A Little Automotive Sales Training

Revolutionizing Automotive Sales with AI

• Daniel Little Jr

Share episode

In this conversation, Daniel Little Jr. and Collin Ulvund discuss the transformative impact of AI in the automotive industry. They explore various benefits of AI, including productivity optimization, data aggregation, automation in marketing, ultra-personalization, and the elimination of human bias. The discussion also covers the tools available for dealerships to implement AI effectively, the importance of customer data platforms, and the future potential of AI in the industry. Throughout the conversation, they address common concerns about AI's role in the workforce and emphasize the importance of human interaction in automotive sales.

Takeaways

AI optimizes productivity, allowing smaller dealerships to compete.
Data aggregation is essential for cohesive marketing strategies.
AI can automate digital marketing, increasing ad output significantly.
Ultra-personalization improves customer engagement and conversion rates.
AI helps eliminate human bias in inventory and sales decisions.
AI tools can manage leads and customer interactions 24/7.
AI should be seen as a supplement to human roles, not a replacement.
Service scheduling can be made more efficient with AI.
Customer data platforms provide a comprehensive view of shopper interactions.
The future of AI in the automotive industry is full of potential and innovation.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to AI in Automotive Sales
00:35 Optimizing Productivity with AI
01:23 Data Aggregation and Its Importance
02:58 Marketing Automation and AI
05:31 Ultra-Personalization in Customer Interactions
06:58 Eliminating Human Bias with AI
08:19 AI Tools for Dealerships
08:26 Agentic Tools: Chatbots and Lead Handling
09:12 Lead Handling Software
12:23 Service Scheduling and AI
14:19 Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) Explained
17:39 Marketing Automation Platforms
19:39 The Future of AI
23:36 Addressing Common Concerns About AI

Hey, welcome in our show at a little sales training. I'm Dan little your host and I'm here with Colin, our regional sales manager for full path. And we're going to talk about some of the top AI benefits in the automotive industry. Colin, you want to give an introduction? Yeah, thanks for having me, Dan. I've been in the auto industry since 2014 when I sold my first car at Crown Honda of Greensboro, North Carolina. Been around in the Chicago land market for some time now. That's actually where Dan and I had met with my time at General Motors. Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Great. So let's get right in and roll. And we're going to go over those top benefits of AI. I'll let you get started with what your first one is. Yeah, I think the first one that you want to uh to note is that it really optimizes productivity. And I think that's what everyone thinks of when they think of AI. They think of ways to write outbound communications a little bit easier, but it's so much more than that. It allows for small stores to compete with large stores when it comes to being able to conceptualize ideas and send those out to customers. It allows for smaller stores to be able to run more efficiently. Think of it in comparison to some of the larger groups. where they might have digital marketing managers or other people in their office that allow them to manage this data. Small stores don't have that benefit. When I was a general manager of a small store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was a really lean operation. And having AI at that time would have been integral to be able to compete with some of the larger stores of the same brand around the Detroit area. The next thing is actually data aggregation. I think one thing that we're finding out with the digital side of marketing is that all too often, all of these tools that you have, whether it be your DMS, your CRM, your website, and so much more, they don't go into one cohesive place. All of that data sits in those individual systems and does not speak to one another. So leveraging a system like a customer data platform or a CDP, which there's a number of those out there in the automotive industry now, That's the first big step in order to make those nice outbound marketing decisions. Nice. Yeah. I can attest to that from the dealer background as to how confusing it gets when you're trying to put together marketing campaigns and you don't even know which data is going to be the most beneficial. You may do something off of your DMS and then realize that if you change it up later and do something out of CRM, you're attacking the same customers with different messages and don't even realize it because of the mixture of databases. Totally. think about this. I every dealership claims that they're doing a good job of deduping, whether it in the CRM or DMS. But realistically, if I put a lead in five years ago and then three years ago and then just last week, You probably don't have the same sales staff through all those cycles. And even then, they're going to take that showroom up or that lead and try to go close that. So salespeople have a tendency to just move a little fast for their feet. And I think having an AI system that can integrate all of that into one cohesive place will help eliminate some of the struggles with that and also give the salesperson a cleaner view of what that shopper is looking for too. Nice. All right, well, what's your next tip? So once you have the data, you got to be able to do something with it, right? So that's where marketing automation platforms or maps come into play. So you can absolutely use a data platform with traditional digital advertising. However, if you leverage that with some AI-based digital marketing, that can really turn into a one-to-one type communication at scale. So if anybody's ever tried to make their own ads, they know that it takes time. It takes time to type those up. It takes time to build out segments and to put it into channels and everything. That's why the average amount of digital advertising companies out there will put out about 50 to 70 ads per month. with AI-based digital marketing platforms, you can see up to 600 to 700 ads pushed out per month. And in these systems, because we leverage machine learning and AI systems, we can learn from what's working and what's not. So instead of having one to two times per month that you meet with a advertising company, the system's optimizing in the background. And some of these systems are crazy enough that they can actually move your budget without you even having to touch a thing. You just set guard rails up and you put a little slush fund in there and just let it go wild. It's amazing being in this industry as long as I have to hear something like that is just crazy. remember the days I have in the nitpick and try to adjust where everything goes and make sure you're doing the right thing. And, and you're right. The amount of time it takes to do ads like that compared to what it sounds like AI could do for you in minutes would take you weeks to put together. totally. And then what if they don't work? So it takes you weeks to put it together. How long is it to take for you to do A-B testing or to work on the tooling of the whole situation to optimize those for what your shoppers are looking for? mean, by the time you do all that, it's time to do it again for the next month with the next month's offers and the next focus models for the OEM and everything. So, you know, that's the outbound side of things. You also can leverage that with email and text messaging for those customers that are currently in your system. That's something that can help a dealership, what we call, reanimate the lead. So someone who maybe put a lead in between a year to three years ago, I mean, we can all say that dealers follow up on customers for a while, but they're not following up a year to three years. At that point, if that salesperson's still there, They probably don't even remember that name of that lead from three years ago. That's where these outbound marketing systems are retargeting can be huge. It just keeps your dealership's name in front of the customer. And if they keep seeing your name, they're more likely to go, OK, I'm going to go see what this group's all about. I'm going go see what Joe Schmo Chevy has really got for me. They claim they have all this stuff. Thanks. And that brings me to the next point. The next part about AI that is really important is ultra personalization and customization for the individual person. So Dan, like you said, building ads, how long would it take you? Two weeks to build ads. But how long does it take you to build landing pages? It's a pain in the butt. So with AI, can build landing pages. can build SEO enabled pages. But when a customer comes in from some of these outbound communications, AI can actually identify that shopper and then create a custom experience. if you interact with an email and come in and say, welcome back, Dan. Here's that Silverado 1500 you were looking at. Click here to get more information. And then that sends a lead in just that fast. You don't have to go start over from scratch and refill in all your contact information. You just get to just send it in a lead or what you think is just a request for information. And the dealer has everything else all in front of them. And that will actually turn to learn from itself too. You take that. That interaction, that's a data point. And that will train the system on what's going to work to convert the next shopper and the next shopper and the next shopper. What we actually find is that a lot of these AI-based tools are pretty good in the beginning. But the longer you run them, the 6, 12, 18 months post-launch, that's when you see your open rate skyrocket up to over 50%, 60%. Your conversion rates are over 5%, 6%, 7%. And you can see real lead attribution. And all of this comes without almost any human input whatsoever. Nice. I think the last one that I have is probably one that no one wants to admit is the elimination of human bias. I think, and the speed to market with those insights. When I would order cars, a lot of it was based off from what I felt was going to sell. You know, the color combinations, the packages, the trims, you know, the time of the year that we're ordering these things. How long is it going to take? Because I ran an Alfa store. We had to wait like six weeks or six months from the time that we ordered to when we were expecting a car because it was being built in Italy. So, you know, you have to try to play that game of what are we going to expect at that point in time. But when you take AI with some pretty neat inventory analysis tools that are coming up or that are out there, you can pinpoint exactly when you should order each individual model, what color, what packages, everything like that. And you take that human bias out of, this is how we've always done it. When you just go back down to the data basics, You can't argue with what the data shows you. That's what people are shopping. That's what they're looking for. And that can help both the new and the used side. So it's not just new cars and trying to order from the factory. It could be this is what we need to focus on getting in on trade or going to the auctions to go purchase from the auctions to make sure that we have that ready when this demand eventually does come in. Nice. So now that you covered the top benefits here, why don't we talk directly about some of the tools that are available and their purposes. Sure, I mean, when you think of AI, and when most people think of AI, they're thinking of the agentic tools, starting with the chatbot. It just makes sense, right? It's a tool that you don't need to have a human actively monitoring a chat at a dealership level. And most dealerships don't. I've actually, when I worked at a car dealership, I was one of those people that ran kind of a human-led chatbot. Um, and it was a lot of extra work for honestly, not a lot of yield. were getting a lot of really low softball questions like what are your hours? Where are you guys at? how do I schedule an appointment like a service appointment? So it took a lot of human effort for really not a lot of gain. So AI can take that load off from the individualized person and be able to serve up that information. Obviously with guardrails, to the shopper with what they're looking for. ah The next one from that is kind of a step up from this is lead handling softwares. Now, somewhat polarizing depending on what your position is on lead handling, if you are AI to handle that or not. But what we're noticing is that this is the direction that the industry is going in. Taking that lead that either comes in after hours or on the weekends and making sure you can stop the clock right away. I think a lot of times people were looking at CRM data and they could manipulate it so that leads that came in during off hours were not counted against their clock stopping. But that still doesn't make a difference to the shopper. The shopper doesn't care what your CRM looks like or what your timelines are. They want an answer now. So with that, you can actually put in certain guardrails, or you can even just, if you run a really lean operation and if you don't have a BDC, you can let the automated lead handling softwares start that off until it gets to a point where it needs human interaction. If they're asking about pricing or certain tools or trim packages that the AI might not fully understand, then a human can take over at that point. But what that does is that allows the system to kind of keep that lead warm until it's time to action on that and try to set an appointment. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, I've seen a lot of articles and one of the biggest concerns of a lot of people with AI is answering the question, is AI meant to replace or is AI meant to work alongside of human employees? And I'm a big advocate for the idea that there's strengths to both. We all know what a typical day looks like in the auto industry. And if you're dealing with hundreds of customers, things are going to slip through the cracks as an individual. And that's where it's nice to have that AI backup. And like you said, being able to handle those overnight leads and the after hours leads and weekends, things where you don't normally have a person on staff. So I think that this is a good way to ease people's minds as to AI's intention is not to take over jobs. It's actually to help things funnel more fluidly and to assist in giving a better experience to our customers overall. Yeah. And I think, I think that's a super common concern and it's not just, not just to the auto industry. It's in every industry. I mean, you could see all these headlines of companies getting rid of people in favor of AI. Um, but I think for the auto industry, what makes it so unique and what makes it such a great place to build a career in it is that human interaction. Um, you know, there's been many people who have tried to sell cars just online without any human interaction or walk arounds or ah any touch points there, and they don't succeed as well as those who have the dedicated staffs, the brand champions, the dealership champions, the people who care and who live in the local markets. And I think right now where we're seeing AI, there may come a time where more providers come out that want to replace certain individuals in the dealership, but I think AI as of today, is best as a supplement, not a replacement. think if you can find ways to make your team better with AI, that's only going to improve the dealership without mortgaging your human capital against this system, which is still, I still think we're very much in our infancy. Nice. And then the last one of these agentic tools is kind of similar to lead handling, but it's service scheduling. I think all too often us in the automotive industry, we have a tendency to try to see things through only our lens. But I think we have to be real with ourselves and realize that service scheduling is pretty broken. It's kind of a pain in the ass. And if it's a pain in the butt for us, imagine what the shoppers and the customers who are already stressed out about needing to get their car fixed because something's not working. Now they have to deal with this whole rigmarole. That's where AI-based service schedulers can come in. And it just makes things so easy, so simple, so streamlined. And I think that's where we're going to see a lot of headway and where dealers can see a lot of opportunity there. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I did deal with the service side as far as scheduling went. And I know even with human staff, sometimes it was a nightmare because, you know, your operators don't always have a good idea of how long the job's going to take that the customer is trying to get accomplished. And sometimes things get overlapped and, you know, some areas don't get very many appointments and some get bombarded. And so I could see where there, there could be a definite benefit to AI alignment there. Yeah, and I think it goes back to that benefit of it takes the human element out of it to a degree for some of these low level tasks of scheduling. you know, knowing right immediately how many labor hours it takes to do a certain job, knowing the availability of if there's a tech that they have specific to do certain types of work, you know, if you have your master tech or if you have somebody else who can do a break job, if we have so many break jobs scheduled, you don't want to double book and potentially annoy a customer, upset a customer. Yeah. can factor all of that in in an instant instead of saying, let me go check with our team and let me give you a call back. Because people who are calling to get service, they don't want to sit around and wait. They've made the decision that they need to get something done. They just want to get it handled right now. So. From there, from the agentic side of things, the next step is really going into the data. So the agentic stuff is more of the customer-facing side, but I think the opportunity for a lot of dealers sits behind the curtain to where customers can't really see how they make the sausage, so to speak. And I think it really does start with having a true customer data platform or a CDP. Something that takes in all of these inflows from your CRM to DMS, OEM, lists, even your V-Auto or your inventory management systems, pulling that all into one system to create an entirely data-rich location where you can go to one place and identify what are the needs, what are the opportunities, and what are the strengths of the stores. And what separates a real CDP from someone who calls themself a CDP is the ability to integrate customer information in such a way that you can see a singular view of the shopper and their entire timeline with your business. So if a dealer is out there looking for something like that, that's a question you want to ask. Can I see the full view of the shopper? Can I see how they've interacted with us? Can I see all of the different sources of data that goes into this? And if it doesn't have that, it's merely just an AI-improved CRM. Yeah, now that makes perfect sense. yeah, and what you could do with these CDPs is it takes all this data, it cleans it up, and then it puts it into small little groupings called audiences, which you can then use in your marketing campaigns, whether it's with your Google or social media, and actually go target more customers that look just like those who have already trusted you with their business. Because that's the truest sense of who your target market is. It's the people who you've sold. Don't go targeting people who have no interest or have no interaction whatsoever. Just like if you're a car dealership out in metro Detroit, you're not going to go try to conquest customers from Chicago. It's just not going to happen. It doesn't make sense. So it kind of serves as somewhat of a connective tissue between all of the systems in your dealership. And you can see the ability to generate reporting or create those outbound marketing actions. Thanks. And this is something that's relatively new to the auto industry. ah It's something that works in tandem instead of replacing things. I think that's new in the auto industry. The last time we had something that was in addition to, think was when we really started pushing out CRMs with DMS. ah It really is proving to be that third pillar. we're seeing major auto groups and small dealerships, all of a kind, seeing value in it. Yeah. And it's crazy to think when you get out of the auto industry, how, how more advanced things are outside of it. It always seems like, those of us in the auto industry are coming up from the rear and trying to catch up with the race. Yeah, that's the struggle of the business. mean, it's part of the reason I have a job, but at the same time, it is tough because sometimes you just kind of want to shake someone and be like, why is it taking us this long? We can go, we could probably do a whole podcast episode just on all of the issues with dealer technology adoption or getting, it all started with going from newspaper ads to going to TV. No one's going to watch TV. Everyone's listening to the radio. Everyone's reading their news. They don't want to watch anything. And then that became internet and digital advertising and so on and so forth. Yep. All right, so does that cover all the tools that you have there? I got more, but we'll go quick. So with that, you have your marketing automation platforms like we discussed. It's to take all those insights and shoot them right out. It is the ability to create those thousands of ads per month and optimize those on a 24-7 basis. That can be via digital advertising. That could be social. That could be um OTT, Amazon network, as well as email and SMS as well too. That's someplace where the industry is seeing a huge amount of value, is that one-to-one hyper-specific messaging at scale, which you can only do with AI. Thanks. And then the last few things, I we're seeing CRMs that are implementing AI to be able to either build out contact lists or to find customers that fit certain profiles or certain identities, similar to a CDP, but more specific to just the data that's sitting inside of a CRM. So think like leads, sale data, if they had certain F &I products, stuff like that. ah So it's very centralized to just that information. You can also look at geolocation as another example for your shoppers to see what areas you're getting a lot of deals from. And ah the last real one that I have is websites. We're starting to see a lot more integration with websites. It starts with search, like vehicle searches. Yeah. of typing in a stock number, like, you know, in order to find a car, you'd have to go to the VDP, find the stock number or find the stock number inside of your V auto and send that into the search bar just to find the specific vehicle. But if you tried looking up red SUVs with carplay, the search would be like, well, I don't see any cars called red SUVs with carplay. So now website providers are really getting hit to that. and realizing that people want to search websites the same way that they search Google, which is predictive, which is something that is more generalized. And then they'll refine themselves instead of having to go to the search bar with a very specific outcome in mind. But from here, mean, really the road is wide open from here. I know we mentioned earlier that we are really in an infancy or we're at the tip of the iceberg, as it were. The opportunity really is out there for any tools to be used with whatever a dealer wants. At end of the day, a dealer can create their own tool. Now keep in mind, there's a lot of cost and risk associated with that if a dealer elects to do so. Number one is that it costs money to develop things and to maintain them. Not only do you have to have an engineer build something, but you also have to them make sure that it doesn't have any bugs of the code or in the system to make sure it's still doing what it needs to do. And then number two is data storage laws. Make sure that you're in alignment with what your local and state laws dictate that you have to do with customer data. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a legal jackpot. But I mean, think about the opportunity, Dan. mean, the inventory analysis systems to know exactly what's selling fast, what's not selling fast, what vehicles are not getting the VDP views that they need to sell and identifying those and marketing those in the moment. without needing to take a 30 minute, 40 minute period to go comb through your V-Auto. Content generation, I we're seeing, I don't know if you saw the video of Will Smith eating spaghetti, how fast it's come in the last three or four months. The very first one was very creepy. It was really weird. And I'm sure if anybody's watching this, if you look it up, you can see the difference between that and now. And now it looks like it really is Will Smith eating a plate of spaghetti. So dealers are going to start using that to generate videos and images for their online marketing presence. But you can do it with recruiting. companies long time have been using AI to to pare down resumes But it can also be used to go and find people not everything has to be reactive in our world. We can be proactive ah But yeah, you could see training solutions, you know listening to phone calls the options really are limitless at this point and I think that we're And if we look at a year from now, we're going to see all new providers. We're going to see all new solutions. And if we have this conversation at that point, I'm going to look back on this and go, how wrong was I? And that's kind of the beauty of AI. You know, it's funny that you say that because it was probably about eight or nine years ago. It was one of the first real conversations I had with anybody regarding AI. And at the time, I think the company was Digital Airstrike and they had just released their AI chat. And I remember having a whole conversation with the guy and he's like, so what do you think? And I said, well, I'll tell you honestly, Right now I feel like my people still handle this better. There's a lot of limitations in chat as far as how smart the AI is. And he made a valid point at the time. He's like, you know, you can make the AI as smart as you want it to be, but if it learns on its own, it's going to take time. If you force it to learn, it's going to take a whole lot of money. And it's crazy to think about how limited it was just eight or nine years ago as to what is now possible. Like you said, as far as creating videos of just taking a few words and throwing it down. And next thing you know, you got a video created of exactly what you want. I can take my new iPhone and I can go and I can create a whole new emoji using a picture of me and a very simple prompt and it's something very custom but very specific. And it does that in a few minutes or less. I can go on chat GPT and I can build out a whole background. I can change my whole background to make it look like I'm flying through the sky right now. And it's that fast, you know, and that's that stuff that I don't think we really understood what was possible just even three years ago. I mean, when you and I were working together when I was with General Motors, mean, AI was not even an idea. We didn't really talk about AI. The AI that I knew of was in video games. And that's it. Or to go back, it was Skynet, which we'll see if we ever get to that point. Yep. So now that we covered all of that stuff, if you had to pick, what would you say are some of the most frequently asked questions you've heard and or what a dealership advisor should be asking if they did want to pursue something more with AI? Yeah, I think the first one is what we already covered, which is, this going to replace my employees? And I think that's ultimately down to the dealer to make that decision if they want to take that leap. But I don't think that that's where we're at right now. It should be used as a tool, not as a replacement. It's a way to improve your processes. to allow systems to talk to one another, to allow for your outputs to be more hyper-specific and customized, which is what people want. But I don't think it really is a replacement. The next one is, what should I ask from a company? So say you're a dealer, right? And say I'm pitching you on something that we do here at Full Path. What are some of the questions that you should ask me? Well, what I advise people is to ask, what are you doing with my data? Where is it? Is it located here in the US? Is it held on a server farm somewhere else in the United or somewhere else in the world? There are laws regulating that, but make sure that it's somewhere that is in a safe place. The best place would be someone who owns their own server farms, someone who owns that physical location where the data is stored instead of renting racks. But that being said, if they are renting racks, make sure that you know what is the security process for that place? What happens if there's a data lossage? What does the backup look like? ah The next step with that is, all right, while we're working together, you? keeping a record of my data or you are merely funneling my data through something. So if all these inputs are being housed externally, there's a responsibility for that. We need to make sure that that provider has their ISO certifications. Those are usually found on their site. And for those of you who don't know, ISO certifications are a very rigorous test to make sure that these providers are doing what they say they can do from a cybersecurity perspective. It's an external certification and any provider with their salt should have them. But lastly, I we all realize that our relationships with our vendors do not last forever. I don't know if I've ever met a dealership that said, I signed up with VL. Right when I opened up this dealership and I'm never leaving them, I don't care if they ever raise their rates. I don't care if they ever offend me in any capacity. They could do no wrong. I mean, at the end of the day, we're running businesses here, right? So when that relationship with the vendor ends, have that question upfront. Go, well, if we stop doing business together, what happens to my data? And I think that's going to tell a lot about the ethics of the company and as well as what you can expect from them. Nice. Well, great. You know, I appreciate your time today. I think that you answered a lot of good questions for us and gave a good perspective as to what a dealership could expect from AI. If someone wanted to contact you directly with questions or to try to get some details about some of the tools available, what's the best way for them to reach out to you? Yeah, they can reach out to my email, is Colin, C O L L I N dot olivand, U L V as in Victor, U N D as in dog at full path.com or you know, feel free to shoot me a text. It's three one two five two nine zero five two seven. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for spending some time with us. We look forward to seeing you in the future and for all of our guests here, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on our next episode. All right.

Contributor

Dan Levy

Co-host
Head Shot

Daniel Little Jr

Co-host