Dreamforce 2025: What Proposal Managers Need to Know About the Rise of Agentic AI
Oct 15, 2025
Introduction: Dreamforce’s Agentic Moment
This week at Dreamforce, Salesforce made one thing clear: the next major frontier in enterprise automation is agentic AI—autonomous agents that reason, act, and collaborate with humans rather than merely assist.
For proposal and revenue teams, that raises a critical question: what does this shift mean for how we create, manage, and deliver proposals?
In this post, we’ll unpack what’s new from Dreamforce 2025, translate the agentic movement into proposal-team realities, and show how Settle is already helping leading sales orgs operate like agentic enterprises.
What We’re Observing from Dreamforce & Market Moves
Here are a few key developments worth your attention — and how they hint at what’s coming for proposal / RFP workflows:
Salesforce has launched Agentforce 360, a unified platform designed to connect humans, agents, and data on one trusted system. It brings a new conversational agent builder, hybrid reasoning, voice capabilities, and Agent Script, a human-readable JSON-like format to define agent logic and guardrails.
Salesforce is positioning Slack as the “Agentic OS,” meaning humans and agents will increasingly interact in a conversational, live-workflow environment rather than through discrete tools.
The company also deepened partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, embedding GPT-5 and Claude models into Agentforce 360 to power reasoning, generation, and context understanding.
The takeaway: Proposal automation is entering its next evolution—from filling templates to orchestrating reasoning agents that draft, review, and submit proposals with minimal manual input.
Translating Agentic AI into Proposal Realities
Let’s connect the dots from Dreamforce language into your daily work as a proposal manager:
Agentic Concept | Implication for Proposal Workflows |
|---|---|
Autonomous planning & reasoning | Agents could sequence RFP sections, decide which clauses to include, and propose responses — not just fill templates. |
Context & memory | Agents should draw on your past proposals, client histories, and organizational standards to maintain consistency. |
Guardrails & logic | Your system must encode rules (e.g. discount thresholds, legal clauses, compliance checks) so agents operate safely. |
Escalation & handoff | Agents should detect ambiguity or risk and defer to humans—especially in high-stakes or unusual cases. |
Auditability & traceability | Decisions, changes, and suggestions by agents must be reviewable, explainable, and reversible. |
Conversational interface | Agents may interact via Slack or chat, asking clarifications or delivering drafts — blending proposal and conversation. |
Agentic AI won’t replace proposal managers—it’ll elevate them into orchestrators who direct intelligent systems.
Rethinking Proposal Readiness for the Agentic Era
Dreamforce and market momentum are telling us that readiness is not about polishing your legacy workflows — it’s about choosing the right foundational system. The systems you adopt now must be agentic from their core, not retrofitted with “AI features.” If your process still depends on document silos, spreadsheets, or traditional “automation” with limited reasoning, you’re optimizing for yesterday’s world.
Reject static systems masquerading as smart
Tools that rely on templates, manual triggers, or baked-in macros can’t scale into reasoning agents. Agents need systems built to interpret, reason, and act—not just follow rules.Demand holistic agents, not fragmented features
Don’t settle for point-solution assistants (e.g. “auto-fill this section”) — agentic systems monitor progress, route tasks, flag inconsistencies, and integrate logic end-to-end.Orchestration > automation
Automation executes tasks; orchestration connects intelligence. Agentic proposal platforms should knit every stakeholder, dataset, and decision into one adaptive feedback loop.Design for conversational collaboration
The next wave of tools will enable agents and humans to collaborate in chat or context — your proposal system should be conversational, not just UI + forms.Prioritize learning systems
Platforms should improve with use. Every proposal should teach the agent, refine the knowledge base, and reduce future errors.Don’t retrofit legacy players — choose built-for-agentic platforms
Legacy incumbents (e.g. “old school” proposal tools) may bolt AI assistants on top, but they’re unlikely to deliver true agentic behavior. The real gains come from platforms architected for agents from the ground up.
Why Settle Fits This Transition
Settle is purpose-built for this shift — we are not just “AI on top of proposals,” we are the agentic proposal manager:
Reasoning-first architecture — Our AI is context-aware, not prompt-bound. It understands your proposal logic, constraints, and domain.
Human + agent collaboration by default — We enable seamless handoffs, review flows, override logic, and annotations.
Continuous learning & feedback loops — Every interaction sharpens the model and your knowledge base.
Built for teams that move fast — We prioritize lean deployment, modular scaling, and adaptability for RevOps/Proposal teams pushing forward.
In short: Settle gives you a head start in the agentic era — not a retrofit, but a launchpad.
Key Takeaways for Proposal Leaders
Dreamforce 2025 signals that agents won’t just assist — they’ll act, reason, and collaborate.
The organizations that win will steer their agents, not hand over blind control.
Real readiness is about choosing platforms built for agentic behavior, not pushing intelligence on top of legacy tools.
Settle is a platform built for that transition — enabling you to lead agentic adoption, not react to it.
Conclusion
The age of agentic AI is no longer a vision — it’s unfolding in real time. But agentic power without direction is chaos. The teams that dominate will not be those who surrender control — they’ll be those who architect it.
Ready to see how Settle can help your proposal org become agentic-ready—with control, visibility, and speed? Book a demo today.
