Empowering Distributors with Smarter Order Management: Trade Hounds and Prokeep

Distributors today are navigating an evolving market where tradespeople expect speed, convenience, and seamless communication. That’s why Trade Hounds partnered with Prokeep, the leading Order Engine for distributors. Prokeep centralizes all communications—texts, emails, web chats, and even faxes—into one workflow, making it easier for reps to manage orders, track customer conversations, and proactively drive sales. With this integration, distributors can tap into Trade Hounds’ engaged audience of tradespeople, streamline communication, and leverage social proof—all without adding extra work for their teams.

For distributors already using Prokeep, this partnership enhances workflows by connecting the front-line interactions of tradespeople directly to your order system with Trade Hounds’ AI Material Ordering. Contractors can snap a photo, upload a materials list, or even speak their order into the Trade Hounds app, and it flows directly into Prokeep—saving time, reducing errors, and creating opportunities for proactive marketing and upsells.

This Q&A dives into how Prokeep helps distributors and tradespeople communicate more efficiently, how AI is shaping smarter order workflows, and real-world examples of distributors driving more orders and stronger customer engagement. Whether you’re looking to boost branch performance or embrace social commerce without the heavy lifting, this integration is designed to give your team a competitive edge.

Can you explain what Prokeep is and how it helps distributors and tradespeople communicate more efficiently?

Prokeep is an order engine specifically built for wholesale and distributors that allows them to take more orders and get more orders. It allows them to take more orders by centralizing all of their forms of communication—text, email, web chat, even fax—into one centralized hub.

In that hub, we're collecting all of the data and the conversations that are happening between the distributor and a customer in a centralized way. So now, all of those data points and customer conversations can then be utilized to get more orders proactively.

How can distributors leverage that centralized data to actually drive more sales?

This allows the distributor to use different segments and tags and those types of things to easily go out and get more orders by sending a broadcast marketing text message. And then maybe having the inside sales team easily be able to assign out, “Hey, here are some tasks to send a message out to our top customers to see if we can get them to engage in a certain promo or come to an event,” or something along those lines.

So really, it’s just leaning into the customer experience as much as we can and allowing those distributors to take and get more orders, because that’s what we’re all here for.

How does the Trade Hounds integration with Prokeep make life easier for distributors and contractors?

It comes back to that customer experience. Distributors are constantly trying to meet the demands and the needs of their customers.

Apps like Trade Hounds make it incredibly easy for contractors to find the materials and then easily, seamlessly transition that straight into Prokeep, which we really see as the front of the house for a distributor. The distributor isn’t having to flip between five different screens to communicate with the customer.

Where we’re really leaning in is continuing to make that process more frictionless so the distributor can easily operate their workflow, but also so it’s super easy for the customer to communicate with the distributor.

How are you leveraging AI in this process?

Something that we’re really excited about coming out is order automation, and that’s where we’re using AI in one particular place.

Think about it this way: if a contractor has a box that they’re writing their order on, traditionally maybe they’d call and say, “Hey, this is what I need on this order.” Now maybe they’re saying, “Hey, I’m going to send this picture in,” and the distributor gets that, and it’s a little easier for them to see and input the order.

But what we’re doing is using technology to capture all of that order and seamlessly bring in the ERP connection so they don’t even have to leave Prokeep to send a quote directly to the customer. Then the customer can say, “Yep, that looks great.”

The great part about Prokeep is you can also say, “Hey, do you need anything else?” Maybe there’s an upsell or cross-sell opportunity, and they say, “Oh yeah, I actually do.” That could be based on recommended products they’ve purchased before and so forth.

Then you can easily say, “Awesome, we’ve got your order. It’s placed—it’ll be ready in 30 minutes.”

So without having to leave that one screen, we’re using AI to continue making that smarter and smarter based on the product information stored there, as well as frequently purchased items.

So yeah, we’re really excited about making it easier for both the distributor and the customer to interact and drive more orders.

We’re here at the NAED Marketing Summit, and one big theme is the future of marketing. How do you see technology and AI shaping distributor marketing?

What we try to do is always think about how distributors are marketing. A lot of what we’ve learned this week is that distributors think very old school in a lot of cases. We’re hearing people say things like, “Okay, we’re going to do flyers,” or “We’re going to send this email and hope people show up for our event or 50% off sale.” Traditionally, distribution has been behind in that technology.

That’s why we’re really excited to start seeing distributors who are leaning into the marketing aspects of technology and pushing forward. They’re saying, “Hey, we’re going to send out a broadcast text message to all thousand of our contacts,” where they might typically see a $20,000–$30,000 day, and now they’re seeing a $60,000–$80,000 day because they’re using technology that many industries have relied on for a long time.

That’s what gets me excited—being able to help these distributors and serve as somewhat of a guide for how they can market to their customers and ultimately drive more orders. That’s how I think about marketing to our customers and how we can support them.

How does Prokeep approach marketing?

From our standpoint, it’s not too different. We’re constantly asking: What can we do differently? What can we do that stands out? And how can we have some fun with it?

We want to stand out in an industry that’s traditionally a bit more straight-laced and old school, but still appreciates humor. So we’re figuring out how to build campaigns that are more fun while still clearly highlighting the real problem we’re solving.

We’re also trying to think outside the box. For example, we’ve been sending old-school pagers to people and saying, “Hey, this was cutting-edge technology back in the ’80s and ’90s—but things have changed.” It’s a way to get them to stop and think, “Oh yeah, I guess it has changed.”

Can you share some real-world examples of how distributors are using Prokeep to drive orders and engage customers?

Traditionally, distributors have struggled and tried to figure out, “Okay, how can we proactively go after our customers?” It starts with segmentation and thinking about what the book of customers looks like. In a lot of cases, you have your top customers that inside sales are all over, right? They’re making sure they’re good, comfortable, and that all their orders are being taken care of. But that sometimes leaves a big chunk—maybe close to 80% of the customers or contacts these distributors have—that they aren’t proactively reaching out to. Some of these may even be dormant accounts.

That’s what Prokeep really allows distributors to do: easily tap back into those audiences and say, “Hey, you haven’t purchased from us in six months—come back and see us. Here’s 30% off your next order.” That’s something we’ve really started to see distributors lean into, and it’s having a big impact on their business.

Another example is events. I was talking to a distributor the other day, and he said that traditionally they would host an event at one of their branches. They’d have hot dogs and desserts, send out an email, maybe some flyers, and typically they’d have a lot of food left over. This time, they sent out a broadcast marketing text message and had 200 more people show up than usual. They sent it to about a thousand of their contacts. Then they created tasks in Prokeep for their top sales team members, who used a template to send messages like, “Hey, hope to see you at the event.”

So there are great use cases for both sales and marketing to work together and accomplish the goals they’re striving for. We’re excited to continue helping distributors drive more orders for their business and get more people into their branches.

Final Thoughts

The integration between Trade Hounds and Prokeep is more than just a workflow upgrade—it’s a way for distributors to work smarter, save time, and connect with tradespeople where they’re already active. From AI-powered materials ordering to centralized communication and proactive marketing, this partnership makes it easier than ever to drive orders, engage customers, and turn every interaction into an opportunity.

Want to see it all in action? Check out the full interview below to hear how distributors are using Prokeep and Trade Hounds to boost efficiency and grow their business.