To capture wholesale and trade enquiries on a retail store, give your chat three things: a short public trade page to answer from, an instruction to recognise trade language and ask a few qualifying questions, and a lead destination that reaches whoever handles trade accounts. With those in place, a café owner asking "do you supply shops?" gets a real answer and a named follow-up, instead of a generic shipping reply. Without them, that enquiry usually sits in a retail inbox for days.
Our earlier post on wholesale enquiries hiding in your retail store inbox explains why these leads go missing. This one is the practical setup for catching them in chat.
Recognise the trade buyer in the first message
Trade buyers rarely announce themselves with a form. They type into the same chat box as everyone else, and their questions look like these:
- "Do you have a stockist programme?"
- "Can I buy these in bulk for my shop?"
- "What are your trade prices?"
- "We run a café, could we sell your candles?"
- "Do you do wholesale to the US?"
The tells are words like stockist, wholesale, trade, bulk, retail partner, reseller and minimum order, or a mention of a business they run. Write that list into your chatbot's instructions so it treats these as a different kind of conversation. In SpideyChat that goes in the "System prompt (persona & instructions)" field on the chatbot:
If a visitor mentions wholesale, trade, stockist, bulk buying, reselling or running a shop, café or salon, treat them as a potential trade buyer. Answer from the Trade page, then ask the qualifying questions below, two at a time. Don't quote trade prices. Offer to pass their details to the trade team.
Publish a short trade page first
A chatbot that answers only from your own content can't describe a trade programme you haven't written down. One page is enough. It should answer:
- Who qualifies. Independent shops, cafés, salons, online stores, or businesses only in certain countries.
- Minimum first order and reorder. A value or unit count.
- How pricing works. "Trade prices are shared once your account is approved" is a perfectly good answer.
- How to apply. What you need from them, and whether there is a form.
- How long approval takes, and who will be in touch.
- Shipping for trade orders, if it differs from retail.
Make sure the bot has learned it: crawl the site again (website crawling is on Starter and above), upload the page as a document, or add the key facts as Q&A pairs.
If you also run a full trade account application process, why trade account applications stall covers the paperwork side.
Six questions that qualify a trade buyer
You want enough to decide whether to call, without turning chat into a questionnaire. These six cover it:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Business name | Lets you look them up before replying |
| Type of business | Shop, café, salon, online store, or a gift box company |
| Where they sell | Physical shop, website or both, and roughly where |
| Products of interest | Tells you which range and price list to send |
| Rough first order size | Separates a 20-unit trial from a 500-unit buyer |
| Best email or phone | So the trade team can actually follow up |
Ask two at a time, in the flow of the conversation, and answer their questions as you go. A hypothetical exchange for an imaginary candle brand:
Visitor: Do you supply shops? I run a gift shop in York. Bot: Yes, we work with independent gift shops in the UK. The minimum first order is 24 units across any scents, and trade prices are shared once your account is approved, usually within two working days. Which ranges are you interested in, and is it just the York shop or online too? Visitor: The tin candles mainly, shop and website. Bot: Great. If you share your shop's name and the best email for the trade team, I'll pass this on so they can send the trade price list.
That is three facts from the trade page, two qualifying questions, and a natural reason to leave contact details.
Route the lead to the person who handles trade
A trade lead that lands in the general support queue loses most of its value. Decide where it goes before launch.
In SpideyChat, lead capture is included on every plan, including Free. When a visitor gives an email or phone number, the conversation is recorded as a lead with any name, company, email and phone collected, and a notification goes to the address in the chatbot's "Email new leads to" setting, or to the account owner if that is blank. Every lead also appears on the dashboard's leads page. If trade and retail are handled by different people, point that setting at a shared address the trade person watches. The notification includes the visitor's opening message, which for a trade buyer usually says what they are after. On Pro, webhooks can also send the lead to another system you run.
The bot is designed to ask for contact details at the two moments people welcome it: when it can't answer, and when they ask for a quote, pricing for their situation or a person. It asks once, and carries on helping if they decline. That suits trade buyers, who generally want to be contacted.
Follow up fast, and use the conversation
The reply that wins a trade account is quick and specific. A few habits:
- Reply within a working day. A buyer comparing suppliers will often go with whoever answers first.
- Read the transcript before replying. The conversation shows which products they asked about and any concerns, so your first email can address them.
- Send the thing you promised. If the bot said "the trade team will send the price list", the first reply should contain it.
Two widget settings help as well. The suggested prompts shown in the chat can include "Wholesale enquiries" alongside retail ones. The greeting bubble can also be limited to chosen page paths, such as your trade page, with a line like "Buying for a shop? Ask about trade terms."
Measure what came in
After a month, count trade leads, how many became accounts, and the questions the bot couldn't answer. SpideyChat logs unanswered questions as knowledge gaps, which often reveal missing trade details such as "do you do own-label?" or "can you ship to Ireland?". Each one is a line to add to the trade page. The wholesale and distribution overview shows how the same setup works for businesses that sell only to trade.
To start catching these enquiries, see how lead capture works in SpideyChat, then publish your trade page and turn it on.