Agentforce SDR Agent: What Is It, and How to Customize It?

Agentforce SDR (Sales Development Representative) Agent acts as your digital sales assistant. It efficiently manages preliminary sales tasks such as gathering new leads, answering their initial questions, qualifying their interest, and scheduling meetings.  By centralizing all lead data, often on a robust CRM like the Salesforce platform, it ensures only the most promising prospects are handed off to your human sales team.

It allows your representatives to focus on strategic tasks such as closing deals and building customer relationships by offering on-call support and personalized negotiation. 

An SDR agent is an extension to your sales team without increasing headcount, making your entire sales operation more efficient and effective. 

Key Features of Salesforce SDR Agent 

Initial Engagement & AI-Powered Interactions

The agent utilizes Natural Language Processing models and Salesforce Einstein AI capabilities to understand and interpret customer queries. It gathers information from various sources, including Salesforce products, primarily Sales Cloud in Salesforce, and third-party applications, while delivering clear, context-aware responses so that every interaction feels personalized and on point.   

Personalized Outreach

The agent uses Salesforce Data Cloud to unify data across multiple sources, enabling hyper-personalized communications. It analyzes the historical interactions, purchase behaviour, and demographic data of your prospects and accordingly sends customized emails and messages to new leads. For this, you must understand what is Salesforce Data Cloud and how does it works. 

This level of personalized interaction boosts engagement, improves response rates, and ultimately increases the chances of converting leads to customers.  

Real-Time Lead Qualification

The SDR agent uses the Atlas Reasoning Engine to understand the buying intent of the prospect. Based on its interaction, it considers the budget and timeline. Leveraging Salesforce Einstein AI, it scores each lead in real-time based on how they interact, so your team only focuses on the most promising prospects.

Automated Meeting Scheduling

The agent seamlessly integrates with your Outlook and Google calendars. Once the lead is qualified, it schedules meetings directly into sales reps’ calendars with respect to availability rules. This eliminates double-booking and back-and-forth emailing. You can inquire about the available days and slots for the meeting from the agent. 

Behavior-Driven Automated Follow-Ups

Agentforce’s SDR agent ensures timely follow-ups based on leads’ behaviour, such as email opens, webinar attendance, and other previous interactions, through the relevant communication channel. This helps in nurturing the prospects through the pipeline. Moreover, any response from the customer’s side is notified to the sales representative in real time. 

Seamless Handoffs to Human Reps 

The agents transfer high-intent leads to the appropriate sales rep based on skillset criteria for deeper engagement and closing. It shares a 360-degree customer view with interaction history and more with the rep for better responses and chances to improve deal closures. 

Multichannel Engagement

The SDR agent seamlessly operates across various communication channels, including email, web chat, Slack, and more. This agent helps you reach and acquire leads across every channel where they are available.

How to Set Up An Agentforce SDR Agent

Salesforce Org Requirements: 

You require Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions with Einstein for Sales.

Here are the detailed steps for Agentforce SDR agent setup:

• Log in to your Agentforce platform. 
• Go to Setup > Agentforce SDR Setup 

It contains four primary steps: 

1. Enable Agentforce SDR 

• Go to the homepage.
• Click on the Settings Icon > Setup. 
• Search SDR in the Quick Find Box setting. 
• Click on Agentforce SDR.
• Click on the ‘Enable All’ button at the top-right corner.

You need to enable the following features: 

• Einstein Activity Capture: It logs data from reps’ emails and calendars into Salesforce, so you get all the data in one place. 

Note: Agentforce SDR requires user-level authentication for EAC rather than Org-level authentication.

• Salesforce Inbox: It integrates Outlook and Gmail. 
• Automated Actions: It adds, removes, and manages prospects in outreach cadences that are structured sequences of communication. 
• Einstein Generative AI: It drafts emails and creates summaries.
• Sales Engagement: It enables autonomous lead nurturing and qualification. 
• Data Cloud: It allows two-way data access, storing, auditing, feedback, the Einstein Trust Layer, and analytics capabilities.

• Click Enable All.
• To enable Data Cloud, go to Data Cloud Setup > Get Started.
• After enabling all supporting features, the option to enable Agentforce SDR will be activated.
• Click on the checkbox to enable Agentforce SDR.
• Click “Got it.”

2. Create an SDR Agent User 

An SDR agent user is a user in Salesforce who keeps a check on reporting, record keeping, and management as other users do.

• Click on ‘Go To User Setup.’
• You will be redirected to the New User page along with the prefilled required “User License” & “Profile.”
• Fill in the required details to create a user.

2.1. Assign Permissions 

You need to assign permissions to your SDR agent in order to allow its working. 

• Click “Edit Assignment.”
• For the same user, click on “Permission Set Assignments.”

• Add the “Agentforce SDR agent” permission set.

• Click Save.

2.2. Einstein Activity Capture 

Allow this feature to let an SDR agent user access your email and calendar applications. Add it to an EAC configuration.

• Click “Go to EAC Settings.”

• Click “Add Contact and Event Sync.”
• A pop-up to add “Google,” “Microsoft Office 365,” or “ Microsoft Exchange ” will appear.

• Select the required email and calendar services. 
• Click Next.
• Select the user connection preferences from the User Level or Google Workspace Marketplace App.

• Click Next.
• Enter a name for your EAC configuration, and click Next.

2.3. Review Sync Settings

Review the Email, Event, and Contacts sync settings to ensure two-way data flow and updates. 

• Review the sync settings, then click on Next.

• Verify all the settings and edit if needed.
• Click Next.

2.4. Add Users and Profiles  

This allows you to select the users and profiles to whom the configurations will be applied. 

• On this page, select the Agentforce SDR agent you’ve created from the Available list and move it to the Selected list using the right arrow.

• Click Finish

3. Grant Access to Your SDR Agent

• Go to Setup > Users 
• Select the user you want to grant permissions to manage and use the SDR Agent.
• Go to “Permission Set Assignment.”
• Click “Edit Assignment.”

• Add 5 Permission Sets
  • “Configure Agentforce SDR Agent”
  • “Sales Engagement Cadence Creator”
  • “Automated Actions User”
  • “Use Agentforce SDR Agent”
  • “Sales Engagement User”
• Click “Save.”

4. Configure and Activate Your SDR Agent

• Return to “Setup > Agentforce SDR Setup.”
• Open step 4

• Click “Go to Agent Builder.”
• You will be redirected to the “New Agent” page.
• Select “Agentforce Sales Development Rep” Agent.

• Click Next

4.1. Add Topics: 

Topics describe the category of a job. It explains how the agent will act and behave regarding a certain job. 

• Select the standard topics that you want to add to the agent.
• Click Next.

4.2. Describe Your Agent’s Job In Detail.

• Fill in the description as to what job your agent will do, the role of your agent, and details about your company.  

• Select the Agentforce SDR user record you created.

• Check the “Keep a record of conversations with enhanced event logs to review agent behaviour” option if you want to track the event logs.

Note: Enhanced event logs consume Data Cloud credits.

• Click Next

4.3. Select the Default Language & Tone

• It is the way that the agent expresses your brand personality in its messages, such as through the choice of words, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Click Next

4.4. Upload Files 

• You can upload files to your agent so that the agent can generate accurate, relevant answers for your business.

Note: This feature requires Data Cloud to be enabled

• Click Next

4.5. Set Up Engagement Rules 

Engagement rules define how the agent interacts with leads. Whenever a lead/contact/person account is created or updated, we can set a condition. When the condition is satisfied , then that particular lead/contact or account will be assigned to an SDR Agent, and he will start outreaching with that record.

• To connect an email account to your Agentforce SDR agent.
  
  • Click Connect an Account. 
  • Accept the terms and then enter the email address. This is the external email account that the agent uses to send emails. Adding the email account here lets Einstein Activity Capture, a tool to keep your Salesforce and email data up to date, sync the SDR agent’s emails between Salesforce and your email application.
    
• Select the number of email attempts, including the initial email and subsequent nudges, you want the agent to perform. 
• Then choose the difference in time between those attempts.
• Choose the maximum number of replies the agent can send in response to a lead’s questions. The agent answers lead questions using the information you upload in the Data Library tab.
• Set an Outreach Schedule, i.e., when will the SDR agent initiate interaction with the leads. 
• Click on Create. 

Congratulations! Your agent is successfully created.

• Click on the ‘Activate’ button to activate your agent.  

To Sum Up

Agentforce Sales Development Representative (SDR) Agent is an intelligent, efficiency‑driven solution designed to optimize your sales process from the very first interaction. By automating initial outreach and qualification, it lays a foundation for downstream activities like personalized negotiation and nurturing prospects so that only the high-quality leads are forwarded to your human sales representatives for engagement and successful conversion.

To fully leverage the capabilities of the SDR Agent within your organization, it’s important to hire Salesforce certified developer. A skilled professional can design and configure accurate descriptions for the agent, seamlessly aligning them with your sales objectives. This not only reduces the manual workload for your reps but also boosts productivity across your sales pipeline, enabling your team to concentrate on closing more deals and driving growth.