Inbound demo request research agent for small industrial manufacturers selling through distributors on HubSpot

What The Researcher does

Today a demo request lands in HubSpot, sits until someone looks the next morning, and by the time a rep figures out who the company is, whether they already buy through a distributor, and what they actually need, half of those buyers have stopped responding. The Researcher owns the first hour after a demo request. It identifies the company and contact, looks up whether the account already exists in the ERP as a direct customer or a distributor's end customer, reads what the requester said about their application and specs, and writes a short brief plus a competitive battlecard tied to the product they asked about. It then routes the request to the right owner (inside rep, territory manager, or channel partner), drafts a first reply that references their application, and offers a booking link so qualified buyers can grab a time immediately. It works for a small sales team of a few reps and a sales manager, and it is built and maintained for them: prompts, data connections, routing rules and battlecards are kept current as products, distributors and competitors change.

Built on HubSpot

The team already runs HubSpot, so the brief, battlecard, routing and booking should live where reps work. HubSpot Breeze handles company research, record summaries and the first-pass chat triage well, and HubSpot workflows handle assignment and reminders. HubSpot does not natively know what is in the ERP or which distributor protects an account, and its research alone will not reliably parse spec-heavy free text against a product catalog. A custom AI agent orchestrated through n8n fills that gap: it reads the ERP read-only, checks the channel map stored as HubSpot custom objects, and writes results back to the record. Chili Piper handles instant booking so a qualified buyer can grab time while they are still interested.

What starts it

• A demo request, quote request or 'talk to engineering' form is submitted on the website and creates or updates a HubSpot contact
• A chat conversation on the website is tagged as a sales inquiry by the HubSpot chat agent
• A known target account shows a spike of visits to product spec, datasheet or pricing-request pages
• A channel partner forwards an end-customer inquiry into a shared HubSpot inbox
• A demo request sits unbooked for four business hours after the first reply, prompting a refreshed brief and a reminder to the owner

What it reads

• HubSpot CRM (contacts, companies, deals, form submissions, page views and owner assignments)
• ERP customer, ship-to and order history via a read-only sync or API (accounts, products bought, last order date, which distributor fulfilled it)
• Distributor and channel partner territory map and deal registration list kept in HubSpot custom objects
• Enrichment and company data from Apollo with FullEnrich as a waterfall for missing direct dials and emails
• Public sources on the requesting company: website, product lines, plant locations, certifications, recent news and job postings for engineers or buyers
• Internal library of product spec sheets, application notes and competitor comparison notes used to build battlecards

When a person takes over

• Channel conflict: when the ERP or territory map shows the account belongs to a distributor or has an active deal registration, the channel manager decides whether to pass it to the partner, co-sell or take it direct. The agent never contacts these buyers on its own.
• Engineering-heavy requests: when the inquiry includes custom specs, tolerances, certifications or non-standard materials the agent cannot match to a catalog product, it routes to an applications engineer with the brief and the exact questions to resolve before a sales reply.
• First reply approval during the pilot and for any request mentioning pricing, lead times or quantities: the rep reviews, edits and sends, because commitments on cost and delivery have to come from a person.
• Ambiguous ERP matches: when two or more ship-to records or a parent and subsidiary could be the match, a sales ops owner confirms the right account before the record is linked.

Rules it follows

• Respect the channel: never send outreach to a contact at an account with a protected distributor relationship or active deal registration, and never imply the buyer should bypass their distributor.
• Never state pricing, discounts, lead times, stock levels or compliance certifications in any draft. These come only from the rep after checking the ERP and quoting process.
• ERP access is read-only and limited to the fields needed for matching (account, ship-to, product family, last order date, fulfilling distributor). Order values and margin data are not pulled into briefs.
• Battlecards use only the approved internal comparison library and public product data. Every competitor claim must link to its source, and unverified claims are labeled as such rather than stated as fact.
• If the agent cannot identify the company with confidence or the request is incomplete, it says so in the brief and routes to review instead of guessing industry, size or application.

How you know it works

• Time from demo request to first relevant reply (target: same business hour)
• Percentage of demo requests that book a meeting within 48 hours
• Meetings held and pipeline created from inbound demo requests per month
• Share of requests correctly routed on first pass (direct rep, account owner, channel partner, engineer) as confirmed by the sales manager
• Number of inbound requests that turned into channel partner handoffs with a logged outcome

From pilot to live

1. Pilot (first month): one product line, reps approve everythingConnect HubSpot forms, the read-only ERP sync, the territory map and Apollo. Run the agent on all demo requests for one product family. Reps review every brief, battlecard and draft before sending, and mark errors in ERP matching, routing and research so rules and prompts can be corrected.
2. Expand: all product lines, after-hours acknowledgments liveAdd the remaining product families and their battlecards, turn on Chili Piper booking links and the after-hours acknowledgment. Allow reps to send standard first replies with light edits. Add the four-hour unbooked reminder and weekly routing accuracy review with the sales manager.
3. Run and maintain: ongoing tuningKeep the agent working as the business changes: update battlecards when competitors launch or products change, refresh the territory map when distributors are added or lose regions, monitor the ERP sync for breaks, and review scoring against which requests actually became pipeline. A monthly report covers response time, booking rate and routing accuracy.