In short
- The Quotes and Prospects agent, in preparation, will qualify each enquiry, complete your CRM, prepare the quote from your catalogue and chase quotes that have had no reply.
- A quote, a discount or a delivery commitment never goes out until someone on your team has approved it.
- Once the quote is accepted, it will hand over to the Payment Reminders and Invoices agent, which will prepare the invoice and follow the payment.
Can an AI agent prepare your quotes and chase the clients who have not replied? Yes, provided you give it clear rules and keep the decision. That is the role of the Quotes and Prospects agent, one of the four standard agents Kendu Intelligence is preparing.
An AI agent is a programme that reads your messages and files, prepares a piece of work and submits it to you. It does not replace your salesperson: it prepares the ground for them. In situations planned in advance, it stops and hands over.
This agent is in preparation: this article describes its standard agent page. For you, it will be adapted to your tools and your rules. At the audit, we check how to connect it to your CRM and your email.
Why quotes get lost
In an SME, a quote request can arrive through several doors: the website form, an email, a call noted in a notebook. The salesperson is in a meeting, the owner is on a site. The reply waits.
Then the quote goes out, and nobody follows it. The follow-up planned for “in a week” slips to the next one. The validity date passes without anyone seeing it coming.
These are not mistakes, but repetitive tasks with no visible deadline, which come after the urgent. An agent, on the other hand, will watch the deadlines you have set. It will still ask you before acting.
Qualifying the enquiry: need, budget, deadline, decision-maker
As soon as an enquiry arrives (website form, email, or a call transcribed by your team), the agent will read it and fill in the prospect record in your CRM, the software where you track your clients and prospects. It will look for four pieces of information:
- the need: what, in what quantity, for what use;
- the budget, if stated;
- the desired deadline;
- the decision-maker: who signs on the client's side.
If information is missing, it will draft the question to ask. It will also suggest the next action: call back, send the quote, arrange a visit.
For example, an SME with 30 employees receives an enquiry through its website on a Friday evening. On Monday morning, the salesperson finds the record filled in and the missing question already drafted. If the information is enough, a draft quote is waiting too, ready to review.
Prospects' contact details are personal data. Before set-up, the agent's rulebook will specify the legal basis (the reason that allows the use of this data) and the retention period. In France, the CNIL, the data protection authority, states that prospect data used for commercial prospecting can be kept for three years from collection or from the prospect's last contact.
Preparing the quote from your catalogue and your pricing rules
The agent does not set your prices. It will apply the ones you give it: your catalogue of products and services, your price list, your calculation rules. These rules are written in the agent's rulebook. You approve this rulebook before any development: that is your first decision.
The result will be a draft quote. The salesperson will review it, correct it if needed, then send it. Each decision will be recorded in the agent's log: what it proposed, what your team decided, who, when, with which version of the agent. That way you will track the quality of the drafts over time.
Next, the agent will follow the quote. It will watch two deadlines: the no-reply period you have set, and the quote's validity date. When that period is exceeded, or when the validity date approaches, it will prepare a draft reminder. The reminder only targets quotes that have had no reply: before preparing it, the agent will check that the client has not replied in the meantime.
What the agent never sends alone: quote, discount, delivery commitment
At Kendu Intelligence, each action of an agent has an autonomy level, from 0 to 3:
- level 0, shadow: the agent proposes, your team does the work itself, and we compare;
- level 1, systematic approval: the agent prepares, a person approves, corrects or rejects each action;
- level 2, approval by exception: the agent acts alone on safe cases, defined in writing; your team approves the rest and checks a sample;
- level 3, autonomous with monitoring: the agent acts alone, your team reads the report and receives the alerts.
For this agent, three actions never go beyond level 1:
- sending a quote;
- a commercial discount;
- a delivery commitment.
A quote commits your company: it never goes out without approval. Simple reminders, however, can move to level 2, if the measurements justify it and with your written agreement.
The agent will start at level 0, during a “shadow” trial period of a few weeks, with a length defined with you: this is the acceptance testing. We measure its differences from your team's work. Going live will wait for your go-ahead: that is your second decision.
After signature: the handover to the invoice and payment follow-up
When the client accepts the quote, the Quotes and Prospects agent will pass the file to a second agent, the Payment Reminders and Invoices agent. It is a chain of agents: each has its own mission, and the file is designed to pass from one to the other without re-entry.
Kendu Intelligence's four standard agents (quotes and prospects, payment reminders and invoices, emails and support, accounting documents) will be built together, on a common base: the same action log, the same approval queue, the same levels, the same supervision dashboard.
The Payment Reminders and Invoices agent will have to:
- prepare the draft invoice from the accepted quote;
- suggest matching payments received at the bank with invoices issued;
- prepare reminders in case of delay, in the tone you have chosen;
- flag discrepancies: partial payment, dispute, at-risk client.
It too will never go beyond level 1 for issuing an invoice, a formal notice (the formal reminder), cancelling an invoice or a credit note (the document that cancels or reduces an invoice), or any promise of a payment delay.
It will apply your payment terms, and these terms must comply with the law. In France, between businesses, the agreed payment period cannot, as a general rule, exceed sixty days from the invoice issue date. The contract may also provide for forty-five days end of month, if this period is stated in it and is not an abuse towards the supplier (Code de commerce, article L441-10).
The invoice itself is changing form. In France, all businesses covered by the reform must be able to receive electronic invoices from 1 September 2026. SMEs and micro-businesses will have to issue them from 1 September 2027. These invoices go through a platform approved by the administration. In Belgium, since 1 January 2026, Belgian businesses subject to VAT must use structured electronic invoices between themselves: invoices exchanged directly between the two businesses' software, and no longer a simple PDF sent by email. The agent will not replace your platform: at the audit, we check how to connect it.
Stop cases: request outside the catalogue, client with unpaid invoices, public buyer
A stop case is a situation written in advance where the agent stops and hands over, rather than guessing. For the Quotes and Prospects agent, there are four:
- a request outside the catalogue;
- a price not covered by your rules;
- an existing client in dispute or with unpaid invoices: the decision is yours;
- a request from a public body.
Why this last case? A public buyer does not order like a private company. In France, it must respect equal treatment of candidates, freedom of access and transparency of procedures (Code de la commande publique, articles L1 to L6). Replying to this type of request is for your team, not for an automatic draft.
When the agent stops, a person on your team takes over the file, and the stop will be counted in the monthly supervision report. If the agent meets an error that keeps repeating, it will report it to us itself.
Indicators: response time, conversion rate, approval rate
Each agent has its indicators, written in its rulebook:
- response time: the time between the arrival of an enquiry and the first reply;
- conversion rate: the share of quotes sent that are signed;
- number of quotes chased;
- approval rate: the share of drafts that your team approves.
The approval rate will be measured from the shadow trial onwards. The indicators will then be reported each month in the supervision report. The approval rate and the errors found will be used to decide whether a simple reminder can move to level 2. The reverse also exists: after a serious alert, the agent will automatically step down one level.
Going further
- Standard agents: the four agents and what each will do.
- The method: the steps, your two decisions and the autonomy levels.
- Supervision: the dashboard, the alerts and the monthly report.
- The audit: a first look at your quotes, your tools and your volumes. It costs €490 excl. VAT, deducted from the quote if you sign it within 30 days.