How Agentic CRM Is Changing the Way Sales Teams Sell with Ryan Braastad
Ryan Braastad, who leads sales solutions at Microsoft, discusses how agentic AI and CRM are transforming sales teams through a shift from systems of record to systems of action. He shares that Microsoft's own sales teams are seeing a 20% increase in deal close rates and 13% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion using Copilot and sales agents, while emphasizing that successful AI adoption requires starting with specific use cases and fostering organizational agility rather than top-down mandates.
Summary
Grant interviews Ryan Braastad, a veteran of major tech inflection points including Forrester, Yammer, Salesforce, and Microsoft, about the future of CRM and agentic AI in sales. Ryan traces his career from a finance and operations background through sales development, product strategy, a fitness startup, and back to Microsoft, emphasizing how each role built foundational business understanding.
The core of the discussion centers on why traditional CRM has failed sales teams. Ryan argues that CRM systems have created friction rather than value—they're viewed as administrative burdens with stick-based adoption (tracking activity to avoid punishment) rather than offering immediate ROI to individual reps. Grant and Ryan agree that successful tools like Slack succeed because they deliver immediate user value, whereas CRM has been disconnected, siloed, and focused on organizational needs rather than rep enablement.
Ryan explains Microsoft's vision of moving from a "system of record" to a "system of action" through agentic CRM. Rather than requiring reps to navigate separate systems, the strategy embeds customer insights directly into the flow of work—whether that's email, Teams meetings, or Outlook. Copilot becomes the cornerstone user experience, automatically capturing meeting data, updating records, and providing contextual information without forcing reps into the CRM interface.
On concrete results, Ryan shares that Microsoft's internal sales teams are experiencing a 20% increase in deals closed with Copilot, 13% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion with sales qualification agents, and one SMB team increased revenue per seller by 9.4% after adopting agents. He cites a customer example (Sandvik) that saved 120+ hours in lead qualification over two weeks through a pilot program.
Regarding adoption challenges, Ryan emphasizes that the most successful implementations start with a specific, narrow use case where the organization lacks resources—not a company-wide mandate. Customers who see value then expand adoption incrementally. He also notes that governance, trust, security, and permissions have been foundational to Microsoft's approach from the beginning.
Grant introduces the concept of a "sales lab" approach—running regular sales hackathons where cross-functional teams (SDRs, AEs, CS, marketing, engineers) collaborate to identify problems in the GTM motion and test solutions, with successful approaches becoming organizational standards. This democratizes innovation and gives ownership to frontline employees rather than relying on top-down directives.
On the distinction between enhanced AI CRM and truly agentic CRM, Ryan describes agentic CRM as orchestrating multiple specialized agents: Copilot for user interaction, Autopilots for unattended long-tail tasks, and specialized agents for sales qualification, data enrichment, and customer journey management. These agents create a "virtuous cycle of data" where improved data quality enables better agent performance and better Copilot outputs.
Both speakers agree that in the current pace of change, organizations cannot afford to wait for clarity or "normal" conditions to return—they must stay agile, test continuously, and avoid sitting still, as competitors will move faster. Ryan notes that ROI as traditionally measured may not apply when the landscape shifts every few months.
About this episode
<p>CRM is finally moving closer to where sellers actually work.</p><p>In this episode, John sits down with Ryan Braastad from Microsoft to talk about agentic CRM, AI adoption, productivity tools, and why the old system-of-record model has created so much friction for sales teams. Ryan shares lessons from Forrester, Yammer, Salesforce, his own startup, and Microsoft as he explains how the next wave of CRM can move closer to the flow of work.</p><p>If you are in sales leadership, RevOps, enablement, or go-to-market strategy, this conversation gives you a practical look at what AI should actually do for reps: reduce admin, improve data quality, support better habits, help leaders coach more effectively, and give sellers more time to focus on customers and revenue.</p><p>Want to prepare your sales team for the next version of CRM before the market moves again? <u><a href="http://www.jbarrows.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Visit www.jbarrows.com</a></u> and learn how you can <strong>Make It Happen</strong>.</p><p><strong>What You’ll Learn</strong></p><ul><li>Why CRM is shifting from a system of record to a system of action</li><li>How AI can support sellers inside the tools they already use every day</li><li>Why CRM adoption has often failed to give reps a clear benefit</li><li>How sales leaders can think about revenue per seller as AI becomes part of the workflow</li><li>Why AI adoption should start with one specific use case, not a company-wide free-for-all</li><li>What agentic CRM actually means and why it is different from bolting AI onto old software</li></ul><br /><p><strong>Ryan Braastad</strong> is a customer-obsessed tech marketing leader at Microsoft, where he works on product strategy across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, helping shape the future of agentic CRM and AI-powered productivity tools. His background spans Forrester, Yammer, Salesforce, and a self-founded fitness startup, with experience across product marketing, go-to-market strategy, productivity, collaboration, enterprise social, and business applications.</p><p><strong>Connect with Ryan Braastad:</strong></p><p>LinkedIn: <u><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbraastad/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbraastad/</a></u></p><p><strong>John Barrows</strong> is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution—helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today’s AI-driven sales environment.</p><p><strong>Connect with John Barrows:</strong></p><p>LinkedIn: <u><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/</a></u> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbnBBemdVT2pBZ1dhY0szYzlzOGUzYURaekEtUXxBQ3Jtc0trNkZEWVBuS3dOOWZaZ0pZVFNrOGtNNHpuNjZWdGx0aVBhX2dNODRTdjVKVG1tS0xnRlJXWk5WOUpVdzk1YzQ1R3ZoTFhRZ3pxeFFibXU5WnFlVGJtVXl5dDUzM1JqdnkwRGRMaC05VTZ2YmNFLTFiSQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fjohnbarrows%2F&v=bULevYtP1Ds" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a></p><p>Instagram: <u><a href="https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/</a></u> </p><p>TikTok: <u><a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows</a></u> </p><p>Check out John's Membership:<a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbGZxSnNVNDNhZU1zTGlfUHNWX19ZemtTLTM3QXxBQ3Jtc0tuY0sxajVtV1ZsdW5TMGtlV2tWTmNDTGVtUUZ6a1J6VmlMVi1DdU5uQ1cwRjRqdjF2ZlVqcXFveUtBWkp1WnZXSEZqQzA1TnJUclAxRVZWNm9fRjFxSlllYjdoTEd1VHFUUEFJbDdCSkR4SEU4TVgzTQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.jbarrows.com%2Fpages%2Findividual-membership%3Fref%3D3edab1&v=bULevYtP1Ds" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://go.jbarrows.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://go.jbarrows.com/</a></u> </p><p>Join John's Newsletter: <u><a href="https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter</a></u> </p>
Key Insights
- Ryan observed that CRM has failed because it created administrative burden without direct value to individual sales reps, relying on punishment-based adoption (tracking for compliance) rather than earning adoption through immediate ROI
- Microsoft's internal sales teams achieved a 20% increase in deal close rates and 13% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion by using Copilot and sales agents, demonstrating that agentic AI delivers measurable business impact when properly implemented
- Ryan argues that the shift from system of record to system of action means embedding customer insights into the flow of work (email, Teams, Outlook) rather than requiring reps to navigate a separate CRM interface
- Successful AI adoption in organizations starts with solving a specific, narrow use case where resources are constrained rather than implementing company-wide mandates, as demonstrated by Sandvik's two-week pilot that saved 120+ hours in lead qualification
- Ryan identified that agents create a virtuous cycle of data where high-quality data input enables agents to perform better, which in turn improves data quality, which enables better outputs from tools like Copilot
- Grant and Ryan both emphasized that agile, cross-functional sales hackathons democratize innovation by empowering frontline employees (especially high performers and younger staff with AI fluency) to identify and test solutions rather than waiting for leadership directives
- Ryan argues that traditional ROI metrics may not apply in the current environment because the technological landscape shifts every few months, making six-month forecasts unreliable and requiring continuous movement and testing
- Ryan cautioned that while Salesforce promoted Einstein AI over 10-15 years ago, the promise failed because output quality, data complexity, and user experience were not mature enough—contrasting with today's generative AI which has substantially better usability and output quality
Topics
Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Alright, this one's a big one for multiple reasons. I have been fighting the Microsoft fight for years. years, like all my previous teams, colleagues, partners, and so many more people have all tried to get me to switch to Google. And I've held the line. I have been an Office 365, Word, Doc, all of it for years. And I think it's going to start paying off. So when I got the chance to sit down with…
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