Amidst the conversation about AI and data centers, both of which distributors can benefit from, there is another conversation that, as typical, starts on the consumer side and then migrates to B2B.

This is how AI is / may change business models

Inevitably it does not occur as quickly as the Big 4 consulting pundits project, but it does seep into the business with more progressive customers seeking solutions for them and then driving their distributors to respond. Few, if any, distributors get ahead of digital innovations … it’s just in our nature, as well as technical skill set and finances.

The concept is Agentic AI.

In a nutshell, it’s an AI agent that seeks solutions based upon the input (rules) it has been given, seeks solutions, makes decisions, and conducts a transaction.

Think if it as automating the ordering process.

It is coming to the contractor, and yes electrical, market. Look into Ravien (and we’ll have more on them in the coming weeks.

Some AD members may remember Christian Siebens. He was their Director of Clean Energy in from 2010-2016. Since leaving AD he has had a number of clean energy initiatives.

His latest company (warning, Christian is a serial entrepreneur!) is a company called Pro Energy Supply and he’s bringing an Agentic AI solution to the distribution industry to help distributors prepare to support their customers.

He shared this article to describe an Agentic AI application:

Automated, AI-Driven Commerce … Your Customer’s Agent

It is 9:07pm on a Tuesday.

Dale runs an hvac contracting business. Eighteen technicians. Three active commercial jobsites. His GC just texted: the schedule changed. He needs fifty SKUs on site by 7am tomorrow. A handful of specialty items his usual supplier stocks, but Dale’s trusted distributor’s branch closed at 5pm and his outside rep is not picking up his call or answering his texts.

The next morning Dale drives thirty miles to the only counter, a competitor distributor branch, that opens early enough. He pays list price and is over budget. His preferred distributor, the one who knows his account, his credit line, his negotiated pricing on his preferred brands, never saw the 50 SKU order. Never had the chance to earn it.

Most of us in this industry know a Dale. The question worth asking now: what happens when Dale does not drive thirty miles himself? What happens when his AI assistant handles that purchase automatically, overnight?

That is not a future scenario. Agentic AI is here now, and contractors in every vertical are beginning to use it.

What Is an AI Agent, in Plain Terms?

Most people have used ChatGPT or a similar tool. Type a question, get an answer. That is AI as a tool. The user is in control at every step.

An AI agent is different. An agent acts on someone’s behalf without that person initiating every step. How? A user gives it a goal and logic (rules) and it figures out how to accomplish it using the tools and information available to it.

For a contractor like Dale, an AI agent might work like this: Dale has prompted his new AI assistant to read his email. It sees the GC’s change order. It checks his purchase history, identifies the fifty SKUs he needs, finds the best available source, and places the order before Dale wakes up.

Brian Hopkins, chief operating officer of Distribution Strategy Group, put it plainly at DSG’s Applied AI for Distributors conference: “The AI tool itself is just a commodity. The way you teach it how to operate becomes the differentiator you have in your competition.” Procurement is being rebuilt around AI, and the distributors who teach it how they operate will be the ones who earn the order.

Why This Matters to HVAC Distributors

When Dale places an order today, his distributor earns it through a relationship. His rep knows him. His account has negotiated pricing. That relationship is the foundation of an independent distributor’s business.

In comparison, when Dale’s AI agent places an order, the relationship between customer/distributor and distributor/manufacturer is invisible to the agent. It only sees what is machine-readable: list price, stock availability, lead time. The order becomes commoditized.

The special pricing Dale’s company earned, the credit terms, the territory agreement, the rep relationship, none of that exists to Dale’s new AI agent unless his distributor has made their sovereign data, their commercial terms, their business information, accessible.

That is the gap. DSG’s 2026 distributor research found that digital maturity (e.g. machine-readable) is the strongest predictor of technology return on investment. The distributors who have built machine-readable businesses will capture agent-originated orders. …The ones who have not will be bypassed, often without knowing it ever happened.

What This Means for Key Distributor Relationships

The impact falls on three relationships every distributor manages.

Distributor and contractor.  The relationship a distributor has built with Dale has real commercial value. But that value disappears the moment his AI agent goes shopping and cannot find a distributor’s pricing or terms in a format it can read. The distributor who has made their account information accessible to AI keeps Dale. The one who has not, loses him to whoever his AI agent finds first. Loyalty is lost.

Distributor and manufacturer.  Manufacturers set rebate tiers and pricing programs based on sell-through data. As more orders originate from AI agents, distributors not connected to agent-based commerce will see gaps in their reporting. That affects rebate qualification, pricing tier status, and manufacturer confidence in the relationship. When a manufacturer sees declining sell-through from a distributor, they start looking at their channel differently. Market development funds follow the data.

Distributor and the supply chain.  When procurement moves around the clock, inventory visibility matters more. A distributor whose stock levels and branch availability are not accessible in real time becomes a lower-priority source, not because their price or product is inferior, but because the agent cannot confirm availability fast enough.

What You Can Do About It

The distributors who will earn the order in this agentic environment share one characteristic: they are making their businesses readable by AI, not just by humans.

That does not mean replacing a sales team. It means giving a distributor’s pricing, inventory, account terms, and customer relationships a machine-readable form so that when Dale’s agent goes looking, the right distributor shows up with the right price, under the right terms, ready to fulfill.

I launched ProEnergy Supply in June 2026 with a product called IVAN, the Immovable Values Agentic Network. I built it specifically to give independent distributors this capability. A distributor’s negotiated pricing, customer relationships, territory rules, and rebate structures, all the things that make a distributor worth buying from, belong in a secure knowledgebase controlled by that distributor, accessible to AI agents operating on their behalf, and invisible to competitors.

Take Aways

1. Think of Agentic AI as eProcurement / Punchout but instead of point-to-point, it is point-to-many points, and the system chooses which point wins.
2. While every contractor will not adopt Agentic AI, and it is doubtful that any contractor will adopt Agentic AI for all of their purchasing, at least in the short-term, you should be confident in knowing that some contractors are working on it somewhere.
3. And if they are not, the contractor estimating and project management systems are integrating the functionality into their platforms and will promote it, especially with some of them being AI-native platforms.

Some things to do:

Five Questions Distributors Should Ask

• Is our pricing machine-readable?
• Can our ERP system, via an API or another means, provide AI agents access to customer-specific pricing and branch inventory? If not, what would it take?
• How can we improve our product data or is it as complete as it can get? What can we / our providers do to make it more complete?
• Can contractor AI agents transact with us without human intervention?
• Do we have a list of questions our salespeople are asking key customers about their digital maturity and interests? Are we gathering the information?

Thank you Christian for the heads up on the opportunity, or threat, to distributors. To learn more about Agentic AI, reach out to Christian and Pro Energy Supply. Ask him about IVAN ((Immovable Value Agentic Network). Visit https://proenergysupply.com/ivan

And remember, if you don’t think Agentic AI is coming, check out Ravien. National chains in other industries are already involved!