Field sales is the part of commerce that data never quite reaches. The rep has the relationship, the context, and forty years of counter knowledge, and most of it dies in a notebook nobody reads. This episode is about closing that gap. Matt Johnson calls in from the AI for Distributors event in Chicago while Floyd Blaikie hosts two guests from Pivotree's automotive world: Lauren McCullough, co-founder and CEO of Tromml, and Pivotree's Sam Russo. Lauren takes the side most software founders won't: the human relationship is the asset, and AI exists to make it sharper, not replace it. The friction that comes out of it is where you point AI in a high-trust business, and where you keep it out.

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👤 Guest Bio

Lauren McCullough is co-founder and CEO of Tromml, a vertically focused software company for the automotive aftermarket and industrial distribution. Tromml started on the analytics side, giving distributors visibility into what products were actually making money, and now builds field-sales tooling that captures rep conversations and turns them into next best actions. Lauren argues for keeping relationship-driven selling human while using data and AI to support it.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why reps in distribution aren't just selling parts, they're selling relationships and trust, and why that changes how AI fits
• The difference between a system of record (put information in, pull a report out) and a system of action (surfaces the next best action and gets smarter over time)
• A rep's actual Monday workflow: prioritized accounts, optimized routes, a human-digestible briefing before the visit, and voice-note capture after
• The field signal that never reaches the boardroom, like a shipping delay or a launch that isn't landing, because nobody reports bad news up the chain
• Hiring implications: when the data lives in the system, you hire for emotional intelligence instead of category memory
• Where to point AI in a high-trust industry, and Lauren's blunt take on automating the customer relationship away

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Tromml (Lauren's company; mobile conversation-capture app for field reps)
• Pivotree
• AI for Distributors event, Chicago (Matt's reference; the event's formal name is Applied AI for Distributors, run by Distribution Strategy Group)
• Claude (AI note-taking tool referenced by Sam)
• Salesforce (referenced as a CRM)
• Genuine Parts Company (referenced by Sam; see flag below)