With more than 20,000 employees and over $20 billion in annual revenue, this electrical distributor sells at enormous scale. It also sells the way most distributors do — on what the reps know. Which products solve which problems, which accounts buy what, and what was promised on the last visit.
At a glance
Electrical distributor- Industry
- Electrical
- Employees
- 20,000+
- Revenue
- $20B+
- Proton products
- CRM
In 2022, leadership put a number on how fragile that arrangement is. Twenty percent of the sales team — the most experienced, most knowledgeable fifth of it — was set to retire within five years.
The challenge: the expertise was leaving, and it couldn’t simply be rehired
Losing that much institutional knowledge is expensive twice over. Training new sales reps to match that level of expertise takes time and resources. And finding people of that caliber has only gotten harder — the rise of remote work and labor shortages have thinned the pool distributors used to hire from.
The goal: a fix that outlasts the person who buys it
The company's VP of Sales was tasked with finding a solution that would stand the test of time, and he framed the problem well past his own tenure: the question wasn't how to survive the next hiring cycle, it was what keeps the business viable two decades from now.
Why Proton: a tool that looks forward, not back
Proton was the first predictive tool the company had ever invested in. The VP of Sales wanted software that looked at what was coming instead of merely analyzing what had already happened.
“Understanding the past does not guarantee success in the future.”
In Proton he found three things at once: a way to break down the company's data silos, an end to the admin burden of juggling multiple platforms, and — the part that mattered most for a team about to turn over — direction for the outside sales reps. Not a record of what they did. A list of what to do next.
Before
With Proton
New hires
BeforeMatching a veteran seller's expertise took training time and resources the company couldn't spare.
With ProtonA rep with no electrical background held knowledgeable customer conversations on day one.
Open quotes
Before“There's nothing we can do today.” Quotes sat, and the sales cycle was assumed to be long.
With ProtonDaily reminders surface every quote worth chasing — and they close in a matter of days.
Institutional knowledge
BeforeHeld in the heads of the veteran sellers who are on their way out the door.
With ProtonCaptured in the platform every rep carries, new hires included.
The results: a cowboy boot salesman, productive on day one
The pilot worked, and use expanded across the company's divisions. According to the VP of Sales, Proton paid for itself within just a few months.
A new hire with no industry background, selling from day one
The standout example was an unlikely hire: a young man with experience selling cowboy boots and no background in the electrical industry.
Equipped with Proton's mobile app, he had immediate access to customer information — and from day one he could engage in knowledgeable conversations with customers, an achievement that previously would have been unattainable for someone new to the industry.
Quotes that close in days, not months
Reps open Proton to a complete overview of customer info and their daily tasks, including cross-sell suggestions and reminders to follow up on quotes. That broke a belief the company had held for years — that its sales cycle was simply extensive.
“We used to say, ‘There's nothing we can do today,'” the VP of Sales said. “Now, we can take action right away and expect immediate impact.” Today the company closes quotes in a matter of days instead of months.
Recommendations that convinced the skeptics
Outside reps run daily customer visits the company calls “milk runs,” aptly coined for their repetitive nature. Proton's AI-generated recommendations have increased sales on those stops — including among the most skeptical, seasoned reps.
One rep looked at a customer's account page in Proton and saw a recommendation to talk about heaters. When he walked into the customer's office, there was a heater sample sitting on the desk.
Onboarding stopped being the risk it was
The distributor is now much less worried about onboarding new sales reps, and about capturing institutional knowledge from its veteran sellers before they go. New hires become productive quickly, and what used to retire with people stays where the whole team can reach it.
The bottom line: sell more without adding reps
For a long time, distributors grew sales by adding more sales reps. That math has stopped working: with more people working remotely and tough competition for skilled workers, headcount is an expensive way to buy growth.
The alternative this distributor found is to sell more without adding people — and when hiring does become necessary, to look beyond the usual talent pool, confident the software will get a new rep serving customers effectively regardless of what industry they came from. Cowboy boots included.
