Buyers now ask AI who to hire and what to buy. We asked ChatGPT and Claude the ten questions a VP of supply chain asks before choosing an integrator or a system, and tracked 55 mid‑market firms. Find out whether yours made the list, and what to publish so it does.
A distribution center operator starts an automation evaluation long before an integrator or a manufacturer hears about it. Increasingly, that research runs through AI search. They type the question, read the answer, and build a list.
Most models return the global players by default: Honeywell, Dematic, AutoStore, Hyster. For an integrator, that means the firm with forty installs in the region, sitting forty minutes from the facility, goes unnamed. For a manufacturer, it means a better-fit system never makes the comparison. If you sell to operations too small for Dematic, that answer is where you lose the deal.
And you rarely see it happen. There's no bounce rate on a conversation you weren't part of. You find out at the RFP stage, or you never find out.
Example buyer question"Who can integrate AMRs with our existing conveyor in a 400,000 square foot DC near Columbus?"
Example buyer question"What's the best goods-to-person system for a mid-size 3PL shipping 20,000 orders a day?"
What we believe
Expertise should decide who gets named. Today, headcount, ad budget, and booth size decide it.
Integrators hold the project history. Manufacturers hold the performance data. Both hold the customer stories buyers need. Most of it sits in engineers' heads and sales decks, where no model can read it.
Most integrators and automation manufacturers aren't sure what content to publish, so they publish nothing. That silence is the opening. Buyers now search for expertise by asking a model.
So we ran the study. We asked ChatGPT and Claude the ten questions a VP of supply chain asks when evaluating integrators and automation, then scored every answer against 55 firms doing $20M to $500M in revenue. The industry study includes:
It arrives right away and shows whether your firm was one of the 24 named, how the category stacks up, and the grid, prompts, and method behind it.
Work email only. We'll also send a note when the next study in the series is out. Privacy policy
A clear point of view predicted visibility better than volume did. Here's what the named firms had in common, and the first move for integrators and for manufacturers on each.
Pieces signed by a named expert, saying something a competitor would argue with. A model cites a position. It skips a brochure.
Original figures from your own installs or your own study. Nobody else can cite them first, so models cite you.
A named customer, real numbers, the problem that forced the project, and what it cost to leave it alone.
Work made with a customer, an industry association, or a technology partner. Their audience and their site carry your name further than yours alone.
Buyers ask a model who to call for a specific job, or which system fits a specific operation. Your site should answer that question plainly.
Models read the same publications your buyers read. A bylined piece or a quoted engineer there does work in search, in sales, and in AI answers.
Each of these takes weeks. None of it fits around a team of two already running the trade show calendar, the website, and the sales collateral. Trelliswork is the marketing team that turns your engineers' expertise into published work, without adding headcount.
Request your company reportThe industry study shows what happened across the category. Your company report shows what happens when a buyer asks about your corner of it, using your buyer's ten questions.
Your name, work email and three competitors, in the form below.
As an integrator, the way buyers look for a partner. As a manufacturer, the way they shop for a system. Specific to your facility types and your region.
With different memory settings, so one lucky answer doesn't count as a result.
Where you showed up, where you didn't, and the raw answers so you can check our work. Then you decide what to publish first.
The industry study covers the whole category. Your company report covers your firm and your buyer's questions. Tell us who you compete with. We run your buyer's ten questions across both models and reply within one business day. You get the industry study right away too.
Work email only. We reply with your company report within one business day. We never publish your result or use your name without written permission. Privacy policy
Yes. All ten prompts are in the industry study with the exact model conditions. Run them and you'll get a version of what we got, though not an identical one. That variance between runs is finding 3.
No. Search ranking is a different problem with a different playbook. This is about whether a model names you when somebody asks it who to call.
Some do, and the share is hard to measure. AI tools send under 1% of visits to manufacturing sites, but a click count misses the buyer who reads an AI answer and then searches your name. Google's AI Overviews already appear on 57% of manufacturing searches. That's why we recommend work that pays off in search, sales, and the trade press as well as in AI answers.
The industry study shows whether your firm was one of the 24 named. For the detail, request your company report or write to us, and we'll tell you exactly what we saw for your firm across every run. We won't publish it, and we won't use your name in anything without written permission.
Longer than most people expect. Model citations take months to move. Original research and a real collaboration take weeks each to produce. Anyone promising a faster number is guessing.
