I went in to present products and discuss the state of our shared business. I walked out with tech-related marching orders.
A customer of ours in western Minnesota had just returned from an AI-focused buying group convention, and I sat there agape as they walked me through what they’d taken away. I pride myself on being prepared to discuss most anything on the spot. This time, I wasn’t. I walked out in a vortex of thought—what am I doing to help myself day-to-day beyond the stray AI search? What is our company doing to fully realize the potential at hand?
As an industry, flooring has historically been slow to adapt to new technology. That’s a generalization, but it’s hard to deny it’s a valid one. With AI, I believe we are at a bigger inflection point than most any we’ve seen in the past. The dealers, distributors and manufacturers who move now will be operating at a different speed than the ones who wait.
I started with my own workload. I’m a collaborative worker by nature and I tend to think best when I’m working through ideas with others. But inevitably, individual contribution has to be made time for. You can’t phone a friend for every decision. So I started reaching for my AI app instead. The outcomes were surprisingly potent. Strong inputs, clear expectations, impressive output. The tool isn’t making decision, it’s building the context by which I can make them or present them to be made. If you manage a large team, run a business or simply navigate varying internal dynamics daily, that’s not a small thing.
From there I moved to the unglamorous and tedious. Concise follow-up notes after a vendor meeting. A spot-check on a sensitive internal memo before it goes out. Personalized outreach set to a schedule. These things matter, but they carry a mental overhead that adds up quietly over the course of a year. We didn’t come this far to spend half our day as typists.
Now back to Minnesota. Outfitting project managers and supers with wearable AI so they can narrate jobsite conditions instead of writing them down sounds like a play for convenience. It’s more than that. It’s competitive advantage. That same dealer is building automated quote follow-up into his process, so that a customer who hasn’t responded to an initial bid gets a timely, personalized nudge without anyone having to remember to send it. No dropped leads. No dependence on a rep’s follow-through on a busy Friday. A system that closes while they’re already on the next job. If a dealer can operate at a consistent speed that outpaces their primary rivals, they win more bids, lay more floors and gain more buying power. The compounding effect is real.
Using AI doesn’t make people lazy. It makes the people who were already going to outwork everyone else shed the weight of non-revenue-driving behavior. And as always, garbage in, garbage out—the tool is only as good as what you give it.
These are just a few use cases on the sales and operations side of our industry. The leaders who will benefit most aren’t necessarily the most tech savvy. They’re the ones willing to sit down, think out loud and give the tool something real to work with. Let’s all start there.
Mark Botros is vice president of sales & marketing for Jaeckle Distributors, a Wisconsin-based flooring and surfacing distributor. A Dallas native, Botros is a second-generation floor covering professional with over a decade of management experience in distribution and manufacturing.
