This is the second blog in the series “Design Your First Salesforce AI Agent with Agentforce : From Sales Persona to Automation“.
Let’s understand the persona
💡 Why This Matters
AI agents are most effective when grounded in real workflows.
Before building, it’s important to understand the end user — what they’re responsible for, how they do their job, where friction occurs, and what workarounds they use.
Whether triggered by user input, system events, or data signals, agents deliver the most value when designed with a clear view of how work actually gets done.
🔑 What You’ll Learn
How to define your primary user persona (e.g., Account Executive)
What KPIs drive their behavior and performance
How their work ties to business outcomes like pipeline and revenue
Where automation can align with strategic goals — not just daily admin chores
Our target persona is Alex, an Account Executive (AE) responsible for both new logo acquisition and expansion revenue.
⚠️ The Core Problem
Alex is a strategic (and expensive) seller — but too much of their day is lost to:
- Manual data entry and disconnected tools
- Constant context-switching just to prep for calls
- Remembering and chasing follow-ups across dozens of deals
📉 This friction creates real risks:
- Missed follow-ups → silent deal killers
- Stalled deals → lost momentum
- Weak engagement → unpredictable cycles
- Missed upsells → revenue left on the table
🤖 The Automation Opportunity
AI agents can eliminate digital grunt work so AEs can focus on revenue-driving activities:
- Strategic conversations
- Relationship-building
- Closing deals
📈 The Payoff: Immediate & Scalable
A well-designed AI agent delivers measurable impact. Even small time savings (e.g. 10 mins/meeting) compound into:
- ✅ Reduces repetitive admin
- ✅ Improves CRM hygiene — without rep resistance
- ✅ Drives best practices and repeatable sales motion
- ✅ Enables smarter, faster selling — in the flow of work
Agents unlock time, consistency, and momentum at scale.
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) and AI Opportunity Mapping
💡Why This Matters
AI is most effective when it supports the actual work reps are trying to get done. By structuring the rep’s day into repeatable jobs to be done, teams can identify where automation will drive the most meaningful impact — and avoid building features that don’t get used.
This approach not only aligns automation with real needs, but also accelerates time to value. It enables teams to start small, focus on high-friction moments, and deliver early wins without needing to solve everything at once. JTBD also brings clarity and control to the design process, allowing for thoughtful guardrails that improve trust, accuracy, and consistency at scale.
🔑 What You’ll Learn
How to map the rep’s daily workflow into structured job categories
How to identify where time is lost, friction builds, and context switching happens
How to spot patterns where AI can reduce manual effort and boost consistency
How to tailor your agent to your specific team’s workflow and sales motion
This step focuses on understanding the rep’s actual workflow. It’s about mapping out what they do each day — the recurring tasks, the systems they use, and where time and effort are spent.
This process looks at how reps manage pipeline, engage with accounts, and keep deals moving.
We’ve grouped the work into three categories:
- Managing the book of business
- Managing opportunities
- Managing client engagement
This simple organizing principle helps ensure the agent can reason clearly, respond accurately, and stay grounded in how work actually gets done.
Each category includes specific jobs, the steps involved, the friction points, and the systems reps touch while doing them.
This gives you a clear view of where AI can reduce repetitive work and improve execution.
👉 These examples reflect common day-to-day activities for a sales rep, but responsibilities may vary depending on your company’s structure, territory model, and sales motion. For the purposes of this blog, we’ll go with a representative sales persona focused on outbound prospecting, opportunity management, and client engagement — but feel free to adapt based on your own team’s workflows.
📒 Managing the Book of Business
Below are representative or example activities most reps do to stay on top of their territory and uncover new opportunities. They happen regularly and involve toggling across multiple systems.
🏗️ Managing Opportunities
Once a deal is in the pipeline, reps spend time progressing and updating it — mostly inside Salesforce.
📅 Managing Client Engagement
This category includes all the tasks reps handle before, during, and after meetings — often split between Salesforce, email, slides, and call recording tools.
The three aggregated Jobs To Be Done categories give you a structured view of the rep’s daily workflow. They highlight:
- What tasks are performed regularly
- Where friction, repetition, and tool switching occur
- Which systems are involved in each activity
- How work is distributed across different parts of the sales process
This sets the foundation for evaluating each job by friction, impact, and implementation effort — so you can prioritize which workflows are best suited for automation in the next step.
Checkout the next blog in the series here.
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