Salesforce has released findings from its State of Sales report. According to the survey of more than 4,000 sales professionals, including 100 in Singapore, AI is a top tactic to drive company growth this year.
The data also reveals why: Sales teams are increasingly stretched between changing customer demands and limited bandwidth to meet them. The real drag on productivity, the research suggests, isn’t effort or skill; it’s administrative bottlenecks, a challenge hitting Gen Z sellers hardest.
This year, sellers are turning to AI and agents to do more with what they have: 82% of Singapore sales leaders with agents say they’re critical for meeting business demands.
“In Singapore’s competitive business landscape, buyers respond to consultative and value-driven sales approaches. At the same time, sales leaders today grapple with finding the right talent & capacity to deliver that level of engagement,” said Paul Carvouni, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce ASEAN.
“Agentic AI is the strategic lever that allows businesses to offload time-consuming administrative tasks and empower sales teams to focus on quality sales conversations that truly drive business growth and sharpen competitive advantage in the region.”
Sellers are doubling down on AI agents and deploying them across the entire sales cycle.
- AI adoption in sales is already mainstream: 80% of Singapore sales organizations currently use some form of AI for tasks like prospecting, forecasting, lead scoring, or drafting emails.
- Singapore sellers using AI report meaningful value: 91% say AI deepens customer understanding, and 83% say it makes their job less stressful.
- AI agent adoption is accelerating quickly: 50% of Singapore sellers say they’ve used agents, and 44% plan to by 2027. Once fully implemented, Singapore sellers expect agents to cut prospect research time by 32% and email drafting by 34%, giving sales teams meaningful time back in their day.
Top-performing sellers are 1.7 times more likely to use prospecting AI agents for outreach than underperformers.
- 70% of Singapore sales reps point to cold calling as the worst part of their job, yet a strong pipeline requires more contacts and more engagement than teams can deliver on their own.
- Despite devoting nearly one full day of their workweek to prospecting efforts, 71% Singapore sellers say they lack bandwidth to do adequate cold outreach.
- To close the capacity gap, 46% of Singapore sales professionals are using AI for prospecting, with another 49% planning to do so in the future.
- 92% of global sellers with AI agents say it benefits their prospecting efforts.
- Globally, high performers — sellers who have substantially increased year-over-year revenue — are 1.7 times more likely to use agents to help with prospecting than underperformers who merely maintained or decreased YOY revenue.
Administrative friction is hitting the lower rungs of the career ladder hardest.
- The grunt work tax is real: While the average seller spends 40% of their time selling, Gen Z reps overall are trapped at just 35% — losing approximately two full hours each week to manual data entry that senior reps spend researching prospects and building relationships.
- They’re also navigating a mentorship drought:
- 46% rarely get feedback on their sales conversations.
- 47% don’t get enough roleplay opportunities before customer calls.
- When asked what prevents effective enablement, Gen Z points to lack of manager time as the #1 obstacle, while millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers cite lack of access to data and insights.
- These factors have led to a significant shift in workforce sentiment, where Gen Z is more open to leaving their job than any other generation, citing a lack of advancement opportunities as the primary driver.
Sales teams — particularly high-performing ones — are tackling messy data to better support AI initiatives.
- To get the most from AI, sales professionals are focusing on trusted, connected data — with high performers leading the charge.
- Over half of Singapore sales leaders with AI (64%) say disconnected systems are slowing down their AI initiatives.
- To help, 85% of Singapore sales professionals are focusing on data cleansing — doing the unglamorous but essential work of removing duplicates, correcting errors or omissions, and standardizing formats across siloed systems to maximize their AI returns.
- High performers take it further:
- 79% prioritize data hygiene compared with only 54% of underperformers overall.