# After the Demo, episode 5: Read the First Thousand Emails

Salesforce, Apollo and Gong all announced AI agents for sales teams this fall, and the pitch is the same everywhere: it finds the leads and writes the emails. John Arndt and Kate get into how much a person should read before one of these tools sends anything in your company's name, why "a human approves every step" is already on a countdown at one vendor, and what one company says it found when it sent a lot more (replies didn't keep up). Kate wins the big argument, John owns up to a zero-dollar checkout he caught by buying from himself, and you leave with a fifty-email check to run this week.

**Sponsor:** This episode is sponsored by Intakra (intakra.com). Intakra watches public sources (job posts, SEC filings, government contracts, layoff notices and company websites) for the companies a B2B sales team sells to, and when one of them starts a project the team could help with, it emails the team the proof, with dates and links, and what it usually means. It's low volume on purpose: a few heads-ups a week, not a feed. Trial: 14 days on 150 accounts, no card needed; plans start at USD 199 per month for 300 accounts.

## Chapters
- 0:00 You hired a robot and got homework
- 0:48 Intro
- 1:54 Every one of the first thousand
- 6:14 Approval now, gone later
- 10:54 More sending, not more replies
- 15:22 Read it like the customer
- 19:41 What the agents can't buy
- 24:13 The fifty-email homework

## Links
- Intakra (sponsor): https://intakra.com/
- Jason Lemkin's post on reading the first 1,000 emails (Oct 2026): https://x.com/jasonlk/status/2109289938692784499
- Apollo, agents in its Slack app (Sept 2026): https://www.apollo.io/magazine/apollo-launches-agents
- Anthropic, Salesforce in Claude (Sept 15, 2026): https://claude.com/blog/salesforce-in-claude
- Unite.AI on the Salesforce in Claude plugin (Sept 2026): https://www.unite.ai/anthropic-releases-salesforce-in-claude-plugin-with-37-sales-skills/
- Salesforce, Dreamforce 2026 announcements (Sept 28, 2026): https://www.salesforce.com/blog/dreamforce-2026-announcements/
- AI Weekly on Salesforce's named Agentforce agents (Sept 12, 2026): https://aiweekly.co/alerts/salesforce-ships-seven-named-agentforce-agents-cites-7b-awus
- Danielle Morrill, how her agents use her passwords (Oct 2026): https://daniellemorrill.com/blog/how-my-agents-use-my-passwords
- Voiso, what AI actually changed about the SDR role (Oct 6, 2026): https://voiso.com/articles/what-ai-actually-changed-about-the-sdr-role/
- Gong, Celebrate '26 announcements (Sept 30, 2026): https://www.gong.io/press/new-revenue-ai-innovation-celebrate-26
- Gartner, AI agents will outnumber sellers 10 to 1 by 2028 (July 28, 2026): https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-07-28-gartner-predicts-ai-agents-will-outnumber-sellers-10-to-1-by-2028-yet-fewer-than-40-percent-of-sellers-will-say-agents-improved-productivity
- DestinationCRM on the Gartner prediction (Sept 2026): https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-Insights/Insight/AI-Agents-Will-Outnumber-Sellers-10-to-1-by-2028%C2%A0-176641.aspx
- Posts mentioned: Jason Lemkin (@jasonlk) https://x.com/jasonlk/status/2109289938692784499 · Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) https://x.com/DanielleMorrill/status/2109294081814003919 · Alex Finn (@AlexFinn) https://x.com/AlexFinn/status/2109350802041291031 · Nik (@ns123abc) https://x.com/ns123abc/status/2109105516941107311
- About John Arndt: https://soxoa.com/john-arndt