Why This Matters to Distributors: At the Applied AI for Distributors conference, Natasha Broxton’s panel — alongside Summit Electric Supply’s Dwayne Roberts and ADI Global’s Stu Tisdale — will show how distributors at different scales are prioritizing AI investments by targeting revenue leaks first.
As distributors prepare for the Applied AI for Distributors conference June 23–25, a featured June 25 session will bring together three leaders from across the channel to discuss how they are making real AI investment decisions.
Natasha Broxton, founder, owner and CEO of Alitura Group and Select Auto Parts & Sales in Milwaukee, will join Dwayne Roberts, president of Summit Electric Supply, and Stu Tisdale, senior vice president and chief experience officer at ADI Global, for a panel on AI priority-setting across organizations of different sizes and complexity.
Broxton’s message heading into the session is direct: start with where the business is losing money.
“We’re going to start where the money’s leaking, like where are we losing money?” Broxton said in an interview. “So, if we before we implement anything, that’s what we have to ask ourselves.”
Her perspective is shaped by direct experience. Over the past three years, Broxton has integrated AI into a nine-person automotive recycling business, moving from early experimentation into operational deployment.
Her initial use of AI centered on marketing.
“It first was an introduction with marketing,” she said. “Me trying to figure out marketing and different ways that I can have my business show up on some of these platforms.”
She soon expanded into administrative work, including grant writing.
“I used it to just amplify my voice and just show up,” Broxton said. “I’m already doing all this good work, so I needed people to see that.”
The results were immediate. “I end up winning over $40,000 in grants last year,” she said.
From there, AI moved into core operations. One of the first priorities was addressing missed inbound calls — a direct source of lost revenue.
“Now I have voice AI answering the phones because we get a lot of missed calls and calls after hours,” Broxton said.
The decision followed a closer look at operational gaps.
“For me it was missed calls,” she said, also pointing to inconsistent pricing and high after-hours demand. “These are places that I recognize where money was leaking.”
With those issues addressed, Broxton is now pushing AI further into real-time responses tied to inventory and pricing.
“Now we’re not missing any calls anymore, how can we actually respond with pricing and let these customers know right away if we have the part or not in stock or respond with availability,” she said. “I need to give it access to my inventory system.”
She said that step-by-step approaches rather than broad deployment — is essential.
“You implement one thing, work out the kinks,” Broxton said. “Make sure everybody has an understanding on how this process works. OK, now maybe we can talk about looking at this other area.”
The process is incremental, but the urgency is real.
“It’s baby steps,” she said. “But also knowing that the businesses that are not implementing AI within their organizations are going to be left behind because it is moving so fast.”
At the same time, Broxton cautioned against starting with technology instead of internal readiness.
“Best practices would be to not start with AI,” she said. “Start within the organization documenting where you might be lacking, documenting where you’re actually doing good.”
She said companies need defined processes before introducing automation.
“People like to start with tools first,” Broxton said. “We don’t want to start with the tools.”
That discipline also determines whether an organization is ready to scale AI.
“Just being having the ability to follow processes and procedures and having clear processes in place,” she said. “If you have clear processes in place and if your team is OK with following those processes, then we can definitely start implementing AI.”
Data quality and governance are equally critical.
“The company should have a clear AI policy,” Broxton said. “But the team has to understand the workflow, and they have to have clean data that they can act on.”
Without that baseline, measuring impact becomes difficult.
“If you’re starting and you don’t have clear data, you don’t know where you are at the beginning,” she said. “You never would know if AI was actually positive or negative in the end.”
Within her own business, AI is now embedded across multiple functions. Employees use voice and messaging tools to communicate with customers, while e-commerce operations rely on AI to improve listings and search visibility.
“My eBay specialist uses a custom tool that I built to optimize those listing,” Broxton said.
Those efforts are contributing to growth. “Our revenue is increasing because we’re doing these listings in a manner that’s appealing to the customer,” she said.
Broxton also pointed to AI’s role in expanding workforce capability.
“The technology is amazing,” she said. “It’s bringing access and giving access to people that probably would have never had it before.”
Her use of AI now spans multiple platforms, including Google Gemini, NotebookLM and other tools.
“I use it for like a brain hub for my standard operating procedures,” she said.
Those tools can adapt information to different learning styles. “The same information can actually be presented in eight different ways depending on who your team member is,” Broxton said.
She has also expanded into additional platforms. “ChatGPT is one another source resource AI tool that I use,” she said. “Claude is becoming my favorite now. I’m tapping into Perplexity AI.”
In some cases, AI is replacing roles she could not afford to hire.
“I’m going to build me an implementer with AI,” Broxton said.
That reflects a broader shift in how she now views AI — as a core part of execution, not just task support.
“I have a tool now that’s going to allow me to be able to stay focused and make sure that I’m sticking to the plan,” she said.
Her message to distributors attending the conference is to stay focused and avoid chasing every new tool.
“Start with one area in the business,” Broxton said. “Don’t be afraid. There’s a lot of tools out there being thrown at you. Don’t go out and just start signing up for every tool.”
Instead, she said, companies should match tools to specific operational needs.
“We want to be able to locate the best tool for what our situation is,” Broxton said.
That discipline, she said, is increasingly necessary as AI adoption accelerates.
“Our competitors are already doing it, and we want to be on the forefront of that,” she said.
If you’re looking for a room full of peers who are working on the same problems, the Applied AI for Distributors Conference is in Chicago, June 23-25. It’s built for exactly this kind of conversation.
Register and learn more at appliedaifordistributors.com.
Share this article:
