Imagine that you had access to every possible woodworking tool. Even if you had basic carpentry skills, you wouldn’t necessarily be better at the craft. Sure, you’d have an available array of implements. But those implements wouldn’t help if you didn’t know how to use them.
This is the same phenomenon that tends to happen when automotive sales teams invest in AI solutions. Though they may have leading-edge platforms and software at their fingertips, they don’t suddenly become more efficient or effective at selling vehicles. They need clear guidance and training on how to use Automotive AI to their advantage.
That’s where this overview of Automotive AI solutions for dealership sales teams fits in. Use it as a springboard to applying AI to generate leads, drive hyper-personalized engagement, and turn shoppers into buyers.
Let’s start with an overview of Automotive AI platforms and how they work.
What is the fastest way to generate high quality leads for car dealerships? (Spoiler alert: It’s AI.)
Every successful dealer is looking to do better, and chances are, you’ve asked yourself on more than one occasion how to find more leads and sell more cars. It’s one of the main reasons dealers are adopting Automotive AI at such record speed. Unfortunately, finding consumers who are looking for vehicles, trade-in options, or service has gotten harder. The competition is fierce, and consumers are holding onto their cars longer than ever. When consumers do enter the purchase funnel, their expectations are higher than ever. They want to know every detail of the exact vehicle on the lot, explore financing options, and get instant, around-the-clock access to the information they need to make decisions.
Fortunately, an end-to-end automotive AI platform can help generate and convert leads in a way that meets the expectations of today’s shoppers.
Dealerships leveraging Impel AI can accelerate the customer journey by analyzing first-party data and pinpointing in-market leads with precision. From there, it’s intelligent enough to send personalized messages in the right channel at the right time, based on each individual’s unique needs. The platform works with existing dealer systems to dramatically improve return on marketing investments.
Once a lead visits the dealer’s website, AI then gets to work automatically personalizing the chat experience, along with any follow up communication in the customer’s preferred channels, including email, SMS text, WhatsApp, and direct mail. Taking cues from CRM and DMS data, it can even engage returning customers to drive repeat purchases, fostering loyalty and reducing churn – 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
This allows car dealership sales teams to continue receiving a steady stream of leads while dedicating their efforts to enhancing the customer experience. And because those leads come in so quickly, dealerships can speed up their sales cycles and drive higher customer lifetime value.
Which AI solution is better than ChatGPT for automotive sales?
Some car dealership sales and marketing teams have begun experimenting with ChatGPT to improve the strength of their written communications, customer-facing content, and marketing strategies. If you’ve been working with ChatGPT, you may wonder where to start with an end-to-end Automotive AI solution, and whether it’s a better alternative.
Unfortunately, ChatGPT, while a breakthrough technology, won’t drive meaningful results in a dealership. ChatGPT gives broad-based answers and recommendations, some of which may not be pertinent to automotive dealership teams. Ultimately, ChatGPT fetches responses across the internet that may drive interaction, but it doesn’t drive toward outcomes dealerships actually care about – booking sales and service appointments.
In contrast, Automotive AI software is better than ChatGPT for vehicle retailing because it’s trained precisely for the automotive industry, with industry-specific data. It is not limited, robotic, nor does it depend on widely available datasets that are simply too broad to ensure dealer-appropriate outcomes.
Sophisticated solutions like Impel also include enterprise-grade security and controls designed to mitigate hallucinations and prevent user manipulation—a well-documented challenge in AI. In fact, one academic study found that GPT-3.5 produced hallucinations in 39.6% of cases.
Consequently, the output you receive from working with an Automotive AI platform is more reliable and accurate than you could get from an open-source product like ChatGPT.
What are the three ways Automotive AI software works for lead generation?
Automotive AI platforms like Impel engage customers throughout the entire automotive retail lifecycle. But one of the main reasons dealerships turn to them is their ability to generate, qualify and manage high quality leads
1. How Automotive AI generates leads
AI software can be programmed to see patterns and anomalies in data much faster than a human could. This means that when an Automotive AI platform analyzes your proprietary zero-party and first-party data, it can rapidly understand what a consumer is likely to want or do based on comparable historical insights.
An Automotive AI system can be trained to use data to determine what type of vehicle a consumer is apt to be interested in, which aspects of a car a consumer cares about most, when the right time to reach the consumer may be, what channels to reach the consumer in, and so forth. This may seem like magic to the customer, but it’s all based on AI’s capacity to identify trends within data pools.
As the Automotive AI software begins to understand a consumer, it can then target and retarget them with exactly the right content in the right channel at the right time. For example, Impel’s Marketing AI analyzes the channels where each individual lead is most responsive and tailors campaign outreach to maximize engagement.
2. How Automotive AI helps convert and manage leads
Once a lead comes in, AI ensures that it is engaged immediately, and effectively. A sophisticated AI platform will respond to VIN-specific inquiries in a conversational, humanlike way, often guiding the interaction far enough to schedule an appointment. Everything is recorded into the CRM to ensure a seamless transition between the AI agent and the human sales rep. In the case of Impel, it even provides conversation summaries with recommended next steps.
Meanwhile, sales representatives can focus on closing deals and responding to high-value, qualified leads—once they appear in their queue, primed for lower-funnel engagement.
An often overlooked yet highly valuable benefit of AI is its ability to filter out low-intent shoppers, allowing sales reps to focus their efforts on customers who are genuinely ready to make a purchase.
3. How Automotive AI can keeps leads engaged
Here’s where the value of Automotive AI truly delivers. Historically, dealerships have poured disproportionate resources into lead generation compared to lead management. Leads are typically worked for a few days, then forgotten about.
In contrast, AI can seamlessly handle key aspects of conversion and engagement once leads enter the pipeline, keeping them active, interested, and ready to convert. Impel’s Sales AI Copilot is a great example of how this works.
Sales AI Copilot follows up with leads for up to 2 months (which is the average car buying cycle), and it takes into account any marketing touches a prospect might receive, ensuring communications are contextually relevant.
With helpful nudges from a humanlike AI assistant, the dealership remains top of mind when shoppers are actually ready to purchase.
The result of long term, AI-powered engagement? A 26% higher closing rate.
The same principles apply in Fixed Operations when it comes to reducing customer defection rates. Service teams can seamlessly integrate AI with their DMS, analyze customer data, and pinpoint those at risk of abandoning dealership service. They can proactively re-engage these customers with VIN-specific messaging, tailored to make, model, and driving behaviors, that’s hyper-personalized at scale. From there, customers can engage in conversation with the AI, or simply respond to the text or email with the day and time they’d like to schedule an appointment.
How can sales teams improve their use of Automotive AI?
Automotive AI is only valuable if it’s being used appropriately. Sales team members must be empowered to work alongside AI, otherwise they won’t see any changes in their lead generation or conversion rates.
This requires automotive dealerships to focus on ongoing training to maximize AI lead generation and nurturing efforts. Without management’s continual support, sales teams may revert to what feels comfortable — and that means they could miss out on some of the major AI-related developments happening in the industry.
Nearly every dealership that embraces AI for lead management reports a notable boost in sales productivity and an enhanced customer experience.
However, only sales team members who are willing to evolve their workflows (or behaviors) will be able to see a difference in their results. Those that don’t know how to use AI appropriately will find themselves losing ground to their colleagues and competitors.
At Impel, we recommend our dealership customers think of Automotive AI as an always-on assistant. Essentially, the AI solution (like Sales AI Copilot) is given a name and treated as such.
This changes their perspective, helps communicate the value more clearly, and makes it easier for them to collaborate with the AI. It also helps them work seamlessly with AI by treating it as a team member, “I heard that you spoke with Sarah. She filled me in on what you’re looking for. From this point, we’ll work together to help you find your perfect match.”
The Automotive AI revolution is here
Automotive dealerships are increasingly recognizing the urgency to adapt their sales strategies. Those clinging to outdated methods may soon feel the impact where it hurts most—their bottom line.
AI has the ability to help dealerships generate and manage leads, and for communications, there are far better AI options than ChatGPT.
If you’re interested in learning more about the many ways to use AI in your dealership, get in touch to schedule an Impel consultation. Impel is the only end-to-end AI Operating System purpose-built to drive successful dealership outcomes, like generating quality in-market leads and ensuring higher conversion and loyalty rates.
