Microsoft’s New AI Sales Agents Explained

Summary

Microsoft has unveiled two new AI sales agents designed to aid sellers using Microsoft CRM (Dynamics 365 Sales) or Salesforce. These agents operate within Microsoft 365 Co-pilot and Co-pilot chat experiences. The first is Sales Chat, which integrates CRM, Outlook, Teams, and more, offering sellers a comprehensive chat tool for accessing relevant information. The second, a more autonomous agent, manages incoming leads by prioritizing, automating communication, and providing research insights, freeing sellers to focus on essential leads. These agents promise greater efficiency and seamless integration with existing sales tools.

Highlights

• Microsoft's new AI agents target users of Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce. 🚀
• Sales Chat helps sellers access diverse data quickly, improving collaboration. 📊
• The autonomous agent automates repetitive tasks, such as qualifying leads. 🤝
• Screenshots show the potential of these tools, with public previews expected in May 2025. 📅
• Customizing agents is viable with Co-pilot Studio, aligning them with business needs. 🔧
• Co-pilot for Sales continues to integrate CRM insights into Outlook, enriching user experience. 📤

Key Takeaways

• Microsoft introduced two AI sales agents to enhance sales productivity. 🤖
• Sales Chat consolidates information from CRM, Outlook, Teams, and more for a comprehensive chat experience. 💬
• The autonomous Sales Agent automates lead management, saving time and prioritizing crucial leads. 📈
• These tools are part of Microsoft's 365 Co-pilot ecosystem, emphasizing seamless integration. 🌐
• Customization and extension are possible via Co-pilot Studio, offering tailored solutions for businesses. 🛠️
• Co-pilot for Sales remains a separate tool, focusing on integrating CRM with productivity applications like Outlook. 📧

Overview

Microsoft is making waves with their announcement of two new AI-powered sales agents aimed at streamlining tasks for sellers using either Dynamics 365 Sales or Salesforce. These agents are seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft 365 Co-pilot ecosystem, offering tools that cater to diverse business needs. The Sales Chat is a valuable tool for quickly accessing information from not just your CRM but also associated platforms like Outlook and Teams, enhancing the seller's ability to collate essential data easily.

The standout feature is Microsoft's autonomous sales agent, set to hit previews in May 2025. Unlike typical chat experiences, this agent autonomously manages lead interactions, automating responses and performing background research on potential clients. This tool promises to drastically reduce the time sellers spend on qualifying leads, allowing them to focus on converting the most promising prospects.

Customization is a key element, and with Co-pilot Studio, users are empowered to tailor these agents to their specific requirements, from modifying communication flows to adjusting knowledge sources. Despite these new introductions, Microsoft’s existing Co-pilot for Sales remains relevant, underscoring the brand’s commitment to evolving productivity tools that integrate CRM data across Outlook and other applications. Watch this space to see how these AI advancements drive sales productivity to new heights.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Microsoft's New AI Sales Agents The chapter provides an introduction to Microsoft's new AI sales agents. It mentions the announcement of two new agents designed to work with Microsoft CRM Dynamics 365 Sales or Salesforce. Additionally, it highlights these can be used in the Microsoft 365 Co-pilot. The chapter raises questions about the purpose, differences from each other, and comparison with Co-pilot for Sales.
• 01:00 - 04:29: Overview of Sales Chat This chapter introduces the co-pilot chat experience with a focus on a sales chat functionality. It mentions a brand new announcement from March 2025, highlighting that previews are expected to be available in May 2025. The chapter provides screenshots from the release and mentions that live demos will follow when access is granted. It encourages readers to subscribe for updates and future live demos.
• 04:30 - 08:59: Features of Sales Chat The chapter discusses a sales chat experience designed to integrate various information sources beyond just CRM data. It highlights how sellers often work with Outlook, Teams meetings, documents, and files that are not present in CRM systems. The intention is to create a chat experience where users can quickly access answers and information from all these sources in a single location.
• 09:00 - 10:29: Introduction to Sales Agent The chapter introduces the concept of a custom Microsoft 365 co-pilot chat agent, designed specifically for sales scenarios. It highlights the functionalities of the agent which is supposed to assist sellers by providing quick prompts to access necessary information. The narrative suggests that similar agents may have appeared in other contexts, indicating a specialization in aiding sales processes.
• 10:30 - 13:29: Features of Sales Agent The chapter explores the functionalities of a sales agent that is designed to understand and interpret the intent behind sales-related inquiries. It showcases an example where the agent provides an account summary by pulling data from a CRM, indicating that it is configured with clear instructions and capabilities to generate pipeline insights and recent engagement details. Although there is limited information available, the described agent demonstrates high potential in efficiently handling sales queries.
• 13:30 - 16:59: Customization and Extensions In the chapter titled 'Customization and Extensions,' the author discusses how sellers can leverage their CRM systems and integrate them with various other tools to enhance their sales processes. This includes the ability to pull citations from different sources like meetings and emails, thereby enriching the information available within the CRM. The focus is on creating a seamless experience where all relevant data can be accessed and utilized effectively, extending beyond just the CRM to include other digital interactions that a seller might have.
• 17:00 - 19:30: Comparison with Copilot for Sales The chapter discusses a specialized version of Microsoft's 365 Copilot, designed specifically for sales. It highlights how users can leverage various Microsoft tools like files, meetings, and emails to prepare for sales meetings. The focus is on providing a tailored experience for sales professionals, offering them tools to easily create meeting agendas and goals.
• 19:30 - 20:30: Summary and Conclusion The chapter titled 'Summary and Conclusion' focuses on the integration of visual aids and advanced tools in sales meetings. The speaker emphasizes the importance of collating information effectively and introduces a tool called 'co-pilot' that aids in visualizing sales data. This tool enhances sales interactions by providing visual responses to queries like 'How is my pipeline looking?' using qualifiers such as develop, propose, and close. These capabilities aim to improve sales dynamics and decision-making.

Microsoft’s New AI Sales Agents Explained Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Microsoft have announced two new sales agents what are they what would you use them for how are they different from each other and how does this compare with co-pilot for sales and any other questions you've got I've got you covered what we've seen is an announcement of two new sales agents which I'm going to take you through these are designed to work with either the Microsoft CRM which is Dynamics 365 sales or with Salesforce you can use these in the Microsoft 365 co-pilot or
• 00:30 - 01:00 co-pilot chat experience I've got a whole other video here on co-pilot chat if you want to know more about that and this is a brand new announcement March 2025 all of what I've got in here is screenshots from the release these things are actually going to be in preview in May 2025 so if you're interested in this make sure you subscribe and I will do live demos when I have access to live demos so let's take a look at the first one here which is the sales chat this one is designed
• 01:00 - 01:30 to be an experience where you as a seller have information that's more than just your CRM so you've got all of that information about your accounts contacts opportunities in your CRM but in reality you are working with Outlook and teams meetings and documents and files and all of those things that actually aren't in your CRM so this is a chat experience that is designed to help you be able to get answers across all of those things in one place quick quickly so this is
• 01:30 - 02:00 the Microsoft 365 chat no hang on let me get this right the Microsoft 365 co-pilot chat experience this is a custom agent so this is what this agent is going to do and you might have seen something familiar to this before if you've seen some of the other agents that are going on so this is an agent that is just defined to really help you with those sales scenarios we've got some quick prompts that are sitting there and the idea is that as a seller I can come in and put prompts in that will get me information across all of those
• 02:00 - 02:30 things that are relevant to me show me an account summary from fabrian and I've actually got in here things that are coming back from my CRM here are the account highlights pipeline insights recent engagement now there's very little information about this so far so a lot of what I'm doing here is interpreting things from what's been announced and what I know this to me looks like an agent that's been configured to have really good instructions that will understand the intent of the sell a question and be
• 02:30 - 03:00 able to return this information to you in this kind of format when you ask a question like this it's actually got the citations in here the same as any of these other agent experiences so you'll see little numbers two and three there and at the bottom it's showing you where those things came from so this is drawing information from my CRM but realistically as a seller I'm not just living in this CRM I am also doing a lot of meetings and I'm working with emails so this experience also allows you to
• 03:00 - 03:30 draw on those things so this is very much the same as what you can do with the main Microsoft 365 co-pilot license but this is now narrowed down to be more of a sales specific Focus help me prepare for a meeting and you can see that you can actually draw on other files and meetings and emails in there so results of that prompt I'm actually getting my meeting agenda and goals here are the related files this is a real winner this one this preparing for a
• 03:30 - 04:00 meeting I I work very closely with Sellers and even for me myself in my job the collating all of the information together is immensely helpful we can go a step further though because we've actually got experiences in here that allow you to get co-pilot to visualize things for you so this sales chat is able to respond with visual things as well how is my pipeline looking and then it's actually able to generate that visual so this is using that qualifier develop proposed clothes typical sales
• 04:00 - 04:30 pipeline stages and it's bringing that in there there's a lot more going on under the hood in co-pilot with these visualization so I think this is going to be quite a useful thing so that's the first one that's the sales chat I'm in that Microsoft 365 co-pilot chat experience and getting information from not just my CRM but my documents files and meetings and that's all existing there this next one is quite different the sales agent this is actually what's
• 04:30 - 05:00 called an autonomous agent so the idea here is that unlike the previous one where we were doing a chat experience this is something that's acting independently autonomously in the background and doing things with guidance that you put in place this is this next level of working with AI where we start to think about agents as more than just chat experiences now these are things that are actually able to automate using AI and run processes for
• 05:00 - 05:30 us in the background so the scenario here is that as a seller if you're in a scenario where you've got a lot of incoming leads if you're working with something where's a lot of new business coming in the time that it takes to qualify those leads and make sure that you're focused on the most important leads is something that this is going to help you reduce that time so again these are screenshots that were sort of from the Microsoft release the idea is that a customer is reaching out with a contact
• 05:30 - 06:00 us form or something similar and that lands in your CRM system so what this is able to do this is an autonomous agent that is basically just working behind the scenes and I will show you the options for tweaking it in a second you you will have some control over this but this is working behind the scenes to Monitor and review based on your guidance all of those incoming requests so instead of having to manually as a seller you you get this new inquiry and you have to go hi can you tell us what
• 06:00 - 06:30 your budget is and what you're interested in this agent is able to do that for you so this is an example here where the agent is using the information it's given and the guidance it's given to respond to that customer autonomously and actually ask for details and provide information and go back and forth to help qualify that deal this is just a closer up version of the previous uh screenshot you can see here it's actually giving
• 06:30 - 07:00 uh a quote and and things like that so if we've given it permission to do those things so the settings here and this is a uh a visual sort of um idea of what it's going to be so again this is not coming out till May but the concept here is very much the same as anything else we're seeing in autonomous agents where you are giving it guidelines and instructions on how you want it to behave so even though this is a bit of a preview screenshot the principles are the same so we're going to say here are some sample emails so that's what it's
• 07:00 - 07:30 drawing on to send those things out we've also got this communication guidance here if the lead asks this type of thing this is the kind of response that we want to give this I think will be critical to the success and usefulness of it again this is all I've got right now watch this space I will come back with more when I get my hands on this when it's real a little bit later in the year but it does come with this ability to fine-tune and to put things in that are in your brand voice your templates your guidance so it's it's not just running away making up its
• 07:30 - 08:00 own thing and then here's an example of the response so as you're building out those parameters of how you want it to behave you're getting examples of of how it might respond so the other idea here is that it's monitoring those incoming leads so this first part we've seen is that it's giving uh it's doing that automated Communications out to the customer based on the information and guidelines that you've given it but it's also monitoring your inbound leads to
• 08:00 - 08:30 help you prioritize and pick up on something that might be important so here we've got one where it's sending you a proactive alert to say hey here's a lead from someone where there is a past deal history this is something that I want to draw your attention to and we can click on this button here to get more information about it so this is now where it's drawing on information from the CRM you'll see the first two references there are sales which is your CRM system Salesforce or Dynamics and then it's actually also using a web
• 08:30 - 09:00 search based on that customer to help with the research so again this is a an autonomous agent that's pulling all of that information together for you about the customer about the organization about the interaction history that helps you get that overview of what you should be doing next again we'll just zoom in on that so those are the two agents first question here can I extend and customize them if you've got other questions please put them here I can't answer the licensing question yet I wish
• 09:00 - 09:30 I could but Microsoft always announce a product and then the licensing is announced when the thing becomes available when I know you'll know but I can't answer that one yet but put the questions in the chat for other things but this is the top one I think can I extend and customize them yes you will be able to so this is a mockup I've done of something that I think is how it will work this is using that same agent capability that we can use inside the Microsoft 365 co-pilot that is conf aable and we can also use co-pilot
• 09:30 - 10:00 Studio as the tool to extend things so again this is my mockup of these things this is not necessarily exactly how it will work but the principles here and the guidance I've had from Microsoft is that yes you will be able to extend them using co-pilot studio if you want to learn more about co-pilot Studio I've got content here but this is a tool that you will be able to use to extend those agents so this is exciting it's sort of giving you a a starting point of something that will be ready to go but for most organizations you'll want to
• 10:00 - 10:30 make that your own you might want to control the flow of conversation a certain way control the actions that takes control the knowledge sources that it's got access to and that's where copilot Studio comes in now the other thing you might be wondering is what about co-pilot for sales like that's been around for a while that's been in market for a while that exists right now does it replace that what's going on uh I I don't have a complete crystal ball into the future here obviously but there's no change to this and this sits a along sided and it is doing something
• 10:30 - 11:00 quite different I'll do a little summary at the end of all of these things but the sales agent that we just saw is an autonomous agent helping you with your leads the sales chat is a an experience where I'm in a chat experience trying to find information this one the co-pilot for sales is about bringing CRM into the productivity tools primarily Outlook word and teams so when I'm in Outlook and I'm just using my email as opposed
• 11:00 - 11:30 to a chat experience where I'm preparing for meeting I'm now in my email I'm getting my CRM context and CRM insights about purchasing and buying signals that AI is sitting alongside me in Outlook drawing on those pieces of information that I've got in my CRM it's also helping me to summarize and provide information about an opportunity in the context of Outlook setting up a meeting or reviewing email and giving me a
• 11:30 - 12:00 shortcut to updating and entering my data so this is quite a a different experience in word you can also say help me prepare for a meeting or help me prepare a document and reference these things that are going on and it is quite different from these new ones I know it's confusing when there's lots of different products coming at us I think what I'm seeing here is that there are lots of different ways to use AI with sales and that's okay people are going to choose to use different things along the the way so this one is very much
• 12:00 - 12:30 about bringing your CRM data into those applications that you're using so here's our summary and our recap hit me with the questions in the comments and I'll do my best co-pilot for sales bringing your CRM data and insights inside Outlook teams and word where you're working let's get that CRM data as part of what you're doing the sales chat experience I want to do an AI natural language chat to quickly find information about all of the things that help me as
• 12:30 - 13:00 a seller not just my CRM obviously my CRM but also all of my documents and meetings and emails and other things that I'm using at work and the sales agent this is the most Innovative one here autonomous agent that's actually keeping an eye on everything that's going on with those incoming leads highlighting things for me that I should know about and presenting that research to me as well as being able to automate that communication with the customer thanks for watching subscribe for more on AI agents all the things