When a buyer's AI agent
asks you for a quote
A short guide for suppliers: what is happening, what you can do now, and what to watch out for.
What is happening
Buyers are starting to use AI tools to help with purchasing. An assistant can draft a request for a quote, look up suppliers, read their websites and, in some setups, send the request itself. The request may come by email or through your quote form. Sometimes it is obvious a tool wrote it. Often it is not.
Nobody has reliable public figures on how common this is yet. It is early. But the basics that help an AI tool understand you also help a busy human buyer, so they are worth doing now.
What you can do now
- Put your key product facts in the page text. Specifications, sizes, materials, lead times and minimum order quantities, written as text. Not only in a PDF catalogue or an image.
- Offer a simple quote form with labelled fields. Product, quantity, delivery location, date needed, contact email. Every field should have a visible label so a person or a tool can tell what goes where.
- Show a plain contact email. Some tools send requests by email. A clear address on your contact page makes that easy.
- Reply fast. A buyer comparing several suppliers may go with whoever answers first with clear information.
- Keep a person approving every price and commitment. Use tools to sort and draft if you like, but a human should check and send anything that commits your business.
Risks to watch
- Requests for binding commitments. A request may ask you to confirm a price, a delivery date or terms in one reply. Treat it like any other request. Do not let an automated reply agree to anything.
- Misread specifications. A tool may pull the wrong size, grade or quantity from a buyer's notes or from your site. Check the details back with the buyer before you quote.
- More requests, not all serious. Tools make it easy to send many requests at once. Some will be real buyers, some will be people comparing prices with no plan to order.
- Your own automation. If you use AI to help reply, it can make mistakes too. Keep a record of what was sent, by whom, and what it was based on.
Where QuoteDesk fits
Kavel is building QuoteDesk, a tool to help suppliers spot the genuine requests for quotes among the rest. It does not exist as a product yet. There is only an early-access list. When it is built, nothing will be committed on your behalf without a person approving it.