From a stalled distributor pipeline to active conversations

The problem

• 67 international distributor inquiries sat in the CRM, some untouched for over a year, with no consistent way to separate strong leads from noise.
• 87 more had been disqualified with no audit trail, so no one knew how many were closed correctly.
• Vetting was manual and depended on whoever happened to review the lead.

The system we built

An AI vetting system that encodes the brand’s own rules: excluded-territory and sanctions checks, a weighted scoring rubric, and category-fit logic. Every lead was independently verified against business registries, trade data, and import records, and through direct vendor interviews. We extended the same system to re-audit the archive of disqualified leads and produced leadership-ready reporting throughout.

Where people verify

The AI does the research and the scoring. Engineers and the client’s leaders verify each finding against primary sources before it reaches a decision.

What changed

• 18 of 67 inquiries verified and prioritized as real targets within weeks.
• 11 of those 18 are in active conversations, and 6 are at the signed-NDA stage.
• The re-audit of the disqualified archive found that a majority of the leads checked were real, fundable candidates.
• The audit caught a live CRM bug: corrected, active leads still showing as disqualified in fresh exports.
• One disqualified lead turned out to be an unauthorized reseller, which the client shut down.

What the client keeps

A reusable AI vetting tool the client’s team operates directly, the encoded rules, the scoring rubric, and the full audit trail of every decision.

Why it matters for any brand with a distributor or partner pipeline

Encode your rules once. Apply consistent AI-assisted research and scoring at scale. Package the findings for leadership. Leave your team a tool they own. The revenue and partnership opportunity is often already in your CRM.