AI for industrial distributors: an inside sales desk that drafts the routine work
Merlin gives industrial distributors with 10 to 200 staff an AI quote and order desk that drafts quotes from emailed RFQs, answers order status questions and sends product documents, all from your own price sheet and order data. Every reply is drafted in the customer's language, English or French, and approved by a rep before it goes out.
From quote request to finished quote in two minutes.
Nothing goes to a customer until someone on your team approves it. Watch full screen
Faster quotes. More orders. Hours back every week.
Win more orders
Buyers often go with the first solid quote they get. Merlin gets yours out in minutes, day or night, and follows up on the quotes that go quiet.
Get your team's time back
A desk that gets 60 quote requests a week at 15 minutes each spends about 65 hours a month building quotes. Merlin takes most of that routine work off their plate.
Grow without hiring
Handle more requests with the team you already have, in English and French, while good inside-sales people are hard to find.
Why is the inside sales desk the bottleneck?
Industrial distributors live on volume: many small RFQs, many repeat customers and catalogs with thousands of SKUs. The work of turning an emailed request into a quote is mostly lookup and assembly, yet it still lands on experienced reps who are hard to hire. The Institut de la statistique du Québec counted about 14,900 vacant manufacturing jobs in Québec in the second quarter of 2026, and the same labour pressure reaches distribution.
Buyers do not wait. In a 2020 Paperless Parts survey, 67% of buyers said they expect a quote within 24 hours. When the desk falls behind, the quote that arrives second often loses.
What does a typical RFQ look like?
For example, an illustrative RFQ to a general industrial distributor might read: '25 x 6205-2RS bearings, 10 x 1/2 in. ball valves stainless, 4 x V-belts B52, 2 cases of nitrile gloves size L, please quote with lead time.' That is four lines, four lookups, a quantity-break check on each, the customer's pricing and a PDF.
Merlin's Quote Desk matches each line to your price sheet, calculates prices and lead times in code, and flags anything unclear, such as a valve with no pressure rating, for a rep.
Which desks fit a distributor?
| Desk | What it handles | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Quote Desk | Drafts quotes from emailed RFQs and web forms | Pilot, Starter, Growth |
| Quote Follow-up | Polite follow-ups on open quotes, day 3 and day 7 by default | Starter, Growth |
| Order Status | Where's my order, shipped, PO confirmation, with tracking | Growth |
| Documents | Spec sheets, SDS, certificates, warranties, with send log | Growth |
What's the time at stake?
Illustrative arithmetic: a distributor that receives 60 RFQs a week and spends 20 minutes building each quote spends 1,200 minutes, or 20 hours, a week on quote assembly. If reps instead review a finished draft in 5 minutes, the same 60 quotes take 300 minutes, or 5 hours. Your own numbers will differ; the ROI calculator lets you plug them in.
Where is Merlin a good fit, and where isn't it?
- Good fit: most RFQs arrive by email, items are in a price sheet, and you quote the same catalog repeatedly.
- Good fit: you serve customers in both English and French, as many Québec distributors do.
- Less of a fit: most quotes are custom-engineered, require drawings or are negotiated line by line on the phone.
- Less of a fit today: your sales mailbox is Microsoft 365 / Outlook only. Gmail and Google Workspace work now; Outlook is coming soon.
How do we start?
Start with a 30-day pilot on the Quote Desk at $3,500 CAD, with one success metric agreed in writing. Merlin first runs in shadow mode for 1 to 2 weeks, drafting on real RFQs while nothing can be sent. See pricing for plans after the pilot.
Frequently asked questions
Does Merlin replace our inside sales reps?
No. It drafts the routine work and a rep approves every quote and reply. Reps spend their time on judgement calls instead of retyping.
Do we need a specific ERP?
No. Price sheets and orders import from Excel, CSV or any ERP that can export a report, such as Epicor, NetSuite, SAP Business One or Acumatica.
Can it handle French RFQs?
Yes. Merlin replies in the language the customer wrote in, English or Québec French.
Does Merlin have distributor case studies?
Not yet. Merlin is new, which is why every customer starts with a pilot and a written success metric.
