APPLIED AI in DISTRIBUTION:
DESIGNING AI-ENABLED DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES
WITH TRENT GILLESPIE
June 24, 2025

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The Big Idea: AI Isn’t a Threat—It’s Your Leadership Opportunity

Trent opened the keynote by addressing the common anxiety many leaders feel about AI: not knowing where to start, feeling too far behind, or worrying that the best opportunities have already passed.

He emphasized that these fears are misplaced. AI isn’t just another wave of tech hype. It’s the most significant leadership and business opportunity of the decade.

While AI is being positioned by some as a threat to jobs and industries, Trent reframed it as the chance for organizations—and individuals—to lead, innovate, and thrive. Most companies are far behind the AI curve. Very few are tapping even a fraction of AI’s full potential.

Trent made it clear: The bold aren’t waiting for AI to happen to them. They’re using it to reinvent what’s possible—starting now.

The AI SPRINT Discipline: The New Operating Rhythm

Trent stressed that success with AI isn’t about one-off projects or large, slow-moving digital transformation initiatives. The companies making real progress are doing something simpler and far more effective: they’re building a new monthly discipline.

He introduced what he calls The AI SPRINT—a lightweight but powerful operating rhythm for organizational learning and adaptation.

The core cycle:

  • Each month, leadership and teams commit to trying one new way to use AI in their work.
  • They execute it.
  • At month-end, they reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what they learned.
  • Then they repeat the process for the next month.

This creates a culture of consistent learning, experimentation, and forward momentum—without waiting for perfect plans or budgets.

The AI SPRINT Framework: Six Steps to Lead with AI

Step 

Name

Focus

Key Actions

S

Spark Action with Leader Education

Spark the fire. Get leadership aligned and moving.

- Educate your leaders on AI, hands-on. Not theory—real tools.
- Assign a senior leader as the owner. AI isn’t a tool project. It’s a change to your business operating model.
- Start transformation sprints immediately. Small wins. Fast action.

P

Position Your Company to Win with AI

Design your company for future AI-enabled customers.

- Define your strengths and double down with AI. Don’t undercut what makes you unique.
- Define your future customer. Ask: What will they want in 3–5 years?
- Decide what, when, and how you’ll address it. Build the roadmap and work backwards from that future.

R

Rally Your Employees to Use AI Daily

Create momentum. Make AI normal and expected.

- Create safety and guardrails. Write an AI use policy to set guardrails, and address job impact concerns.
- Equip and train everyone. Give people tools and education—AI is worth $30 a month per employee.
- Incentivize smart usage. Reward employees for finding and applying AI to their work.

I

Integrate AI into Sales and Marketing

Target immediate business impact.

- Start with sales and marketing. Fast ROI, low risk, and proven results.
- Then address your biggest bottleneck. Speed up the constraint that’s holding back the rest of your business.
- Fix them one at a time. Sales first, bottlenecks next, keep moving.

N

Enable a Culture of Innovation and AI

Make AI use a reflex, not a one-time event.

- Set clear expectations. Make it normal and expected to try AI every week.
- Establish a learning sprint. Share new AI tools and use cases with your team every month.
- Structure an idea intake process. Give employees a place to submit AI ideas—and act on them.

T

Trailblaze with New Offerings to Create Growth

Leave competitors behind by inventing the future.

- Invent for your future customer. Build products and services for where your market is going.
- Spot emerging opportunities. Use AI and your data to find market gaps.
- Bet on bold experiments. Run fast, low-cost pilots. Learn by doing.

 

Real-World Results Are Already Happening

To underscore that AI progress isn’t theoretical, Trent shared real examples of distributors already using AI today to unlock major efficiencies and cost savings.

Some highlights included:

Use Case

Outcome

Invoice processing automation

82% cost reduction and 72% faster turnaround time

AI-powered quoting

79% reduction in quote response time

AI catalog lookup for part selection

80–90% accuracy achieved with only a $6,000 proof-of-concept investment

Marketing content personalization

Up to 400% productivity improvement for marketing teams

PDF-to-spreadsheet data conversion

$250,000 in annual labor cost savings

These examples drove home the point that AI-driven wins are happening now, across multiple operational areas—from back-office finance to front-line sales.

AI Agents & AI-to-AI Commerce: The Next Evolution

Trent then shifted focus to what’s next: the rise of AI agents and swarms of agents acting as digital workers within organizations.

He explained how organizations are starting to deploy:

  • General-purpose agents (like ChatGPT, but company-trained)
  • Specialty agents (focused on key functions like pricing, forecasting, or logistics)
  • Reasoning agents (capable of multi-step, reflective problem-solving)
  • Swarms of agents (coordinated, autonomous agent teams completing complex workflows)

Looking ahead, Trent painted a clear picture: The next wave is AI-to-AI commerce.

Soon, customer AI agents will be researching, negotiating, and placing orders—without human interaction.

To stay relevant, companies must ensure their systems are discoverable and accessible to AI buyers, likely through emerging standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Trent’s warning was blunt:
If a company isn’t ready for this, they risk becoming invisible in future commerce.

The Vision Question: What’s Left for Humans?

As AI makes decision-making and execution cheap and fast, Trent pushed the audience to confront a critical question:

What becomes the human edge?

His answer: Vision.

Trent stressed that when intelligence becomes infrastructure, imagination becomes the leadership differentiator.

Leaders and employees who succeed in the future will be those who:

  • Spot unseen customer problems
  • Imagine new ways to deliver value
  • Connect business needs with AI capabilities
  • Orchestrate teams of humans and AIs to deliver outcomes

Vision, adaptability, and customer understanding will separate future leaders from those left behind.

Immediate Next Steps for Attendees

To close, Trent gave the audience three specific actions to take immediately:

✅ Commit to using AI tools daily (no more passive observation)
✅ Pick one process to automate (either for themselves or their team)
✅ Start their first AI Sprint this month (build momentum now)

Final Thought

Trent ended by reinforcing the core message:

The bold aren’t waiting for the future. They’re inventing it.

He invited everyone in the room to make this day their own Day One for AI leadership.

Tool Recommendations

Trent recommended the following tools during the presentation:

  1. ChatGPT
  2. Agent Frank (AI salesperson agent)
  3. Lindy (AI agent builder for individuals)
  4. Make.com (No-code automation platform)
  5. n8n.com (Workflow automation platform)
  6. Model Context Protocol (MCP) (AI-to-AI commerce infrastructure standard)