Automating routine tasks for sales reps is a big deal, given that reps only spend 30% of their time on average actually selling to customers, according to the 2024 State of Sales report from Salesforce Inc. A new conversational AI tool is helping reps for distributor Building Products Inc. save time and serve customers better, says BPI sales director Collin Schull.
BPI, based in Watertown, South Dakota, and serving builders in the Upper Midwest, began this summer using the Pronto AI assistant from Proton.ai, the provider of the distributor’s customer relationship management (CRM) system. Pronto, introduced in July, is designed to access customer data in the CRM to enable sales reps to perform such tasks as logging results of sales calls, checking stock availability, and identifying a buyer’s top purchasing categories.
Schull says BPI’s 30 or so inside and outside salespeople are using Pronto mainly to quickly enter sales call information, get product information and draft emails to customers. It’s been especially helpful, he says, for outside sales reps who can speak the results of a sales call into an app on their mobile phones, instead of having to type in that information.
“You tell it the notes for that call, like who you spoke to, and it inserts that information into the CRM,” Schull says. “That’s saving the outside sales team 10 to 15 minutes at every stop because they are talking into a device instead of typing out notes.”
Since BPI has only been using Pronto for a few weeks, Schull says he’s measuring success mainly by how often sales reps use the new tools. And are they using it?
“The guys that have found out it can write your email for you, they’re using it quite often,” he says. “We’re not having to think of the perfect way to write an email. It gives you a general idea of the language appropriate to send out to a customer.”
How to get employee buy-in on AI
Many distributors face employee resistance as they introduce AI and other new technologies. Brian Hopkins, now chief operating officer at Distribution Strategy Group, has first-hand experience of deploying the Proton CRM software, which was designed from the start with AI functionality, from when he worked at industrial products distributor Hisco and the company became among the first to deploy Proton in 2019.
“The biggest thing is finding those people who are willing and want to,” Hopkins says. “When we built out the original Proton I had three people who were just on fire for building something new.”
But, in addition to recruiting those three people for the deployment team Hopkins also brought in a vocal skeptic. “That helped because now all of a sudden the rest of the team on the fence saw this detractor evangelizing it and using it, and the rest started to adopt it,” he says.
The new technology also has to provide value that employees can see, Hopkins says. To that end, Hisco put up a scoreboard that was updated daily with the sales gains made by people using Proton. “People didn’t want to be on the wrong side of that scoreboard,” he says.
Hopkins also advises distributors to make clear from the start that AI-driven technologies are not meant to replace sales reps. “You’ve got to get out in front of this as a leader and talk about this as a tool that will help you do the job better and not replace you, because that does play into some of the resistance,” he says.
He says AI likely will eliminate some routine jobs, such as Accounts Payable clerks that match purchase orders and invoices. But any reduction in sales teams will be gradual, he says, and likely accomplished by attrition, not layoffs.
Hopkins says Proton broke new ground when it introduced its CRM with built-in AI functionality, and many sales leaders were skeptical at the time. Now AI’s power is well understood. Proton, he says, “overcame not just the technical constraints, but also the mindset that doesn’t exist today.”
The AI learning curve for sales reps
The broad acceptance of AI in a variety of applications is evident in the rapid adoption of conversational AI systems, which accounted for $12.24 billion in global spending in 2024, according to Fortune Business Insights. The market research firm projects that spending will reach $14.79 billion in 2025 and grow at an annual rate of 22.6% to $61.69 billion. The firm says 35.5% of that spending in 2024 came from North America.
Deploying the AI-driven technology that understands the words salespeople speak is the first step. Then a distributor has to make it work.
Schull says BPI quickly found that Pronto provides accurate data in response to queries, but that sales reps had to learn how to ask questions in the right way. For example, if a customer has several lumber yards the rep may have to input the account number for a particular yard to find out how many shingles that location has purchased.
Sarah Bayer, the product marketing manager for Pronto, says initially Proton encouraged reps to use customer IDs to accurately identify a specific customer location, but now in most cases Pronto can identify a location by its name. “If there are multiple similar entries, it will ask clarifying questions—just like a human assistant would,” she says. “We still recommend including an ID when possible for maximum precision, but it’s not required for most queries.”
Bayer says Pronto was trained on years of historical data to make it easy for sales reps to get useful responses right away.
“That said,” she adds, “like any AI assistant, it works best when users know how to ask for what they need. If you can type or talk, you can use Pronto—it’s conversational by design. But understanding how to prompt clearly can make the difference between a good answer and a great one.
“To help with that, we host ‘Getting Started with Pronto’ sessions where we walk teams through prompting best practices, show real examples, and answer live questions. It’s a fast, high-impact way to get teams up and running.”
Schull would also like to see Pronto extended to its ecommerce site, which BPI relaunched in April, so that customers can use the bot to more easily get the information they need.
Bayer says Proton’s focus now is on making Pronto useful for salespeople. “Once we nail that experience, the plan is to bring Pronto to end customers on e-commerce sites, where it can help answer product questions, surface recommendations, and even assist with order entry,” she says.
A free conversational AI add-on
Pronto is a free add-on to Proton that only works with the Proton CRM, Bayer says. She says Proton plans to add new features, such as enabling Pronto to generate a quote in PDF form that users can send to customers, something Schull says would be valuable for his team. “It’s coming soon,” Bayer says, “and it’s one of our top priorities.”
She says Pronto will increasingly take on more, acting as an independent AI agent that can spot sales opportunities. “Rather than only responding to requests, Pronto will work in the background, reading synced emails and extracting the details needed to prepare the right response—whether that’s a quote, order, opportunity record, or follow-up task,” Bayer says.
She says Proton eventually plans to introduce a premium-priced tier for customers interested in the more advanced capabilities, while the basic Pronto functionality will remain included in the Proton licensing fee.
How AI can justify its cost for sales reps
Hopkins says distributors will be willing to pay extra for a tool like Pronto when they can see measurable sales gains from using it.
“These tools become very valuable for companies when they’re able to surface selling opportunities they would never have seen before by looking at data or even with a traditional CRM,” he says. Especially useful, he says, are tools like Pronto with natural language processing, allowing sales reps to speak their queries in everyday language.
“You can speak to it and ask, ‘What are the substitutes for this item?’ ‘I’m going into XYZ customer, what are its sales trends for the last six months?’ Those are the kinds of things that make these conversational tools very valuable,” Hopkins says.
While Hopkins says he’s not aware of Proton’s current pricing, CRM systems typically are priced at $65 to $125 per year per user, with an initial implementation cost in the range of $100,000 for a midsized distributor.
Proton charges per seat, as many other CRM providers do, with the price varying based on company size, customization needs and integration requirements, Bayer says. There is also a one-time fee for implementation, which is handled by in-house Proton personnel.
