Richards Supply is an industrial distributor with 50+ employees and a sales process that, by 2023, was solid. That year, President and CEO Eric Wessinger went looking for what solid was still missing.
At a glance
- Industry
- Industrial
- Employees
- 50+
- Proton products
- CRM
He found it in the space between two teams. Inside sales and field sales worked the same customers without working together — and the opportunity pipeline meant to connect them lived in a spreadsheet.
The challenge: a sales floor split into “church and state”
Two things needed to change. Richards Supply wanted reps working ahead of the customer instead of reacting to whatever came in, and it wanted inside and outside sales collaborating on the same accounts. Eric called the divide “church and state” — two groups with frequent communication breakdowns and a habit of finger-pointing.
The pipeline was the other half of it. Opportunities were managed in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet had stopped being enough. It was time to graduate to a real CRM — one that could bridge the gap between the teams and drive sales growth at the same time.
Why Proton: a CRM that’s also a sales stimulant
Traditional CRMs are built to capture what already happened — call reports logged, fields filled in. Eric wanted a system that would also tell reps what to do next.
“Proton is a customer relationship management tool that allows us to very easily look at customer activities like quotes and orders. But it's also a sales stimulant, helping us grow our business through recommended products.”
Eric Wessinger · President & CEO, Richards SupplyThose recommendations do double duty. They keep salespeople engaged in finding ways to help customers improve, and they let Richards Supply be a better partner by keeping track of what each customer has bought before.
Getting buy-in: lead with the pain the team already feels
Richards Supply had been through software rollouts before, with mixed results. One earlier attempt added product recommendations to the ERP through another vendor, and the tool never gained adoption. So Proton had a bar to clear: it could not be another “flavor of the month.”
Eric was confident it would clear that bar, because Proton solved a problem his people already felt. So that is how he introduced it — not as a management initiative, but as the fix for a specific, familiar frustration.
“We presented Proton as a really good communication tool between our inside sales team and our field outside sales team. Our more tenured employees appreciated this because it solved a pain point they had been feeling for a long time. This led to quicker adoption of Proton.”
Eric Wessinger · President & CEO, Richards SupplyHis advice for anyone evaluating a CRM is to widen the frame first, then bring the users in early. “Anyone who's looked at traditional CRMs in the past should broaden their perspective on what this tool can do,” he said.
“It's really important to have conversations with the end users ahead of time to ensure your team is on board with what you're doing, and it's not just the management team making the decision.”
The rollout: peers teaching peers
Richards Supply ran the implementation on a “train the trainer” model, and what made it work was who did the teaching. “It was their peers teaching them about Proton, and it was more hands-on,” Eric said. “It wasn't just a head on a screen telling them what to do. It was somebody they've worked with for a while that was able to highlight the virtues of it.”
The communication around the rollout mattered as much as the training itself. “I think the communication was really good from the start,” Eric said. “And so it made it more seamless than previous implementations we've done.”
The surprise was who picked it up fastest.
“Our expectation coming in, as with any new technology, was that our younger employees are going to be faster adopters than our more tenured team. But what we saw with Proton was both sides adopting it pretty quickly.”
Eric Wessinger · President & CEO, Richards SupplyBefore
With Proton
Inside and field
Before“Church and state”: frequent communication breakdowns and finger-pointing.
With ProtonOne tool both teams work in, and real accountability between them.
Pipeline
BeforeOpportunities managed in a spreadsheet that had outgrown the job.
With ProtonOpportunities managed in a CRM built for distributors.
Sales calls
BeforeReps took the order the customer already came in for.
With ProtonRecommended items and reorder prompts give reps more to discuss.
The results: open lines, and a lot more accountability
A month after going live, Richards Supply had already seen the change it was actually after.
Inside and outside sales talking to each other
“Proton's helped us open those lines of communication and bring a lot more accountability between the inside and outside sales teams,” Eric said. Both halves of the sales floor now work from the same record of what a customer has quoted, ordered, and been pitched.
Adoption that stuck this time
72% of the people who use Proton in a given month are in it every day — at a company whose last attempt at recommendations, bolted onto the ERP, never got adopted at all.
A 23.67% conversion rate on pitched items
The AI-driven recommendations are what turn a reactive rep proactive. Recommended items and items due for reorder give the team something to raise beyond the order in front of them — and 23.67% of what reps pitch converts.
$3.4k of incremental revenue per user, per month
Richards Supply measures Proton by what it adds on top of the business the team was already writing: $3.4k in incremental revenue for every active user, every month.
Looking ahead: more lines per order, and a pipeline you can see
Richards Supply expects the next stretch of gains to show up inside the order itself — more lines per order, better pipeline visibility, and reps working further ahead of the customer — with profitability and business growth following from there.
A month in, the clearest signal was how fast it spread.
