Phocas finds 39% of distributors don't measure sales forecast accuracy

Thirty-nine percent of wholesale distributors don't track sales forecasting accuracy, according to Phocas Software's State of Sales in Distribution 2026 report.

It lands next to a much louder finding. Nearly half of respondents, 49%, already use AI to sell, 29% plan to start within six months, and only 22% have no plans at all.

Deciding to buy AI is one decision. Knowing whether it worked is another, and the survey suggests plenty of sales teams have made the first without setting up the second.

The sales numbers many teams skip

Forecast accuracy isn't the only blind spot.

For the 39% of distributors that don't track forecast accuracy, there is no baseline for judging whether an AI tool made the next forecast any better.

The distributors that put winning new customers first tend to be the strictest about tracking that goal. In that group, 87% measure their new-business win rate. Among distributors whose main focus is expanding existing accounts, the share is only 46%.

The difference suggests the scorecard gets built around the current strategy and may not be rebuilt when the strategy changes. A distributor moving from account expansion toward new logos this year could easily find its reporting a cycle behind its plan.

The field rep still closes the sale

Whatever AI does in distribution, it will do it alongside a human. 55% of respondents named field or outside sales as their most effective channel. Just 5% said e-commerce.

Knowledge beat charm. Three-quarters of distributors put strong product and usage knowledge among the most important traits of an effective rep, well ahead of any other skill. Phocas CEO and co-founder Myles Glashier made the pitch that follows from that: distribution-specific AI should give reps faster, reliable access to product and performance information down to the SKU level, so they make better calls while they're with a customer or on the phone with one.

There's one clear exception to the relationship-first picture. Half of consumer goods brands distributors said their customers value best price above everything else, the only vertical in the survey where price won outright. For those sellers, the useful AI may be the kind that sharpens a quote rather than the kind that feeds a rep's product knowledge, and a win rate matters most when price decides the deal.

Collaboration, and the same gap in the warehouse

For distributors that already use AI, the capability most often picked as the biggest potential boost to sales performance is better collaboration across the business, named by 40%. One plausible reading follows: a sales forecast that nobody checks could also be the number a buyer uses to decide how much stock to keep on hand.

The upside shows up on the inventory side. Among the benefits distributors in that research reported from accurate demand planning, inventory cost reduction was cited most often, at 34%.

What Phocas ships alongside the survey

The research coincides with the release of Phocas' Sales Performance Suite. Phocas says the suite tells reps who to call and what to sell, lets them log and act on that in seconds, and shows sales leaders whether they're on track to hit targets.

The research coincides with the release of Phocas Sales Performance Suite, which readers may want to keep in mind when weighing the gaps it finds. With a sample of more than 100 wholesale distributors, single-vertical results like the consumer goods price finding also deserve care.

Still, the win-rate and forecast questions are simple yes-or-no checks, and they're hard to spin. The number worth watching in next year's edition is the 39%, because by then the 29% who said they'd start using AI within six months should have started, and should be able to say whether their forecasts got better.