In the blink of an eye, artificial intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous in our lives. Consider just a few of the options most of us use daily: virtual assistants like Google, Siri and Alexa; personalized suggestions from entities like Netflix and Spotify; navigation apps such as Waze and Google Maps; spam filters; facial recognition; chatbots; shopping cart suggestions. Today, there are a dizzying array of AI software options—from ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini to Microsoft Copilot, Grok and so many in between, each with its own pros and cons. For most independent dealers, the question isn’t if they are using AI, but rather how and where they are incorporating it into their business. With these questions in mind, we explore how industry leaders are using AI in their operations.
Mark Porter, visionary of Porter’s Office Products, Rexburg, Idaho, calls on AI for a variety of tasks: “I use it to come up with ideas to help me draft LinkedIn posts. It doesn’t replace my own ideas. I give it as much information as I can—you have to tell it your exact goals. I review the output to ensure things like whether it has the right tone. I also use it to help create images for my posts—a good visual image helps tell the story. There’s some gray areas regarding who owns what, but I am careful not to use copyrighted pictures or brand names, unless I am talking about a specific product. A year ago, the images AI would create weren’t very good, but now they are.”
And AI has other crucial advantages for Porter’s business: “I put our company policies online so they are all in one place. If there are updates, I make them and AI automatically pulls the latest one. It was my pet project—as we are having staffing challenges, I didn’t want to add anything to our employees’ already overfull plates. Our current and new employees love it because they can go there to look up our vacation policy or whatever they need. We also put operational things on there, like how to process a credit card.”
AI is assisting with communications too. “We have an employee who is great at what he does, but realized his emails often came across like he was upset,” says Porter. “Now he puts what he wants to say through AI and he’s really found it useful.”
AI is also helping solve certain technical issues that previously involved contacting the company’s software provider, incurring both costs and often time delays.
That said, Porter does not believe AI is infallible and cites its potential to deliver wrong information as a major flaw. Another challenge AI presents for dealers concerns website optimization. “Before, it was all about search engine optimization and using the right keywords so Google wouldn’t list your site on page 50,” he explains. “Now, AI often provides answers without mentioning the site it came from, so the question is how to make a site AI-friendly.”
While Porter may not yet have the answer to this, he is testing out some theories: “I personally try to be consistent in things like our LinkedIn posts, to be authoritative. My hope is that as AI searches for sources and learns about everything, it will pick up some of it from us—but I have no idea if this will work.”
Porter advises dealers: “AI is not going anywhere. Whether you like it or not doesn’t matter—you’re going to need to build your business around it. So, start using it. AI is the wave of the future and you want to be in front of it.”
Ian Wist, president of Wist Business Supplies and Equipment, Tempe, Arizona, avails of several AI platforms for personal use, including Gemini and ChatGPT. But for his business, he prefers Copilot. “It’s part of Microsoft and integrated in the price,” he says. “The Copilot dropdown is in the top-right corner of the screen, making it very convenient.”
Wist goes on to detail how his company is utilizing AI: “The first thing we started using it for was recording our meetings. Two people can hear the same thing and come away with two different versions. Copilot is amazing at summarizing them, including next steps and who is responsible for what, so we are all on the same page. It helps eliminate miscommunications.”
According to Wist, AI is also “extremely valuable” for prospecting: “AI helps our sales reps. They can ask questions about protocols, such as what protocols daycare centers use, and see which products we offer that fit those needs. It can also help by listing the biggest daycare centers in the area and even provide contact information. This removes a lot of the legwork and guesswork. It allows our sales reps to be laser-focused on a category’s needs and wants.”
Wist reports that AI also helps create product descriptions, including keywords: “Where it used to take maybe 40 minutes to complete a task like this, AI spits it out in seconds.”
The company is additionally using AI to assist with truck maintenance. “We used to subscribe to a service that would monitor and tell us when we needed to bring our vehicles in for oil changes, tire rotations, filter and wiper replacements, etc.,” says Wist. “But it was expensive. Now we enter the models and get an AI checklist, including when things should be scheduled. When it’s time for these things, we can go someplace less expensive to have them done.”
Despite its utility, Wist would acknowledge that not everyone is a fan of AI. “Incorporating AI is a challenge in getting people to do it,” he admits. “They are used to doing the job and problem-solving the old-fashioned way. Now they are being asked to break habits and incorporate this new tool. Changing behaviors isn’t always easy.”
Wist suggests that dealers should start making AI use a daily habit: “Just like you brush your teeth morning and night, you have to be disciplined and force yourself to use it. Whether you are curious about it or scared, you have to get started. Begin by looking at how others are using it successfully.”
While Robbie Clark, president of A-Z Office Resource in Nashville, Tennessee, gravitates toward ChatGPT and Grok, employees are free to use their AI tools of choice. Currently, his company is using AI to train internal sales team members; he also finds it especially helpful for researching products focused on client satisfaction and increasing sales. “If a customer is buying toner for an older printer, our sales reps can go to AI and quickly get a cost per page and use it to figure that cost over 15 years,” he reports. “They can show the customer the potential cost savings of upgrading the printer.”
Personally, Clark uses AI to proofread emails and keeps a running chat he updates so current sales information is available on demand. He also uses AI to help write documents like customer contracts and disclosure agreements, and to analyze sales—including comparing year-on-year customer spending trends, to determine why a customer may be spending less. It has also helped improve efficiency, allowing employees to offload grunt work and focus on higher value-added activities.
The biggest challenge Clark identifies with AI is fully understanding its capabilities. He also acknowledges the need to check AI results but suggests spot checking still saves a lot of time compared to starting projects from scratch: “AI will at least point you in the right direction. It can save an hour on a project that requires an hour and a half of research.”
Clark’s advice for other dealers is to keep it simple: “Don’t start complicated and don’t start using it to speak to customers. Use it internally first for things you are already doing to improve efficiencies. Additional uses will come over time.”
Gary Molz, vice president of EZ Office Products, Madison, Wisconsin, observes parallels with past tech trends: “It reminds me of the early 1990s, when people were talking about the Internet. I don’t view AI as a separate entity, since it is already ubiquitous and integrated into just about everything we do in our private lives. It’s a tool that improves technology. The challenge is incorporating it in our businesses.”
To this end, Molz aims for specific results: “I look to AI to increase velocity by helping salespeople do research and get out in front of customers more effectively and reducing friction by enabling us to complete internal mundane tasks faster and more efficiently. I use it for social media posts—we posted three last week using AI and it cost nothing. I can do them myself when I know the product. AI gives me the basics and I can tweak things from there.”
Molz applies the same methodology to other communications: “For emails, I come up with the idea of what I want to say and use AI to help craft it. It’s almost like using spellcheck.”
But he warns: “AI is a tool, not a crutch; it’s not a replacement for a sales rep that hones their skills over the years. Results always equal effort. It’s not the be all, end all. If you don’t have core competencies in place, it won’t create them for you. It won’t do your job.”
Like the other dealers, Molz appreciates challenges remain: “It’s like GPS—it’s a great tool, but not infallible. Sometimes, GPS leads you to a dead end. It’s the same with AI: it still makes mistakes.”
For other dealers keen to explore AI further, he suggests: “No matter what you do today, you are using some form of AI, so don’t be scared. It’s worth trying to use in business. Take small steps. We all have a lot to learn.”
Donata Barber, marketing director of Suburban, Inc., Middletown, Connecticut, believes AI “is fun but can be overwhelming.” Her AI programs of choice are Google Gemini—“which is great for creating images that we can then alter as we see fit”—Copilot and, to a lesser degree, ChatGPT, which she finds less reliable.
“We use AI for everything and anything that is a heavy lift,” she says. “We match line items and compare products. Speed is one of AI’s top advantages, as things can be done using it that once would have involved the whole team. For example, part of our company strategy is to ask customers if we can quote their top 10 most used products. This can mean reviewing 40 or 50 invoices for the past quarter. Before AI, our sales reps would have to review them, then hand them over to customer service to do an analysis, all manually. Now, we scan the documents and AI puts them together. The turnaround time used to be two weeks, but now it’s less than a week. The time savings allow us to compete with Amazon and other big-box stores. Customers today equate good service with fast service. AI enables us to meet this expectation without a 24-hour staff. We’re a small company, with 48 employees, and AI allows us to do more.”
According to Barber, Suburban uses AI for a multitude of other tasks, including helping employees and customers solve small technical issues that previously would require contacting their software provider, incurring costs and time loss. The company’s drivers also use it to track routes, while accounting relies on AI to check numbers and spreadsheets.
However, Suburban doesn’t use AI for customer communications—at least not without a human touch. “We want to ensure the quality of what we communicate to customers and add the Suburban voice manually,” says Barber. “We still have a person handling our website’s live chat, although we do use AI for quick, standard responses. Also, you have to check what AI provides, as sometimes you will find errors that are ridiculous and customers will call you out on them. There still needs to be a person behind AI’s use and someone to factcheck.”
Barber concludes: “AI is amazing in many ways. It is definitely scary—but also exciting. Who knows how much further it will go? But if you don’t use it in your business, you will fall behind. Technology is ever-changing, but you have to keep up with the trends.”