AI Agents Will Outnumber Sellers 10-to-1 by 2028 

By 2028, artificial intelligence agents will outnumber sellers by 10 to one, yet fewer than 40 percent of sellers will say that those agents improved productivity, research firm Gartner predicts in a new report.

"Sales organizations are moving quickly toward a future where AI agents are embedded across the commercial function, but more agents will not automatically mean more productivity," says Dan Gottlieb, a vice president analyst in the Gartner Sales practice. "Without the right data foundation, workflow integration and seller experience, [chief sales officers] risk creating agent sprawl with more digital activity but little improvement in seller impact."

The research suggests the biggest challenge for CSOs won't be deploying AI agents, but ensuring they deliver measurable value, according to Gartner, which warns that organizations risk creating agent sprawl if AI is layered onto fragmented data, workflows, and user experiences.

Sales organizations are already trapped in a productivity paradox, with increasing investments in talent, tools, and processes delivering stubbornly flat returns. Additionally, 60 percent of CSOs say their revenue numbers are largely driven by elements outside of their control, underscoring the misalignment many leaders feel between productivity investments and commercial outcomes.

Closing that gap will require CSOs to address the systems that determine whether AI agents can create value in the first place. Gartner predicts that by 2028, CSOs who overhaul data, automation, and user experience will be five times more likely to gain ROI from AI than those choosing quick fixes.

"AI agents should not be viewed as a shortcut to sales productivity," Gottlieb says. "They are only as effective as the systems they operate within. If those systems are fragmented, the agents will scale the fragmentation. If the systems are redesigned around seller judgment and customer value, agents can help create meaningful capacity."

To avoid agent sprawl and turn AI agents into meaningful productivity gains, Gartner urges CSOs to focus on the following three actions:

• Own AI-forward sales infrastructure: Build a centralized context layer that connects enterprise data, systems, and seller judgment so AI agents can generate more relevant, enterprise-specific outputs.
• Orchestrate winning sales behaviors: Use AI to reduce administrative burden, scale top-performer expertise, and provide managers with data-driven insights that improve coaching and decision making.
• Harvest AI's impact on sales capacity: Move beyond tracking AI only through time savings and measure how it expands seller capacity, improves effectiveness, and supports commercial outcomes.

"Sales leaders should be asking where agents can remove friction, improve decision quality, and create capacity, not simply where agents can be deployed," Gottlieb says. "The organizations that get this right will not just have more AI in the sales function. They will have a better sales system."