WhatsApp sales agent for manufacturers and industrial SMEs
Price and lead-time requests also arrive in the evening and at weekends — from a rushed buyer, a distributor, an export client in another time zone. The agent qualifies them immediately, and the salesperson arrives in the morning to a complete file instead of a vague message.
In your day-to-day
- 01
After-hours intake of price requests: part number or drawing, quantities, material, target lead time — qualified before the salesperson arrives.
- 02
Immediate answers on catalogue references using your validated standard prices and lead times.
- 03
Made-to-drawing request: drawing, quantities and specifications collected, handed to the quoting team in the same thread.
A typical scenario
A 25-person machining shop serves clients across three time zones — and price requests land while the French office sleeps.
- 01
At 5:30 AM a buyer in Pune asks for the price and lead time of a catalogue part: instant answer from the validated grid, in English.
- 02
At 9:15 PM a prospect sends a STEP file for 500 parts: the agent collects material, critical tolerances and target lead time — the file reaches the morning quoting session complete.
- 03
A distributor needs 200 parts “for yesterday”: stock and standard lead time checked, the request goes to sales admin flagged urgent with full context.
What changes
No overnight enquiry waits for opening hours to exist anymore, and the estimator starts each day on complete files instead of chasing missing tolerances.
Order of magnitude
Working assumptions
- →around ten incoming price requests a week
- →a third arrive in the evening, overnight or at the weekend
On the order of 12 to 15 extra qualified files a month reaching the quoting desk without delay (10 × 1/3 × 4 weeks) — the ones that used to wait until morning while competitors were already answering.
Indicative estimate built on average sector assumptions — it gets recalibrated on your actual volumes during scoping.
What eats your days
- →
Supply shortages are discovered when the work order is released — and scheduling gets redone by hand in a rush.
- →
The sales-admin inbox mixes PDF orders, supplier confirmations, delivery-date requests and quality claims — everything is retyped, nothing is prioritised.
- →
Key accounts demand EDI, supplier portals and service-rate indicators — and it is your team copying data from one system to another.
How it works
- 1
Immediate, fenced replies
The agent answers in seconds on your WhatsApp Business number: product questions, prices, availability — strictly from your catalogue and your rules. What it may not promise, it does not promise.
- 2
Qualification in conversation
As the exchange flows, the agent captures need, budget, timeline and contact details — no form to endure, just natural conversation in the client’s language.
- 3
Handover at the right moment
Warm lead, quote request, negotiation: the agent hands over to your salesperson with the full history. The client never repeats what they already said.
Typical results
30 s
first reply, day and night
100%
of conversations qualified and logged
+40%
leads handled, typical order of magnitude with the same team
Orders of magnitude observed in production; your diagnostic sets your own baseline and targets.
Frequently asked questions
Can the agent quote a made-to-drawing part on its own?+
No — quoting stays with you. The agent collects everything needed to quote fast: drawing, quantities, material, tolerances, expected lead time. The quote goes out earlier because the file arrives complete, not because a machine improvised it.
Our clients order by email and EDI, not WhatsApp — what is the point?+
The agent covers the fast inbound channel — prospects, distributors, export — without touching your EDI flows or sales admin. If that channel carries no weight for you, we will say so at the diagnostic: it is not the brick to start with.
Is this the problem eating your team’s time?
Tell us how you work today — 30-minute call, then a free written diagnostic of what this agent would change for you, with numbers.
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Sales, admin, support, operations: the 20 tasks AI agents already handle in SMEs — with, for each one, the tell-tale sign that your team is concerned.