Your day starts at 7 AM with emails. By 9, you're deep in LinkedIn rabbit holes, researching prospects who may or may not respond. Lunch happens at your desk while you update CRM records.
Sales calls? Squeezed between meetings about meetings that could’ve been an email.
Most reps, founders, and agency leads are stuck in the same loop, selling less, typing more.
The data backs up what you already know: you’re spending only 30% of your time actually selling. The rest is deal management, research, and data entry.
Meanwhile, quotas go up. The admin load goes up. And the clock? Still ticking.
It’s exhausting.
The good news: AI isn’t just changing the world, it’s also changing sales. And the most accessible version of that change is the rise of AI agents.
Unlike LLMs, these aren’t chatbots spitting out canned responses. They’re mini-yous, designed to handle the repetitive, low-leverage work like prospect research, email drafting, and CRM updates. Work that needs to get done, but doesn’t need you to do it.
Yes, AI can feel daunting. Especially if you’re not a technical person. But the truth is, most of today’s AI agents work right out of the box, without a learning curve or dev support.
And hey, we’re not saying AI agents will solve world hunger or stop your manager from pinging you for pipeline updates every hour. But they will give you back a few hours a week, and that adds up quickly.
This guide walks you through exactly how to pick, set up, and start using your first AI agent, no technical skills required.
Let’s get into it.
What Are AI Agents, And How to Use AI in Sales
An AI agent in sales is like having a junior sales rep who can think through problems, make decisions, and take action without you holding their hand every step of the way.
The fundamental difference between a chatbot and an AI agent is that the former can only give you an output, in a certain format (text, image, spreadsheet), etc, when asked. A chatbot isn’t autonomous, while AI agents are.
For example, ask a chatbot "Who should I reach out to at Microsoft?" and it might give you some generic advice about finding decision makers.
Ask an AI agent the same question, and it'll go research Microsoft's org chart, find the right people, pull their contact info, check their recent LinkedIn activity, and draft personalized cold outreach messages for each one.
Chatbots can think for you, AI agents can act (and more importantly, act with intent).
In the context of sales, AI agents can:
- Research a company and identify key decision-makers
- Find and verify contact information
- Analyze each prospect's recent activity and interests
- Create personalized outreach messages for each person
- Schedule follow-ups based on response patterns
- Update your CRM with all the relevant data
They also adapt and evolve over time, meaning if your emails about "cost savings" get better response rates than ones about "efficiency gains," the agent picks up on that pattern and adjusts future messaging accordingly.
While this sounds complex to implement, you don't really need to understand machine learning algorithms or neural networks to use these tools. (Like how you don’t need to know physics to drive a car)
Memo before you read on: For most non-technical users, an AI agent and an automated workflow are the same thing. AI agents by nature, are autonomous, capable of taking action. Most automation needs a click/a go-ahead and needs to be manually configured.
Building AI agents requires deep technical knowledge that most teams in GTM do not possess. There are platforms like Agent.ai (more on that later) that make using agents easy, but most other platforms mentioned below will not let you create or use “true” agents. The good thing is that irrespective of what you call it, the ROI on the agents and automations below is massive.
The 3 Types of AI Agents (And Which One’s Right for You)
Now that you know what AI agents can do, let's talk about your options.
Not all AI agents are built the same, and not all of them are built for you.
Because just like cars, AI agents come in different models, from the reliable Honda Civic to the custom-built race car that costs more than your house.
Here's how to think about the three main types:
1. Plug-and-Play AI Agents
These are your "download and go" options.
Someone else built them, tested them, and made sure they work for the most common sales tasks. You just have to sign up, maybe connect your CRM, and start using them.
Think of these like buying a pre-built computer from Best Buy. It's not custom, but it works right out of the box and handles 90% of what most people need.
Examples:
- A LinkedIn lead scraper that pulls contact info into your CRM
- A prebuilt email assistant that writes outbound drafts based on a job title
- A company research bot that summarizes firmographics and recent news
Setup level: None
Skills needed: Can you click a button? You’re good
Best for: Sales reps, founders, agency leads, solo operators
2. No-Code / Semi-Custom Agents
Think: LEGO blocks, the shape is mostly there, but you can rearrange and remix based on your workflow.
These agents often live inside platforms like Bardeen, Zapier (AI), or Agent.so. You define the steps (e.g., “when a new lead is added, enrich it, write intro email, log in Notion”), and the system handles it.
Examples:
- Auto-enrich a new lead from LinkedIn, drop the info into a deal sheet, and send a Slack notification
- Build a "daily briefing" agent that summarizes activity from HubSpot, your calendar, and open deals
- Use Agent.so to create a personalized outreach writer based on ICP and tone
Setup level: Low. You’ll need to drag and drop, connect a few tools
Skills needed: Comfort with tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, or Notion helps
Best for: Sales ops, power users, hands-on founders
3. Fully Custom / Code-Based Agents
These are built from scratch by developers specifically for your company's needs. You write the logic, the workflows, the interfaces, and wire it all together using frameworks like LangChain, Superagent, or CrewAI.
They can integrate with proprietary systems, handle complex multi-step processes, and basically do whatever you can dream up. These are powerful, but they’re also a commitment and mainly handled by more “technically experienced” personnel.
Examples:
- A custom SDR agent that reads inbound interest, qualifies it against internal data, and spins up a follow-up sequence
- A deal intelligence bot that pulls signals from Gong, Salesforce, and email threads to surface red flags
- A research agent that runs competitive analyses from multiple sites and updates internal wikis
Setup level: High
Skills needed: Dev team or technical resources
Best for: Larger teams, AI-savvy orgs, or those looking to embed AI deep into core systems
TL;DR
Most sales teams in agencies, SMBs, and startups don’t need tier 3. In fact, for most sales teams, the first two tiers are more than enough to start seeing tangible results.
And if you’d rather skip it all and use a sequencing tool to drag, drop, and create a simple, multi-channel outreach sequence, Salesflow’s got your back.
Salesflow helps sales teams automate LinkedIn outreach, follow-ups, and CRM updates, without any coding.
If you’re spending hours doing manual prospecting, it’s time to let something else handle it. Sign up for our 7-day free trial today, and experience just how powerful and easy sales automation can be.
Up next, we’ll go deeper into both plug-and-play and semi-custom agents, the tools, the best use cases, and what’s worth trying.
The Best Platforms to Use AI Agents in Sales Today
Plug-and-Play AI Agents (Ready to Use Now)
Let’s start with the simplest tier: plug-and-play AI agents.
These platforms don’t ask you to build anything. You just pick an agent, give it a goal, and let it run. While these AI agents usually require minimal prompting, it needs to be contextual and concise.
Most plug-and-play agents are focused on single, well-defined sales tasks, things like:
- Summarizing a lead’s company and role
- Drafting an email
- Filling out CRM fields based on LinkedIn
- Giving you call prep notes in seconds
Here are 2 of the most polished, non-technical platforms worth trying:
1. Agent.ai
Agent.ai is built for people who just want things to work. Created by Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot co-founder), the platform offers a curated catalog of AI agents you can use without any configuration or technical setup.
To find an agent for your use case, either filter by “tag”, “sales”, or type the use case in the search bar.
The platform is still evolving, but it already covers a surprising number of practical use cases. Agents run in-browser, results are fast, and there’s no learning curve.
Setup: None
Free to start: Yes (credit-based)
Who it's for: Reps, founders, anyone doing sales as part of their job
Top 3 Sales Agents on Agent.ai
These have high community ratings and are built for reps, founders, and agency leads.
What it does: Conducts deep research on companies, pulling in size, funding, industry, website traffic, and competitors, and packages it into a clean, structured summary.
You can expect a search result to look like this, with all the information listed and linked on the left panel:
Why it’s powerful:
- Replaces the manual 15-20 minute Google + LinkedIn deep dive
- Provides uniform output everyone can quickly scan or copy into a pitch deck
How to use it:
- Load a company URL or name
- Run the agent
- Copy-paste summary into your CRM, sales deck, or call prep doc
Implementation time: ~1 minute per account
Why sales teams love it: Turns research from a time drain into a process that scales, without tech headaches.
2. LinkedIn Personalized Connection Request Generator
What it does:
This agent analyzes your prospect’s LinkedIn profile and recent posts, then generates a short, tailored connection request.
Output likely to look like this:
Why it’s useful:
- Perfect for SDRs or founders looking to build relevance at first touch
- Helps cut down the time you spend reading profiles
How to use it:
- Drop in your prospect’s LinkedIn profile link
- (Optional) Drop in your own profile too, for mutual context
- Hit run, it generates a personalized connection note
- Copy → Paste into LinkedIn → Done
Implementation time: ~15-30 seconds per contact
Why sales teams like it: This is one of those little time-saving agents that makes your outreach land better. Used across 10-20 new contacts a day, the time savings add up.
What it does: Pulls the latest posts (up to ~25) from target prospects and summarizes tone, themes, and posting frequency.
Final output may look something like this:
Why it’s valuable:
- Helps you write high-context, timely outreach (“I saw your comment on LinkedIn about high-touch outreach” vs. generic intros)
- Gives you fuel for conversational, relevant follow-ups
How to use it:
- Supply LinkedIn profile URLs
- Run the agent
- Get a run down of everything your prospect has posted about recently
Implementation time: ~2 minutes per prospect
Why reps like it: Makes personalization fast
2. ChatGPT Custom GPTs
What it does:
ChatGPT’s Custom GPTs are like task-specific AI agents you can use directly inside ChatGPT. They’re designed to handle targeted jobs like writing outreach emails, analyzing leads, prepping for meetings, and summarizing prospect data, all inside a familiar chat interface.
Why it’s useful:
- Completely plug-and-play
- No setup required, the GPTs have built-in instructions
- Many are optimized specifically for sales, with tailored outputs and reusable workflows
How to use it:
- Go to chat.openai.com/gpts. To use if for sales, specifically, go to GPTs, click on “Productivity” and look for agents like “market research and competitive analysis”
- Once you click on it, the pop-up window will look something like:
- To use it, just hit “Start Chat” and type away!
- You can search for other GPTs too like:
- “Sales Prospecting Pro”
- “AI Email Writer”
- “Objection Handler”
- Copy and paste the results into your outreach or CRM tools
Implementation time: ~10 seconds to launch
Why sales teams like it:
While custom GPT is just ChatGPT with a wrapper, the added benefit of using these is that they require little to no additional prompting. Since they’re created for a specific purpose, they’re quite handy when you’re in a time crunch.
No-Code AI Agent Platforms
Plug-and-play agents are great, until you hit the limits of what they can do.
Maybe you want to run the same agent across 100 leads. Maybe you want to pull data from LinkedIn, enrich it, write an email, and push it into your CRM, without doing it by hand.
That’s where semi-custom AI agents come in.
These tools give you more flexibility without requiring you to code. They let you:
- Connect multiple steps into a single workflow
- Automate recurring tasks like lead enrichment or follow-ups
- Adjust logic, triggers, and outputs to match your team’s real process
You don’t need technical know-how, but you do need to be comfortable building blocks. Think: Zapier, Make, Agent.so, Bardeen. You give the agent a job, define the steps, and let it run.
The learning curve exists but it's manageable. Most platforms are designed for business users, so if you can build a complex Excel formula or set up Zapier automations, you can surely deploy these agents.
Here are the platforms that work for sales teams:
1. Bardeen.ai
What it does:
Bardeen is a browser automation tool with AI built in. Think of it as Zapier meets ChatGPT, but visual. You can automate boring tasks like scraping LinkedIn data, filling out CRMs, or drafting follow-up emails based on what’s on-screen.
It runs entirely inside your browser and plugs into tools like Gmail, Google Sheets, Notion, HubSpot, and more.
Why it’s useful:
- Combines AI + web automation.
- Includes prebuilt “Playbooks” (mini agents) you can customize
- Ideal for repetitive sales tasks like account research, email prep, CRM cleanup, and scheduling
- You can run workflows manually or trigger them when things happen on screen (e.g. open a LinkedIn profile → auto-run summary + email draft)
How to use it:
- Install the Bardeen Chrome extension
- Choose a template (called a “Playbook”) or build one visually
Alternatively, you can just go to the “explore” section and click on a pre-existing one.
- Customize inputs and outputs (e.g., extract company name → send to Notion → write follow-up), more on this later.
- Trigger it manually or set it to auto-run
- Use built-in AI blocks (powered by GPT) to summarize, write, or reformat data
Implementation time: 10-15 minutes to set up your first real workflow
Why sales teams like it:
- Saves time without requiring deep logic or code
- Automates tasks across tools you already use
3 Bardeen Workflows That Help Sales Teams
Some of these are pre-built, and some need to be customized further.
1. Right-Click to Copy LinkedIn Company Data to Google Sheets (Instantly save company info to a spreadsheet while browsing LinkedIn, no copy/paste needed.)
What it does:
- You right-click on a company name or open a LinkedIn Company Page
- Bardeen scrapes the company name, industry, size, location, website, etc.
- It pushes the structured data into a Google Sheet (or Airtable, if you prefer)
- Optional: tag the row with your name and timestamp for pipeline tracking
Why it’s great:
This turns LinkedIn browsing into lead list building, without breaking flow or toggling tabs. Perfect for founders, BDRs, or AEs doing manual research.
Setup time: ~10 mins
To find this, go to the explore tab and scroll down to find this:
Then, configure it according to your preferences:
2. Summarize Meeting Notes Sent to Gmail + Draft a Follow-Up (Automatically write a follow-up email based on what happened in the meeting, straight from your inbox.)
What it does:
- You receive meeting notes in Gmail (from a calendar integration, Zoom, or manual notes)
- Bardeen pulls the content of the email body
- AI block summarizes the key points, next steps, and tone
- Then it generates a personalized follow-up draft in Gmail
- Optional: logs it to your CRM or sends to Slack
Why it’s great:
Follow-ups don’t get delayed, and they’re based on meeting notes, so it looks relevant and customized.
Setup time: ~15 mins
To find this, go to the explore tab and scroll down to find this:
Then, configure it according to your preferences:
3. Auto-Update HubSpot Deal When Docusign Envelope Is Signed (Move deals to “Closed Won” or trigger next-step tasks as soon as contracts are signed.)
What it does:
- Connects to Docusign’s webhook (via Zapier, Make, or API proxy)
- When a document is marked “Completed,” it triggers a Bardeen Playbook
- Bardeen updates the matching deal stage in HubSpot
- Optional: notifies the rep in Slack, adds internal notes, or assigns onboarding tasks
Why it’s great:
It closes the loop without human error. You don’t need reps to manually update status, and post-sale motion kicks off immediately.
Setup time: 20-30 mins (this is the most “technical” of the three, but very doable with built-in integrations + walkthroughs)
To find this, go to the explore tab and scroll down to find this:
Then, configure it according to your preferences:
2. Agent.so
What it does:
Agent.so is a no-code platform for building your own AI agents. Think of it as a sandbox where you can create small, task-specific assistants, without needing to write a single line of code.
You give your agent instructions (like “write cold emails for marketers in SaaS”), choose a tone, upload some context, and let it handle the rest.
Why it’s useful:
- Great for building repeatable sales agents (email writers, post-call summarizers, objection handlers)
- Let's you customize tone, style, brand voice, and inputs
- Each agent gets its own shareable page (like a sales microsite)
How to use it:
- Go to agent.so and create an account
- Click “Agents”, and then either find the one you want, or click on “Create”
- Fill out a simple form:
- Name your agent (e.g. “SaaS Cold Email Writer”)
- Give it a job (“Write 3-line cold emails for [target persona]”)
- Choose tone of voice (e.g. friendly, expert, casual)
- Click save, and your agent is live instantly
- Test it by chatting or giving it tasks
Implementation time: ~2-5 mins to create your first agent
Why sales teams like it:
- Everyone on the team can use the same agent
- Ideal for teams who have some content or positioning ready, but want to make it reusable and fast
3. Zapier AI (with OpenAI integration)
What it does:
Zapier isn’t traditionally known as an “AI agent” tool, it’s an automation platform.
But with the introduction of Zapier AI actions, OpenAI steps, and natural language workflow builders, it now lets you build semi-autonomous agents that connect your tools and run logic-driven, AI-enhanced flows.
This is perfect for sales teams who want to say: “When this happens in my CRM, use AI to write that email and send it via Gmail or Slack.”
Why it’s useful:
- You can use AI to write, summarize, decide, or extract, right inside your workflows
- Works with 6,000+ apps (Gmail, HubSpot, Airtable, Notion, Slack, Docusign, LinkedIn, etc.)
- You can use natural language to build Zaps
- Create full workflows like: “When a lead fills out a form → enrich with Clearbit → write intro email → post to Slack”
Here’s how you can build a Zapier AI workflow:
Sign up at zapier.com, and you will find an AI workflow section on the homepage as soon as you log in.
Let’s say you wanted to write a sales email follow-up for every contact in your database that is stored in Google Sheets. Here’s how you’d do it:
- From all the AI workflow templates, you’d pick the one you want. In this case, it would be the following:
- You would configure step 1, i.e choose your desired Google account and spreadsheet.
- After you map that, the next step would be to configure the Zapier AI step. Once you click on the prompt builder, you’d be asked to choose “Build mode”. For this, we will select “Write”, “Draft sales email”.
- Once you do that, Zapier will automatically populate the “Prompt” field with an appropriate prompt. Customize it to your liking, test the step, and move on to the next step.
- Once you configure the final step, i.e adding the email created to another row in Google sheet, you will end up with a workflow that look like this:
And that’s it, you have now created an AI workflow with Zapier!
Implementation time: ~15-20 minutes depending on complexity
Why sales teams like it:
- Adds intelligence to existing workflows
- Makes CRM updates and follow-ups automatic
Other Example Zapier AI Use Cases in Sales:
Which AI Agents Are Right for You?
You don’t need to be technical to use AI agents in your sales process, but you do need to pick the right type of tool for your comfort level, tech stack, and workflow.
Here’s how to think about it:
If You’re Non-Technical and Just Want Things to Work:
Use Plug-and-Play AI Agents
Why it works:
These tools get you 80% of the value with 0% of the headache.
If You’re Comfortable With Light Setup and Want Flexibility:
Use Semi-Custom AI Agents
Why it works:
You get to scale repeatable workflows without reinventing the wheel. There’s more effort up front, but you unlock a ton of leverage.
If You’re Technical or Have an AI Engineer on Deck:
Explore True AI Agent Frameworks
Why it works:
These tools are powerful, but they require engineering fluency. And if you’re proficient in any of these, you probably wouldn’t even have read this far!
The Bottom Line: How to Go From 0 to Deployed
The math is simple: if you're spending more than 2 hours a day on prospect research, email drafting, or CRM updates, using an AI agent is a no-brainer.
What stops most teams isn’t the tech. It’s the noise. A new tool launches every week, and suddenly, trying to save time becomes a full-time job.
But you don’t need to master it all. You just need to pick one agent, point it at one painful task, and see what happens.
Worst case? You burn an hour and learn something.
Best case? You get hours back, every single week.
Want to put AI agents to work in your outbound flow?
Salesflow helps sales teams automate LinkedIn outreach, follow-ups, and CRM updates, no coding required.
FAQs:
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