AI agents for wholesalers and distributors

A distributor's website does three jobs at once: a product catalog for trade buyers, an application desk for new accounts, and a help desk for existing customers who want an invoice copy or a return label. The questions are repetitive and specific: minimums, freight thresholds, terms, cutoff times, brands. This page covers where AI agents help a wholesaler or distributor, and what they must never say.

Who visits a wholesale or distribution website

• Trade buyers looking for a product. Contractors, retailers, maintenance teams and resellers searching by part number, by a competitor's part number or by description. They want to know if you carry it, in what pack size, and how fast they can get it.
• Businesses that want an account. What you require (business license, resale certificate, credit references), whether you sell to the public, minimum orders and payment terms.
• Existing customers. Order status, invoices, returns, catalogs, cutoff times, branch hours.
• Manufacturers looking for distribution, and job seekers for warehouse, driver and inside sales roles.

Which ASDK agents fit

The agents share one knowledge base built from your public pages: line card, product pages, account policies, shipping and return terms.

Chat: account, policy and product questions (early access)

Chat answers from your own pages and links the source, so a buyer gets "yes, here is the page" instead of a contact form.

Example flow

1. A visitor asks: "How do I open an account and avoid being charged sales tax?"
2. Chat answers from your "open an account" page: you sell to businesses only, the application takes a business license and a resale or exemption certificate, and terms need a separate credit application. It links both forms.
3. The visitor asks whether you accept a multistate certificate. Your page says you accept the Streamlined Sales Tax certificate, which all 24 Streamlined member states accept (Streamlined Sales Tax), so Chat confirms and links the upload page.

Search: answers instead of a search box (coming soon)

Search is planned to replace your site search with a direct answer and the best matching pages. A buyer who types a competitor's part number, a description such as "3/4 inch lead-free brass ball valve", or a misspelled brand gets something useful instead of "0 results". Its planned "searched but not found" report shows what people looked for and missed: often a cross-reference you never published or a brand you carry but do not list. AI site search explains how this kind of search works.

Sales: new accounts and volume inquiries (early access)

Sales qualifies businesses that want to buy from you, using rules you write in plain language: business type, location, product categories, expected monthly volume.

Example flow

1. A visitor writes: "We're a mechanical contractor in Dayton. What would pricing look like for about $5,000 a month in fittings and valves?"
2. Sales explains that pricing depends on the account and shows after approval (it never quotes from a login-only price list), then asks which categories they buy most, how they order today, and whether they need delivery or will-call.
3. The location and volume fit your Dayton branch, so Sales books a call with the territory rep and sends the lead with the answers attached to your team, and to your CRM through webhooks and Zapier or Make.

Agent-Ready: make your line card readable to AI agents (early access)

Agent-Ready publishes an llms.txt file that maps your line card, branches and account application for AI systems. A purchasing agent can "ask a question", such as which branch carries a brand, and gets an answer drawn only from your public pages, or use "contact sales" to start an account inquiry. On Pro and above, you can see which AI agents visit and which pages they read.

Guardrails for distributors

A distributor's agent speaks for every branch and, in the buyer's eyes, for the manufacturers on your line card. A net price quoted to the wrong customer, a stock promise a branch cannot keep or a substitute that fails inspection costs margin and supplier trust at the same time. Set these limits:

• Keep account pricing private. Price lists, contract pricing and customer-specific discounts stay out of the public knowledge base. The agent explains how to get an account; it never guesses a net price.
• No stock promises. Unless your public pages show availability, the agent does not say an item is in stock or when it will ship. It points to your ordering site or takes the request for a rep.
• Tax exemption: process only. The agent explains how to submit a certificate. It does not judge whether a purchase is exempt. Not every state allows every exemption on the multistate form, as the Streamlined Sales Tax board notes (Streamlined Sales Tax).
• Terms: how to apply, never approval. Credit decisions belong to your credit team.
• Substitutions only from your cross-references. If you publish an equivalents table, the agent can use it. Otherwise it does not suggest substitutes, especially for code-regulated or certified items.
• Returns and freight as written. Restocking fees, special-order rules, freight minimums and cutoff times come from your policy pages, word for word.

How AI agents research suppliers

A purchasing manager can ask an assistant: "find a distributor within 50 miles of Columbus that stocks this brand of valves, offers same-day will-call and accepts a resale certificate." Assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude search the web and compare a few supplier sites. Agentic browsers can go further, opening your site, searching your catalog and filling in your account application for the buyer. They can only use what your public pages state plainly.

Put these on crawlable pages, as text:

• Line card: the brands and categories you carry, by branch if it differs.
• Branches: addresses, hours, will-call and delivery areas, cutoff times.
• Who you sell to: trade only or public, and what an account requires.
• Order minimums and freight thresholds, drop-ship and international policies.
• Ordering channels: web ordering, EDI, punchout, phone.
• Return and special-order policies.
• Product data with manufacturer part numbers and GTINs, the GS1 identifiers for trade items (GS1 US), so an agent can match exactly what the buyer asked for.

Give each branch its own location page with hours and cutoff times, and keep public product pages crawlable even when prices sit behind a login: an agent that hits a login wall on every product page has nothing to match against. The free agent readiness checker shows whether AI crawlers can reach your catalog at all, the agent-ready website checklist covers structured data and llms.txt, and Agent-Ready keeps the summary in step with your line card.

Where to start

Start with Chat on your account, shipping and returns pages, with the guardrails above in its instructions, and turn on Agent-Ready. A week of conversations will show which product questions your site cannot answer yet, which is useful input whether or not you add Search when it ships. Add Sales when account inquiries start coming in through the chat. Pricing shows which plan includes each agent.