What is an AI sales agent?

An AI sales agent is an automated conversational system that engages website visitors in real time, qualifies them as leads by asking targeted questions, answers pricing and product questions, and books demos or meetings — all without human involvement. Unlike a static contact form, it holds a two-way conversation and captures lead information naturally during the exchange.

Can an AI sales agent replace SDRs?

An AI sales agent replaces the repetitive parts of an SDR's job — initial qualification, answering FAQs, collecting contact info, and booking meetings. It does not replace the relationship-building and negotiation that happens further down the funnel. Most teams use AI sales agents to handle the first touch so human reps can focus on high-intent prospects who are ready for a real conversation.

How does an AI sales agent qualify leads?

An AI sales agent qualifies leads by asking configurable questions during the conversation — company size, budget range, use case, timeline, and decision-making authority. It scores responses against your ideal customer profile and routes qualified leads to your sales team with a full conversation transcript. Unqualified visitors still get their questions answered, but your team only sees the leads that match your criteria.

How to Set Up an AI Sales Agent That Qualifies Leads 24/7

Contact Forms Are a Dead End

A contact form asks for a name, an email, and a message. Then it sits in an inbox until someone gets to it. By the time your rep follows up, that lead has already talked to two competitors.

An AI sales agent does something different. It starts a conversation the moment someone lands on your site. It asks what they are looking for. It answers pricing questions with real numbers. It asks qualifying questions — budget, timeline, team size, decision authority. It captures their email and phone number naturally, inside the conversation. And if the lead is qualified, it books a demo right there.

No form fills. No 24-hour response delay. No leads slipping through because your team was asleep or in a meeting.

That is what we built Sphinx Agent to do. Here is exactly how to set it up.

Step-by-Step Setup

Step 1: Create Your Account

Go to sphinxagent.ai and sign up. Free tier gives you one agent with up to 100 conversations per month. No credit card required.

Step 2: Create a New Agent

From your dashboard, click Create Agent. Select Sales Agent as the type. This pre-loads a conversation flow built for lead qualification — greeting, discovery questions, objection handling, and meeting booking. You can customize every step.

Step 3: Configure Your Product Info

This is where you feed the agent your actual business context. Upload or paste:

Pricing tiers — exact numbers, what is included at each level, annual vs. monthly
Product features — what you do, what you do not do, what is on your roadmap
Common objections — "too expensive," "we already use X," "not sure we need this" — and how you want the agent to respond
Competitor positioning — how you compare, where you win, where you lose honestly
Integration questions — what tools you connect with, what APIs are available

The more specific you are here, the better the agent performs. Do not dump your entire website. Give it the information a good SDR would have memorized.

Step 4: Set Up Qualifying Questions

Define the questions your agent should ask to determine if a lead is worth your team's time. Standard B2B qualification looks like:

What problem are you trying to solve?
How many people are on your team?
What is your budget range?
When are you looking to get started?
Are you the decision maker?

The agent weaves these into the conversation naturally. It does not fire them off like a survey. If a visitor asks about pricing first, the agent answers that, then transitions into qualification.

Step 5: Embed the Widget

Once your agent is configured, grab the embed code from the dashboard and drop it into your site. One line of HTML:

<script src="https://sphinxagent.ai/widget/sphinx-widget.js" data-agent-id="your-agent-id"></script>

That is it. The widget appears in the bottom-right corner of your page. Works on any site — WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, static HTML, React, whatever.

What to Train Your Sales Agent On

Garbage in, garbage out. The agent is only as good as the knowledge you give it. Here is exactly what to include:

Pricing tiers: Every plan name, price, and what is included. If you offer discounts for annual billing, say so. If enterprise pricing is custom, the agent should say "let me connect you with our team for a custom quote" instead of making up numbers.
Feature comparisons: A clear matrix of what each tier gets. The agent will reference this constantly.
Common objections: List the top 10 reasons people say no. Write the response you want for each one. Be honest — if a competitor genuinely does something better, acknowledge it and redirect to your strengths.
Competitor positioning: Who your buyers compare you against and why they should choose you. Keep it factual.
Integration questions: What CRMs, payment systems, and third-party tools you support. API availability. Zapier or webhook support.
Company policies: Refund policy, SLAs, data handling, security certifications. Prospects ask about these more than you think.

Lead Capture and Export

The agent captures lead data automatically during the conversation. No forms needed.

Email and phone detection: When a visitor shares their email or phone number in conversation, the agent detects it and saves it to the lead record. No separate input field required.
Conversation transcripts: Every conversation is logged in full. Your sales team can read the exact exchange before their first call. They know what the prospect asked, what objections came up, and what the agent said.
Lead scoring: Based on the qualifying questions, each lead gets a score. High-intent leads get flagged immediately.
Export: Download leads as CSV or connect via webhook to push them directly into your CRM — HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, or anything that accepts webhooks.

Your reps stop wasting time on unqualified leads. They pick up the phone already knowing the prospect's budget, timeline, and pain points.

Inbound vs. Outbound — Know the Difference

Let us be clear about what this is and what it is not.

An AI sales agent on your website handles inbound leads. These are people who found you — through search, ads, referrals, content. They are already interested. The agent's job is to convert that interest into a qualified conversation and a booked meeting.

This is not an outbound tool. It does not send cold emails. It does not scrape LinkedIn. It does not do cold outreach. If you want outreach AI agents for cold prospecting, that is a different category entirely.

The distinction matters because the economics are completely different. Inbound AI sales agents have high conversion rates because the visitor already wants to talk. Outbound AI has low response rates and high spam risk. We built Sphinx Agent for inbound because that is where the math works.

Channels: Where Your Agent Lives

Your AI sales agent is not limited to a chat bubble on your homepage. Sphinx Agent supports multiple channels:

Web widget on landing pages: Embed the widget on your pricing page, product pages, or any high-intent landing page. This is where most conversions happen. A visitor reading your pricing page has questions — the agent answers them instantly.
Shareable chat links in email campaigns: Generate a direct link to your agent. Drop it in email drip sequences, newsletters, or outbound follow-ups. The recipient clicks and lands in a conversation, not a form. Use this for re-engagement campaigns — "Have questions? Chat with our AI sales rep."
Telegram for communities: Connect your agent to a Telegram bot. Useful if your audience lives in Telegram groups — crypto, developer tools, international markets. The agent runs the same qualification flow inside Telegram.

Same agent, same training data, same qualifying questions — across all channels. Conversations from every channel feed into one dashboard.

Pricing

Sphinx Agent pricing is built for teams that need results, not enterprises that need a demo of a demo.

Free: 1 agent, 100 messages/month, web widget, community support. No credit card.
Starter — $19/month: 5 agents, 5,000 messages/month, all knowledge base sources, lead capture, email support. Right tier for a single-channel funnel testing AI inbound.
Pro — $49/month: 25 agents, 25,000 messages/month, voice phone number, 40+ AI voices, all channels (web, link, Telegram), advanced analytics, priority support. Where most sales teams land.
Business — $99/month: 50 agents, 50,000 messages/month, 5 phone numbers, white-label branding, 24/7 support. For agencies and multi-product SaaS running parallel campaigns.
Enterprise — $249/month: 100 agents, 250,000 messages/month, 10 phone numbers, API access, dedicated support. First tier with API for CRM and pipeline integrations.
Enterprise Plus — $499/month: Unlimited messages, 25 phone numbers, voice cloning, interview agents, AI receptionist, custom integrations + SLA.

Start on Free. Upgrade when you hit the conversation limit. That is the whole funnel.

Deploy Your First Sales Agent

You can have an AI sales agent live on your site in under 10 minutes. Sign up, configure your product info, set your qualifying questions, paste the embed code. Your next site visitor gets a conversation, not a form.

Every hour your pricing page runs without an agent is an hour of unanswered questions and lost pipeline. The setup takes less time than reading this article did.

Start free at sphinxagent.ai