.png)
The AI agent landscape is heating up. But as demand accelerates, so does confusion, and “AI-powered” chaos.
With nearly every vendor positioning their solution as an “AI agent,” sales teams are left to separate real autonomy from repackaged automation.
According to Gartner®: “Vendors are actively trying to market their capabilities as ‘AI agents.’ This makes it difficult for enterprises to differentiate between true AI agent solutions — characterized by features such as goal-setting, adaptive decision making and autonomy —and fancy bots or conversational assistants.”
To avoid costly mistakes, it’s not enough to see a good demo or hear the right buzzwords.
In new research, Gartner® recommends six categories of questions to ask AI agent vendors.
Here are our top takeaways from that report:
Start by asking: What exactly will this agent do for us — and how is it autonomous, not just automated?
Focus on how well the solution supports the outcomes your sales org cares about. Can it perceive, decide, and act without constant human oversight, or does it require prompting? Does it operate in a defined environment, or is it just routing queries to a knowledge base? Are its outputs comparable to those of your best seller(s)?
Don’t settle for surface-level explanations of LLMs or APIs. Gartner notes, “It is critical to move beyond surface-level capabilities and probe deeply into architecture, decision-making models, alignment safeguards, governance mechanisms and pricing models.”
Look under the hood. Is the solution monolithic or modular? Can it integrate with your current CRM, CPQ, and pipeline tools?
Hidden costs often come from how usage is defined.
Ask about pricing predictability: Are tokens, API calls, or session counts metered, or are costs fixed per user? What’s the total cost of ownership over time — and how easy is it to test at low risk before scaling?
For vendors offering free trials or freemium plans, take extra security precautions. Ensure they don’t use your data to train their models and that they have rigorous protections in place for free and paid users.
Does the vendor use proprietary models, third-party LLMs, or both? Can you control how decisions are made — and under what guardrails?
Gartner® encourages leaders to evaluate:
AI agents that operate in customer-facing or decision-making contexts must be safe, explainable, and auditable.
Ask for:
Any vendor who is not transparent about your company and customer data is used and protected should be evaluated with skepticism.
Perhaps the most critical: Does it work?
Ask for real-world deployment examples and success stories— not just sandbox demos. Can the vendor share benchmarks, customer outcomes, and ROI proof points? Will they let you trial the solution?
The rise of AI agents presents incredible promise for sales execution but also significant risk if the wrong platform is chosen. With agent-washing on the rise, asking the right questions is your best defense.
Easier said than done in this novel space, so we recommend the Gartner® report as a start to building your evaluation plan, your credibility check, and your blueprint for intelligent AI investment.
Download the Gartner® report: Selecting an AI Agent Solution.
Source: Gartner, Selecting an AI Agent Solution: Questions to Challenge Vendor Claims, Jim Hare, Gene Alvarez, Tom Coshow, & Deepak Seth, 12 June 2025.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
.avif)
.png)
.png)
.png)
