Purchasing departments are deploying AI agents that request quotes, compare them and place orders. The term for this is agent-to-agent commerce, A2A for short. These agents inquire at night and with many suppliers at once, and they decide within the first hour based on the answers they have.
The checklist asks five questions in the order an agent asks them: can it find your product range without asking a human? Are your list prices machine-readable? Is it clear whether and when you can deliver? Does every customer see only their own price? Is a quote available within one hour? At the first “no”, the agent stops reading. That is your starting point.
The back shows five signs that tell you an agent-generated inquiry has landed in your inbox: timing, structure, tone, the request for a structured reply, and the sender. Plus three things to do this week to measure your baseline.
Two pages to print, as of September 2026.
