Global customer relationship management (CRM) company Salesforce released its State of Sales report on Tuesday based on a survey of 4,050 sales professionals in 22 countries including South Korea.

The report showed 90 percent of sales organisations either already use AI agents or plan to adopt them within the next 2 years. Among sales leaders who have adopted AI agents, 94 percent rated agents as a key factor in achieving business goals. High-performing sales organisations were 1.7 times more likely than lower-performing organisations to use AI agents for lead generation.

South Korea showed a similar trend. Among domestic respondents who use AI agents, 86 percent said investment in agents is essential to achieving business goals. The areas where domestic sales organisations use AI agents most were sales opportunity management and order fulfilment and management.

The report showed AI adoption does not immediately translate into performance. Only one-third of respondent sales teams ran sales tools and data in an integrated environment, while the rest used an average of 8 separate solutions in parallel. Among sales leaders using AI, 51 percent said technology disconnection delayed or limited AI adoption. Among sales teams that do not use an integrated platform, 84 percent said they plan to integrate their technology environment and data.

On revenue strategy, 76 percent of sales leaders worldwide said the importance of usage-based pricing has increased from the previous year. Also, 81 percent of respondents said participating in external sales communities contributes to improved performance, and the top-performing group was 3.2 times more likely than the low-performing group to participate regularly in external communities.

Park Se-jin (박세진), head of Salesforce Korea, said an "agentic enterprise" model in which people and AI agents coexist and collaborate is no longer a choice but a necessity.