While AI is making tentative steps forward on the shop floor, manufacturers are increasingly assertive about using AI for customer-facing activities. According to a survey of 200 U.S. B2B manufacturing decision-makers sponsored by Aleran Software and conducted by research firm TrendCandy this summer, 91% of respondents have or are planning to implement AI-powered sales automation. In addition, 4 out of 10 respondents are eyeing AI sales agents as a top priority for sales modernization.

And why not? Sales cycles today still rely too often on PDFs, static catalogs, and manual quoting, whether from a job sheet, spreadsheet, phone calls or emails. But with the growing unpredictability in manufacturing driven by tariffs and other supply chain disruptions, it’s an ideal time for B2B manufacturers to increase their ability to respond faster to their customers while simultaneously streamlining their own sales processes.  

Nevertheless, one doesn’t simply go out and “buy some AI.” Rather, manufacturers need to prioritize key areas for value creation for both themselves and their customers. I’ve outlined three ways AI is ready to start creating that value today, particularly for manufacturers where configure- or engineer-to-order is a big part of the business

1. Improving Discoverability

In today's digital-first world, if you aren’t found when your buyer is searching for new suppliers, your new customer acquisition targets will ultimately fall short. And with AI search, including ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, now transforming how buyers find you, it’s no longer just about keywords, it’s about what prompts you are showing up in – and which relevant ones are missing you.

B2B commerce platforms with built-in generational AI tools can automate the process of creating professional, compelling, HTML-ready product copy that meets AI requirements for richer and more structured descriptions so product content shows up in GenAI search results. Additionally, GenAI also can help manufacturers identify what competitors are doing and carve out an AI search whitespace and differentiation.

2. Delivering Sales Assistance:

Most of us are familiar with chatbots. With AI, those chatbots are transforming into true sales assistants, trained on your CRM and ERP data, including order and quote histories, to not only answer questions, but also recommend parts and services.

This approach goes a lot farther than a chatbot asking, “What can I help you with?” AI chat can bring a rich understanding of what you sell and all the options available. That’s essential for complex B2B purchases. AI chat can effectively understand what a product is for and how different models address different requirements. Fundamentally, it’s about the ability to have enough of a conversation for the AI chat to collect the context required to get a prospect to a solid product fit.

Because AI-powered commerce systems can tap into ERP and CRM data, they can provide much better additional suggestions to buyers, bringing Amazonification to B2B manufacturers and expanding share of wallet. For example, leveraging order history from ERP enables the system to recommend spare parts or easy reordering. CRM information ensures that conversations that happened with the sales team can effectively continue seamlessly on the e-commerce site without the need to “re-educate” the AI on what the organization should already know about the customer.

3. Customer-Facing CPQ:

Configure-price-quote systems have been around for several years, but their complexity has meant they have primarily been internally focused, not something customers have used directly. CPQ has been a way for sales teams, engineers, and pricing experts to coordinate what was often a fairly lengthy process with the customer. The goals included ensuring the customer got what they really needed, the manufacturer could build it, and the pricing was optimized for both parties. Efficiency of the process was often secondary.

AI changes that. An AI-powered and ERP-connected CPQ system effectively brings sales, engineering and pricing expertise together instantly on demand. Every manufacturing sales quote can reflect the latest costs, inventory, and customer terms. In addition, when integrated into an e-commerce platform, it enables customers to get quotes essentially instantly. We have found that ERP-connected CPQ with AI can cut quoting and sales cycle times by as much as 40% while eliminating costly errors.  

What’s Next: Shifting from Automation to Orchestration

While each of the prior capabilities are ready today, the future will be led by agentic AI orchestrating not just each step of the workflow, but also the real-time orchestration of multi-channel selling across teams, systems and buyers. For example, today we can use AI to automate and streamline processes like creating a quote through to finalizing the approved sales order – all with human intervention for accuracy.

As we look ahead, AI agents will increasingly be built to engage with other systems – going beyond today’s API–based integrations. For example, with an agentic workflow, an AI agent would be able to interpret a request from a buyer on the e-commerce site, generate a quote using AI-driven pricing models, secure approval if necessary from a sales manager, negotiate with the buyer within certain margin parameters, verify credit terms and initiate production. All of it is an automated process. At any time, sales leaders can monitor deal progress and step in if needed.

In this sense, AI agents can help ensure every interaction across every channel contributes to a single, intelligent sales motion, including always-on gathering insights like on which SKUs are trending to develop and implement real-time optimizations.

AI-powered selling isn’t about implementing a black box. Teams still get control, context, and configurability. In fact, it empowers sales teams with smarter tools and lets them focus more on the highest value deals and build deeper more consultative customer relationships, while fully automating other purchases like replacement parts. As modern commerce demands faster decisions, richer personalization, and lower-friction workflows, AI is here to help.