Proton.ai unveils conversational AI assistant for distributors
Proton.ai, maker of an AI-powered CRM built for distributors, announced the launch of Pronto, a conversational AI assistant designed to lighten the load for distribution sales reps by automating routine, time-consuming tasks.
According to LinkedIn’s Global State of Sales Report, sales reps only spend 30% of their time actually selling. The rest is swallowed by manual work, navigating fragmented systems, pulling customer data, checking stock, drafting follow-ups. Pronto changes that, the company says. With a simple prompt, reps can complete multi-step workflows in seconds without switching tools or re-entering data.
“Pronto is just the beginning,” said Proton.ai CEO Benjamin Cohen. “The future of sales in distribution isn’t buried in dashboards or tangled up in admin. It’s reps spending more time with customers while AI handles the busywork in the background: drafting emails, keying in orders, queuing up follow-ups. Reps just review and move. We’re not building software to analyze the work. We’re building software that does the work. This is how AI should work in distribution. It should feel obvious.”
How It Came to Be
Cohen says he saw a future where AI could take on the repetitive, high-friction tasks that slow sales teams down, and a handful of forward-thinking distributors immediately leaned in.
Leaders at Purity Life, ORS Nasco, and Replenex were among the first to believe in the idea, according to a press statement. They helped build the product by testing early functionality, providing feedback on real-world workflows and shaping how Pronto operates today.
“We saw the value in Pronto as the hook for our sales team to embrace our CRM deployment, particularly for our outside sales team," said Matthew James, president and CEO of Purity Life. "Pronto allows reps to spend more time selling and less time analyzing. The easy-to-use AI chat format of Pronto is like each rep having a sales assistant at their fingertips,”
“Proton built Pronto the right way: inside the CRM, with input from the people who use it every day,” said Kevin Short, CEO, ORS Nasco.
“This is where sales tech needs to go. AI that actually reduces effort, not adds to it,” said Matt Cohen, president, Replenex.
According to Proton, reps are using Pronto to:
- Pull a customer’s top spending categories
- Identify top products and purchasing gaps
- Check stock and find suitable alternatives
- Draft personalized recommendation emails
- Log call notes and next steps
Over the coming months, Proton will continue to expand Pronto’s capabilities to support quote entry and order entry, as well as proactively flag critical issues – such as stalled deals or missed follow-ups – before reps fall behind, transforming it from a smart assistant into a fully integrated sales agent.
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