Charlye Tapia

How has your workflow changed since the transformation started?

I manage a team of eight AEs. A year ago, my job was coaching and pipeline review — lots of one-on-ones, lots of deal inspection. Now my team's deals are instrumented. I see real-time signals from every account without scheduling a call. The coaching conversations are sharper because they're based on data, not memory. My team closes more and I spend more time on the outlier deals that actually need manager judgment.

What does it mean to operate alongside agents in your function?

Sales management with agents in the loop is fundamentally different from traditional sales management. The agent surfaces what's happening — account health, deal velocity, sentiment from the last call transcript. I decide what to do about it. My job moved from information gathering to interpretation and action. That's a better use of a sales manager.

What do you wish you'd known before joining?

That the learning curve for the tooling is real. We use Salesforce, a set of internal agent tools, and a data layer that ties them together. Getting fluent with that stack took me about six weeks. Once you're fluent, the leverage is enormous. But don't expect to walk in and be productive on day one — come ready to invest in the setup.