The biggest sales challenges for building materials brands
In building materials, a rep's day is hard to plan. A rep isn't covering one type of customer. In one territory there are distributors, dealers and sub-dealers, plus contractors, masons, plumbers and architects who choose the brand, plus project sites, plus leads from builders and enquiries from homeowners. Reps and their managers usually build their own visit plans to cover all of them.
Even the result of a visit is hard to pin down. A productive visit does not always end in an order, and every company defines it differently. When we asked building materials leaders at the BeatRoute Elevate AI Summit for Building Materials in Gurugram what makes a visit productive, each gave a different answer.
The clearest outcome is the order you collect, but that is not going to happen on every call. A person doing 10 visits is not going to get an order at every site or every counter. What matters is adding a new product line, adding new demand, or connecting with an influencer who can bring future business.
Amit KumarHead, Sales Excellence, Birla NuBusiness as usual is not a productive call. If a person is actually helping you increase share of wallet with a counter, or adding more SKUs to what that counter already sells, that is a productive call. Everything else is a transaction.
Ishang JawaManaging Director and Partner, BCGSo reps juggle many types of visit, and success is judged differently from one company, and often one manager, to the next. That makes field productivity hard to measure and even harder to improve. The survey reflects it: 61% of respondents named field sales productivity as the biggest commercial challenge in building materials, ahead of every project and channel challenge on the list.
Exhibit 1
Field sales productivity is the top challenge
Question asked: “What are the biggest commercial challenges facing building-materials companies today?”
Almost every challenge on this list plays out in the field. A rep spends the morning at a counter that was never going to order. A project enquiry waits a week for a call back. By then, the contractor has already suggested another brand.
At BeatRoute, after working with 200+ enterprise brands, we have seen a common problem. Most brands focus on tracking their field teams, so every visit, check-in and report gets logged. But tracking does not change what a dealer buys or how much they order. What raises productivity is guiding each rep on what to do next: which dealer to visit, what to sell and what agenda to drive.
How AI can improve field sales productivity in building materials
61% of respondents named field sales productivity as the building materials industry's biggest challenge, and 79% said this could be solved with AI-led visit recommendations. This shows that the building materials industry's biggest bottleneck can be solved with AI.
Exhibit 2
AI-led visit recommendations are the major AI use case in the building materials industry
Question asked: “Where could AI make the biggest practical difference over the next 2–3 years?”
AI-led visit recommendations
- Trade-influencer engagement63%
- Reporting and follow-ups47%
- Project lead identification47%
Today, AI can work out which outlets to prioritise based on a brand's business goals. It can spot dealers whose sales are slipping and decide which dealers and sites each rep needs to visit.
So for building materials brands, the opportunity is to use BeatRoute's Scheduling AI Agent to send reps to the right place at the right time, and get the most out of every dealer, influencer and project.
What building materials brands must fix before AI can deliver
Building materials brands operate with highly fragmented technology stacks across their sales and distribution operations. A typical setup includes separate applications for field sales (SFA), lead management, dealer portals and loyalty programmes, alongside Excel sheets and WhatsApp for day-to-day information sharing. SAP or other ERP systems manage core business operations, but sales and distribution data often remains scattered across these different tools.
Exhibit 3
Data fragmentation, low field adoption and system integration are interconnected barriers to AI adoption
Question asked: “What are the biggest barriers to achieving measurable business value from AI?”
- 63%Fragmented or unreliable data
- 53%Low field-team adoption
- 37%System integration
These challenges are closely connected. When dealer information, leads, influencer details and field activities sit in different systems, getting a complete view of sales and distribution becomes difficult. It also makes it harder for AI to bring information together and provide relevant guidance.
Consider a sales representative who needs to engage with a few business-driving influencers, prioritise 5–6 dealers experiencing declining sales in their territory, or follow up on a few high-potential construction-site leads. If this information sits across different applications, where does the AI deliver its recommendations? And can the representative access the relevant information and act on those recommendations without switching between systems?
This creates another challenge for field adoption. Representatives already navigate multiple applications to complete their daily tasks. Adding AI recommendations to this fragmented experience only adds to the complexity. For AI to become part of everyday sales execution, representatives need a seamless interface where they can receive guidance, access relevant information and take action.
The challenge, therefore, is not just fragmented data or low adoption in isolation. It is the lack of connected data, integrated workflows and a seamless interface for field teams. Building materials brands need to bring their sales and distribution workflows together so AI can move beyond generating insights to guiding and driving field execution.
At BeatRoute, we believe AI must work within the flow of sales execution. Our unified, goal-driven platform connects sales and distribution activities, helping brands translate business goals into actionable guidance for their field teams.
How soon AI could become part of everyday building materials sales and distribution
Building materials companies are already incorporating AI into their operations, using it to analyse business performance, generate insights and build custom dashboards. The next opportunity is to make AI an integral part of sales and distribution, where it can guide decisions and drive execution at the territory level.
We built it over three months with a $200 Claude subscription. Our SAP provider said they would make the APIs for 30 to 40 lakhs, and another team said they would make the dashboards for 30 to 40 lakhs. Six hundred dollars later, I have a perfectly running, incredible dashboarding system, and decisions are being taken faster and better.
Shrivatsa SomanyHead, Bathware, Somany CeramicsExhibit 4
95% say AI is already routine or will become routine within three years
Question asked: “How soon do you expect AI to become a regular part of sales and distribution operations in the building-materials industry?”
95% already use AI or expect it to become routine within three years
- 35%Already routine
- 22%Within 1 year
- 38%Within 2 to 3 years
The remaining 5% expect AI to be routine within 4 to 5 years.
The survey points to growing acceptance of AI across the industry. However, its real value will depend on how effectively it translates business goals into action. Traditional sales systems record visits, orders and check-ins, leaving managers to interpret the data and decide what needs to happen next. AI can take this further by helping sales representatives identify which dealers to visit, what to discuss, which products to recommend and what actions to take to reach their goals.
More than the industry accepting AI, it's going to be the SaaS player integrating it in their existing suites.
This calls for AI to be embedded into the systems sales teams already use, rather than existing as another standalone tool. BeatRoute's Goal-Driven AI Agents follow this approach, translating business goals into actionable field guidance through dealer prioritisation, visit planning, visit agendas and SKU recommendations.
See how BeatRoute is transforming building materials RTM
Questions about AI in building materials sales
What does route to market mean in building materials?
Route to market is the path a product takes from the factory to the person who uses it. In building materials it runs through distributors, dealers and sub-dealers, and through influencers such as contractors, masons, plumbers, electricians and architects, who often choose the brand. It also covers project sales to builders and construction sites. That is why field teams spend most of their time with dealers, influencers and sites, not with end buyers.
How should a building materials company start with AI?
Start with one leak, not one tool. Name the place you lose the most sales, pick one number that shows it, and write down today's value. Then use AI on that one decision for a quarter, for example which dealers and sites a rep visits each day. In BeatRoute's survey, visit planning was the most wanted use of AI. Compare the number before and after, then move to the next leak.
How reliable is BeatRoute's building materials AI survey?
The survey gives a directional view from experienced practitioners. A total of 125 respondents from building materials brands answered seven questions on paper at BeatRoute Elevate, the AI Summit for Building Materials Route to Market, in Gurugram on 23 October 2026. The findings show what people working in sales and distribution think about AI. They are a strong signal to test against your own data, and they are not a statistical estimate for the whole industry.
Can I use the data from this report?
Yes. The results are in the exhibits on this page, each with its question and sample size. You can quote and reuse the figures with credit to BeatRoute, citing the report title, the survey date of 23 October 2026, the sample of 125 respondents and the page link. Respondents are named only where they agreed to it on the form.
What does BeatRoute do for building materials companies?
BeatRoute is an enterprise SaaS AI platform that combines sales force automation, distributor management and Goal-Driven AI agents. Building materials brands use it to plan dealer, contractor and site visits, track project leads, run loyalty programmes for contractors and other influencers, and capture secondary sales. It is used by 200+ enterprise brands across 20+ countries and 10 industry verticals.
About the survey
| Report | AI in Building Materials Route to Market: 2027 Report |
|---|---|
| Run by | BeatRoute, at BeatRoute Elevate, the AI Summit for Building Materials Route to Market, Gurugram, 23 October 2026 |
| Sample size | 125 respondents from building materials brands |
| Focus | AI in building materials sales and distribution |
| Interpretation | Directional survey findings |
All percentages use 125 respondents as the base and are rounded to whole numbers. Several questions permitted or recorded multiple selections, so their percentages add up to more than 100%. The findings describe what experienced practitioners think and are not a representative estimate for the entire building materials industry.