Will Salesforce Win the AI Era Like It Won Cloud? | Kris Billmaier

Is Salesforce the dominant player in the AI platform shift, or the incumbent about to be disrupted? Kris Billmaier, EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products, sat down with Sophie Buonassisi at Salesforce Tower to answer that directly.Kris runs the business behind Sales Cloud's 26-year run and its rebrand into Agentforce Sales. He makes the case that CRM is becoming "agentic revenue orchestration," that the category needs a new name, and that the future is headless. For Salesforce, that means surfaced inside Slack, ChatGPT, Gemini, and wherever sellers actually work. He also shares the internal numbers, including an engagement agent that worked the leads Salesforce had always ignored and generated over $100M in pipeline in eight months.What you'll learn:- Why 60% of a seller's time goes to non-selling work, and which agents remove it- The case for renaming the category from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration- What "headless CRM" means, and why Salesforce integrated with ChatGPT and Gemini- How one leader manages 100 reps plus the equivalent of 400 agents- Why the Momentum acquisition matters: "memory fragments" that cut an 8,000-word meeting to the 800 words that count- Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers, not fewer- How hiring shifted from "what did you do" to "how do you build" (and why a PowerPoint is now a red flag)- Pricing in the agent era: seats, flex credits, and a coming leads-worked outcome metric- Why Kris says we're not in a SaaSpocalypse, and how a 70,000-person company still ships weeklyThank you to our sponsor:Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial. See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.comChapters:00:00 Intro01:12 Welcome, and the Salesforce platform-shift question02:25 How Salesforce adapted across cloud, mobile, social, and AI03:32 Why Sales Cloud became Agentforce Sales05:17 Renaming the category: from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration06:56 Will anyone log into a CRM again?08:09 Agentforce in one line, and the seller's Monday morning09:08 Build vs. buy, vibe coding, and the context moat11:01 The Momentum acquisition and memory fragments13:04 Sellers managing teams of agents, and the $100M pipeline story15:03 The agent stack: prospecting, engagement, pipeline, quoting16:27 Efficiency, accuracy, and auto-generated forecasts18:03 Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers19:16 What the modern sales role looks like20:08 Sponsor: Primer21:34 How AI changed hiring: from "what" to "how"23:48 The window: shipping weekly, not on three annual releases25:13 What product-market fit means now26:05 Software vs. services, and the $10T question28:10 The complexity problem: easy by default, advanced by choice30:07 Go-to-market evolution and consolidating the stack32:07 Leading as a player-coach33:16 Being "chief repetition officer" and educating the field35:00 How a 70,000-person company stays agile36:48 The biggest lesson from Marc Benioff37:57 Pricing: seats, flex credits, and outcome-based metrics40:53 Are we in a SaaSpocalypse? The full answer42:08 Where Kris gets his learnings43:07 World Cup picksKris Billmaier (EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales, Salesforce)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisbillmaier/Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforceSophie Buonassisi (Host, SVP at GTMnow/GTMfund)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/X: https://x.com/sophiebuonaAbout Kris Billmaier:Kris Billmaier is EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products at Salesforce, where he leads the business formerly known as Sales Cloud. He oversees the company's agentic sales portfolio, including its prospecting, engagement, pipeline, and quoting agents, and the Momentum acquisition that powers its conversational data layer.About GTMnow: GTMnow shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest. The media brand is owned and operated by venture firm, GTMfund.Visit us on: https://gtmnow.comFollow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnowFollow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_nowFollow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.