actions.
Result: Faster follow‑up drives up to 50% higher lead‑to‑opportunity conversion.¹
4. Coaching & Analytics Agents
What they do: Auto-recaps meetings to ensure the next best action is happening based on what was discussed. Adds markers to pivotal sales points so that managers understand what’s happening within a deal and can coach to a selling methodology (e.g. MEDDPICC).
Result: Better conversion down the funnel with 12% higher win rates and 32% improved coaching productivity.¹
Put all four layers together and the funnel stops gaping, pressure builds, revenue flows.
Why this clicked for me this week
I’ve spent the last few months knee‑deep in Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study on Salesloft. The numbers above aren’t marketing poetry. They’re modeled outcomes from real customer data.²
Here’s the aha moment: Agents don’t replace that TEI story, they extend it.
TEI quantified productivity, engagement, and win‑rate gains
Agentic AI shows how those gains keep compounding quarter after quarter
That’s why I’m weaving the agent story into every value workshop going forward, especially with teams chasing win‑rate improvements before the fiscal year closes.
The TEI backbone: Independent economics you can trust
3‑year composite enterprise impact
ROI
236% ROI (≈ 2.36× payback)
Incremental profit
$12.4 M
Pipeline growth
152% more opportunities (≈ 2.5× pipeline)
Tool consolidation savings
$1.3 M
Coaching productivity
+32%
Forrester interviewed multiple Salesloft customers, built a $7 B‑revenue composite company, and stress‑tested every assumption. That rigor is why I lean on TEI in value workshops.
What to do before your next QBR
Pull last quarter’s funnel metrics. Where’s the biggest drop‑off?
Map the right agent to that gap. (Need more activity? Start with Research & Auto‑Log.)
Run a two‑week pilot. Measure the delta in time saved, replies earned, or opps converted
Bring the data to your board. “We plugged one gap, here’s the lift. Imagine all three.”
Ready to see the gaps disappear?
Book your Agentic AI walkthrough and watch how each agent seals a stage of your funnel. No buzzwords, just numbers.
