AI assistant readiness checklist for sales: is your inbox ready?

BOTrento Team13 October 20269 min read

Phase 1: Inbox and data access

An assistant can only work with what it can see. Start by finding out where your enquiries actually land, not where you think they land.

• List every entry point. This includes shared addresses (general info, sales and bookings mailboxes), salespeople's personal mailboxes, web form notifications and enquiries forwarded by partners.
• Pick one mailbox to start with. One mailbox and one process give you a clean test. Add the others once the first one works.
• Check how it can be connected. Some providers allow IMAP access. With others, you set up a forwarding rule or export messages. Ask whoever manages your IT whether company policy blocks forwarding to external addresses.
• Export open deals. If you use Pipedrive, HubSpot or a spreadsheet, export current enquiries and sent quotes as CSV or XLSX. Useful columns are customer, contact person, enquiry date, what they asked for, quote date, quote value, status and next step.
• Clean the export. Remove duplicates, mark deals that are clearly won or lost, and fill in missing contact emails. A short, accurate list is better than a long, messy one.
• Move key details out of attachments. If event dates, quantities or equipment lists only ever appear in PDFs, the assistant may miss them. Get into the habit of summarising the essentials in the email body.

Phase 2: Price lists, templates and standard answers

AI drafts are only as consistent as the material behind them. If your prices sit in three different spreadsheets and every salesperson writes in their own way, the drafts will be just as inconsistent.

Prices and commercial rules

• Keep one current price list with a "valid from" date. Archive older versions.
• Write down your rules for discounts, minimum orders, delivery and collection fees, deposits and cancellation terms.
• List the things that must never be guessed: availability, dates, final price and contract terms. A person always handles these.

Templates you actually use

• Acknowledgement of a new enquiry
• Request for missing information
• Quote cover email
• Follow-up after a quote
• Polite decline

Keep them short and in the tone you want. Decide whether you're formal or informal, whether you use first names or surnames, and which languages you reply in. Add your standard signature.

Standard questions per enquiry type

Write down what you always need to know before you quote. For an event company, that might be date, venue, headcount and budget range. For equipment rental, it's usually the rental period, delivery address, collection and whether an operator is needed. With these lists, "request for missing information" drafts ask the right questions and don't read like a generic form.

Phase 3: Approval rules and who signs off drafts

This is the phase most teams skip, and it decides whether the assistant helps you or creates risk. The principle is simple: the assistant prepares the draft, and a person decides whether to send it. If you're not sure which tasks to hand over at all, see which sales tasks to give an AI assistant first and which to keep human.

• Give every enquiry an owner. When an enquiry has no owner, its drafts sit there unread.
• Set fixed review times. For example, review drafts every morning and again after lunch.
• Plan cover. Decide who approves drafts when the owner is on holiday or ill.
• Agree what "edit" means. Small wording changes are fine. If you rewrite a draft completely, note why, so the template or instructions can be improved.

Phase 4: Privacy, access and a baseline

Sales emails contain personal data, so treat the assistant like any other supplier that processes it. Go through our GDPR checklist for AI sales tools instead of starting from scratch. The practical points are below.

• Ask the supplier where data is stored, which language model provider processes the text and whether that provider uses it for training.
• Get a data processing agreement and check whether your privacy notice or records of processing need a short update.
• Keep sensitive mail out. HR matters, personal conversations and legal disputes shouldn't be in the mailbox you connect.
• Tell the team. If you connect someone's personal mailbox, they should know and agree to it.
• Ask a lawyer about specific cases, such as special categories of data or customers outside the EU. The EU AI Act also sets transparency expectations for AI use. If the tool only drafts internally and a person approves everything, the practical step is to write down how you use it.

Finally, record a baseline before you start: how many enquiries are open, how many quotes have had no follow-up and how long replies typically take. Without it, you can't judge the trial. Our 14-day trial plan with a scorecard shows how to measure it.

Template: one-page brief for your AI assistant

Copy this, fill it in and keep it next to your price list. It also works as an onboarding note for new salespeople.

Mailbox to connect first: [your shared sales address]
Enquiry types: event production, equipment hire, ad hoc services
Languages we reply in: English, German
Tone: friendly, first names, no exclamation marks
Always ask before quoting: date, location, number of guests, budget range
Never confirm in a draft: availability, dates, final price, discounts above our limit
Price list: current version valid from [date], stored in [location]
Approvers: enquiry owner; team lead for declines and non-standard terms
Holiday cover: [name]
Excluded from the assistant: HR, legal, personal mail
Baseline (today): open enquiries [ ], quotes without follow-up [ ], typical reply time [ ]

How this works in BOTrento during the 14-day free trial

BOTrento Chief of Staff is a managed process for enquiries, quotes and follow-ups. It isn't an empty chat window. The difference is explained in ChatGPT or Claude vs a managed AI process. Here is how your checklist is used during the trial:

1. You connect your data. You can connect a mailbox via IMAP. For Gmail, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, you use a forwarding rule or an import for now, as a direct connection is still being prepared. You can also import open deals from your CRM or spreadsheet as CSV or XLSX. After you register, someone from our team contacts you within 24 hours on working days to help connect your mail.
2. The 14 days start with the first successful data upload, not when you register. You have 7 days to prepare. You don't need a payment card or your own API key, and AI usage is included.
3. At the start, you get a "Lost money" report showing enquiries and quotes that went quiet. It can only look back at past emails in a mailbox connected via IMAP.
4. Every working-day morning, you see "Today 1+3" in the app and by email: one main task and three more that need your attention.
5. You approve the drafts. Replies, quotes and follow-ups are prepared in English, German, French or Czech, and nothing is sent without your approval. BOTrento also spots promises like "I'll get back to you by Friday" and reminds you about them. That solves the problem described in how to stop forgetting quote follow-ups.

There are a few limits to know about in advance. BOTrento works from the email text, not attachments. It doesn't read your calendar, and it never confirms dates or bookings. Your approval rules from Phase 3 cover exactly those points. Data is stored on servers in the EU (Germany), and the text needed for each task is processed by a commercial model provider through its API. You can also use your own key, as described on the API key help page.

See a walkthrough of the process, check plans and what's included, or go straight to start your 14-day free trial. It's particularly well suited to teams in events and production and equipment rental.