An AI agent for B2B manufacturers
that qualifies an RFQ before a rep spends an hour on it
A manufacturer's sales inbox fills with RFQs. Some come from a serious buyer with a drawing and a quantity. Others come from someone just collecting prices for a comparison chart. A sales engineer often can't tell which is which until a call is already booked. We build an agent that asks the qualifying questions first. It answers routine spec and lead-time questions from your own catalog, then hands a rep only the RFQs worth their time.
Where an RFQ inbox quietly bleeds time
An RFQ inbox is the front door to every real order. Most manufacturers still run it the way they did ten years ago. A shared mailbox or a form collects a name and a message. Then a sales engineer reads each one to figure out if it’s worth a call. Industry surveys of B2B manufacturing sales teams consistently rank qualifying inbound leads among the largest unpaid time sinks in the sales process. The information that actually separates a real order from a comparison exercise is rarely in the first message: quantity, application, timeline, a drawing.
Response speed is another cost. A buyer who sends the same RFQ to five manufacturers usually orders from whoever answers first with something specific, not whoever eventually answers best. A spec question that sits unanswered over a weekend can lose the deal. So can a lead-time question that waits for someone to check the production calendar. By Monday, it’s often already gone.
Time zone coverage is uneven too. A manufacturer selling into export markets gets RFQs at 3 a.m. local time that a rep won’t see for hours. By then the buyer has usually already moved on to a competitor who answered inside the hour.
There’s a quieter cost in where the good leads actually go. Without a consistent qualification step, a complex, high-value RFQ from an engineer with a drawing can sit in the same queue as a routine spec question. Whoever answers the inbox first handles both the same way. That wastes the senior rep’s time on the easy one, and wastes the easy win on a rep who wasn’t ready for a technical conversation.
What the agent actually does for your RFQ inbox
The agent reads every inbound RFQ and asks the qualifying questions your own reps would ask: quantity, application, target date, whether a drawing exists. It answers spec-sheet and lead-time FAQ straight from your catalog and production calendar. It never guesses at a lead time it can’t verify, and it never improvises a custom price.
Every qualified RFQ gets written to your CRM with the full conversation attached, scored by the criteria your sales team actually uses. A rep opens a lead already knowing what the buyer needs, instead of starting the qualifying conversation from zero.
Typical integrations: your site chat and RFQ form, WhatsApp or Telegram for export buyers. For the CRM write-up, that’s HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive. Your ERP’s API handles live lead-time data, where one exists.
Manufacturers running several product lines with different lead times and minimum order quantities can route by line. A buyer asking about a long-lead custom part gets a different qualification path than one asking about a stock item that ships this week.
Where judgment stays with your sales engineers
Every custom price, discount, contract term and technical judgment call about whether your process can actually meet a buyer’s spec stays with your sales engineers, by design. The agent’s job ends at qualification and routing. It collects the facts a rep needs and gets out of the way before the real negotiation starts. A borderline technical question the agent can’t answer from the catalog gets routed immediately, with the context attached, rather than guessed at.
Price and timeline
| Model | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Agency runs it | from $2,200 | We build, launch, host and tune the agent. You send us catalog and lead-time updates as they change |
| Full control, handover-ready | from $3,200 | Same build, full source code and credentials transferred to your team, documentation included, paid edits available as an option |
Both run on the same 3 to 5 week build. Running cost is separate, usually $30 to $200 a month in model usage depending on RFQ volume, with a hard budget cap set before launch.
What pairs well with this
Pair this with a lighter Telegram bot for B2B manufacturers if RFQ intake alone fits your line better right now. A CRM and lead-routing build for B2B manufacturers helps if the bottleneck is what happens to a qualified lead after intake. See the full package breakdown on the AI agents service page. A closely related sales-outreach and inbox-agent build for a certification body is detailed in the B2B certification AI sales agent case study. The production-data side of a manufacturer’s systems is covered in the factory ERP recovery case study. Get a written plan with a fixed price for your plant.
FAQ
How much does an AI agent for a B2B manufacturer cost?
Our Assistant package starts at $2,200. It covers RFQ intake, spec and lead-time FAQ, lead scoring, and a CRM write-up, with hand-off to a sales engineer. Live in 3 to 5 weeks. A lighter Telegram intake bot alone starts at $900.
Does it quote prices or negotiate terms?
No. It can share a published price list or a standard lead time, if you have one. Any custom quote, discount or contract term gets routed to a sales engineer. That line is fixed in the playbook before launch, not left to the agent's judgment.
How does it know a serious RFQ from a tire-kicker?
From the same questions your own reps would ask: quantity, application, timeline, and whether the buyer has a drawing or spec sheet ready. We build the scoring rules with your sales team from real RFQs you've handled before, not a generic lead-scoring template.
Which channels does it run on?
Your site chat and an RFQ form, plus WhatsApp or Telegram if a meaningful share of your buyers already reach out that way. That's common with export buyers in different time zones.
Does it connect to our CRM and ERP?
We integrate with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive or a custom CRM through its API. We also read stock or lead-time data from your ERP, where an API or reliable export exists. We have rebuilt a factory ERP from a lost cloud account before, so we are comfortable working with imperfect source systems too.