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Host Michael Donovan welcomes Strolid Founder and CEO Vin Micciche to discuss practical applications of ChatGPT and AI tools for automotive dealers who want to start leveraging artificial intelligence today. The conversation covers how dealers can begin using AI for marketing content creation, data analysis, and operational efficiency without overhauling their entire business model, emphasizing that AI should empower teams rather than replace human relationships. Vin and Michael explore real-world examples, including generating USP concepts and radio scripts, analyzing conversation data for business insights, and using AI to streamline email creation and business planning processes.
The hosts stress that AI today is like the internet in 1996 - rapidly evolving but still in early stages - and dealers should pay attention without feeling pressured to rush into significant changes. A key takeaway from the episode is that AI can handle 80-90% of creative and analytical work, allowing dealers to add their human experience and expertise to achieve results much faster than traditional methods, creating significant efficiency gains while maintaining the personal touch that drives automotive sales.
Learn more about how Strolid helps dealerships Never Miss opportunities for dealers at https://www.strolid.com.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI for Car Dealers
03:05 The Evolution of AI and Its Current State
06:05 Practical Applications of ChatGPT for Dealerships
08:50 Data Management and CRM Integration
11:55 Leveraging AI for Business Insights
14:52 Creating Marketing Strategies with AI
18:00 The Future of AI in the Automotive Industry
24:06 Leveraging AI for Dealership Success
27:31 The Human Element in AI Integration
30:09 Empowering Teams with AI
34:55 Data-Driven Decision Making
39:15 The Future of CRM and AI
44:01 Enhancing Customer Experience with AI
Creators and Guests
Host
What is Dealer Insights Podcast?
Interviews with Strolid CEO and Founder Vin Micciche, BDC industry icon and veteran
The road ahead has never been more
clear. Success belongs to those who take
the lead. Welcome to Dealer Insights,
the podcast that puts you in the
driver's seat of growth. Hosted by Vin
Machichi, industry leader with over 30
years in
automotive. This is where experience
meets innovation. From cutting edge
technology to gamechanging strategies,
we go beyond the surface to bring you
the insights that matter, real
conversations to help you navigate the
everanging automotive landscape. Buckle
up. Your next competitive advantage
starts
now.
Imagine having a tireless assistant
ready to answer your dealership
questions, streamline processes, and
provide personalized customer
experiences
24/7. What if you could start using it
today? Welcome to your introduction to
Chat GPT AI simplified for car dealers.
What's going on, Vin? Not much. How are
you doing? Awesome. We're doing another
episode of Dealer Insights. It's a great
day. We sure are. Highlight of the week,
man.
Yes, it is. So, we've had a few episodes
where we talked about
AI. Think some of what we've discussed
is, you know, pretty high level and this
episode is a little more actionable,
right? But we need to kind of take a
step back and just
share from a really simple level like
how could a dealer start
today using AI and not getting so deep
in the box that they don't realize
they're in the box. Yeah. So,
um, using AI today is kind of like using
the internet in
1996 in my opinion, you know. Yeah. Um,
there's going to be a lot that comes out
of AI, but it's just not there yet. So,
everybody's doing their best to
um, emphasize
AI to get attention, right?
Um, but basically, you know, Chachi Bi
is better today than it was a year
ago and it's going to be better in a
year from now and two two years from
now. There's a lot of
details as to what and how uh it's
better, but it would probably bore the
hell out of our car dealer audience if
we went into the details. But as an
example, last year's version had a
shorter
memory than it has this year. U now chat
GPT can remember things that you told it
across conversations better leading to
like more personalized context and um
and and answers to questions like we're
using it um here. Um, but
basically, you know, to I always say it
was great being born around the time I
was
born. There's a book called Outliers and
sometimes you're just in the right place
at the right time. Um, and maybe, you
know, 50 years from now, my kids will
say, "Hey, I was born in the right
time." But we got to see life before and
after technology.
um if you were born around the time I
was born and uh you know from video
games to cable TV to
uh you know the internet, email
um to social media and and all the
things that emerge and you know AI and
um you know I I I just liked playing
with new things. I don't know if you
consider me an early adopter or whatever
but I just like getting involved. So, if
I were a dealer right now, I would say
that um just pay attention. If you're
not paying attention, that that'll be a
problem. But you don't have to rush
in and change your whole business at the
moment. Everyone's got to like use their
best intuition and not worry so much
about what they're missing out on. Like,
what is it going to do to help their
business, you know? Um that's how they
need to look at it.
So, I appreciate that.
And you know, we're not too far apart in
age. Uh I think I got you by a couple
years, right?
Anyway, no.
Uh, I remember playing outside, playing
in the woods, riding my riding my bike
with my buddies. And, you know, back in
um back in the early 2000s when I had an
opportunity to kind of shift my
trajectory and get into uh uh digital
marketing and learn about SEO and and
Google ads and uh it was it was
interesting to me because it was brand
new like and so just like AI is today.
But I I really want
to I want to share some of the
uh
specifics on what a dealer if if you've
heard of chat GPT and look there's
perplexity there's Gemini there's Claude
there's a bunch of AI models and the way
that those AI models are
um you know conceptually they're the
same they're large language models
uh with an NLP, right? N uh natural
language processing. So, you can talk
and interact with it. And just like Vin
and I are talking here on this
podcast, but they're different the way
that they're engineered, the way that
they're uh designed. And you know, one
of the we're not we're not going to get
in the weeds on on biases, uh, but you
do have to be aware if you're going to
download Chat GPT app or set up a free
account on Open AI's website,
uh, or download the app on your phone,
right? You can get a free account and
that's that's how you do it. You just
set up the free account. Uh, you can do
an upgrade to a $20 account. kind of
gets you a couple of more models and a
little more functionality, a little more
uh frequency on on some of the more
current models, but that's it. That's
all you have to do to start using it and
exploring. And then, you know, so with
that
said, Finn, I've asked you in previous
episodes, right? you're a dealer
principal or a general manager and you
just downloaded chat GPT on your
phone, what would you what would you do
with it? What would you uh you know load
into it or tell it about your
business and what would you have it help
with?
Um yeah, and I agree with everything you
said about LLMs and how they learn and
all that. Um, chat, my version of chat
GBT knows a lot about me because I use
it all the time.
Um, and uh, we talked about it in past
um, conversations. I don't know if we've
talked about this on other podcasts, but
you got to be careful with the output,
too. And you don't necessarily use the
output, but it helps frame what it is
that you want to do. Um, you know, I
know general managers write a lot of
emails, for example. it can write emails
for you, but I wouldn't let it write
emails for me because I have my own
flare. And that's where the human
element is involved, right? You can use
it to uh research, you can use it to in
terms of what you just said about
feeding it data about your business. Um
you can't just send a spreadsheet into
it yet. I mean there there are ways but
that's really what we've designed here
is um for conversational and you know
CRM data um and lead data and inventory
data and conversations uh via or
communications via email and text
um the way I look at a lead is um you
know it's not just c if you go back in
history um dealers had captive markets
and customers would walk in, then they
started calling, then they started
filling out leads, then they started
chatting, then they started, you know,
communicating through social media
channels and and so forth. And our CRM
were built to collect all that
information. So, what we've built is a
layer of technology. Think of the
conserver as a layer technology where
you can plug these conversational pieces
into to create
VCON which are a format for that data a
standardized format that's going to be
an actual standard soon. Um now you can
decide where you want to feed that
information into. So it starts at the
basis of where does the data come from.
Um, if you go into any dealer's CRM, um,
all dealers I assume want, uh, their CRM
to give them clean, consistent data. Um,
I know a lot of them use them because
they need to use it to desk a deal. Um,
and they need to have a place to store
their customer information, but
ultimately, uh, CRM were for the
organizing the data so you can get
reporting out of it to help you run your
business better and make you more
efficient.
I would question whether you know um
that's happening in most dealerships uh
consistently. I mean it's happening.
It's just a matter of who's looking at
the data and who's making decisions
based on the data. So to me my pet one
of my pet peeves is making sure we
collect data that's clean. Even if that
means our numbers might not look as good
as a competitive BDC or an in-house BDC
that may not be collecting it as cleanly
as we are to be nice and so because I
want to know what's working and what's
not working. I don't it's not a you know
a tool where you can say hey I'm better
than you that's or I'm the best. A lot
of dealers are very competitive so
that's kind of how they oh you got to
get to a 10% lead to close ratio. Sure,
that might be the goal, but it's there's
a lot of variables in getting there. Um,
to include your your marketing, your
merchandising, your inventory, your
people, um, you know, your market
presence and so forth. So, it is too
many to just look at a number and say
10% you're you're bad uh, if you're not
at 10%. Uh, and people know that, so
they find ways of manipulating the data.
And I don't do
that because I want to be able to take
that data and feed it into um reporting
that I can look at every day and make
sure that I know we're we're on track or
we're not. And the way you do that with
LLMs is you have to consistently capture
it and then consistently feed it and
then you have to train it to give you
the the output that you're that you're
requesting. And that's not easy. Uh
we've been at it for two years. And
we're not looking at AI just to create a
bot to replace a human. We see a lot
more value in the business um data and
the the dark business data that no one
even knows exists. And we're uncovering
that with AI, which is really cool in my
opinion. And it's fun. Like I told you,
I like playing with new things. So, this
is something new that I can dig my teeth
into and try to figure out, you know?
Yeah. You're rolling your sleeves up,
getting your hands in the dirt. And, uh,
of course, it's it is new, but I think
early on, uh, like you just mentioned,
two years ago, you you've seen the power
of
what's possible. And you started doing
what you do, connecting those dots, and
then figuring out how to build to
ultimately right the ultimate goal of
and and and one of the primary uh
principles of what Strolid provides
which is helping dealers sell more and
and just to do better and I don't mean
to uh minimize that by putting the word
just in front of
it to help dealers do better. Let me let
me let me explain though a little
further on that because what I just said
I if I was listening I'd be like okay
great how do I do that and um that's
where I why I tell dealers don't worry
yet because I just told you a year ago
Chad GBT was not as good as it is today
and and next year it's going to be even
better um and faster uh less resource in
intensive like for example you you can
now uh uh you know look at text, vision,
audio,
um multimedia capabilities that that
didn't exist a year ago. Um and it
understands nuances better and and
reasoning better uh and instructions
more accurately. So that's just going to
keep improving. So anyone who's wasting
their time right now on old models um
they're going to probably be in trouble.
But the best part about having a
conserver and having your data stored
securely is when the new models appear,
you can switch to
those or hopefully you're with one
that's progressive and continues to
improve on it. Um, and and that's kind
of how I see it is like the data is the
important part and we're turning
conversations into data and we're
helping you store them in a compliant
and safe redacted uh customer
information and securing the data
because AI is not a um safe place right
now.
So, just kind of backing up, uh, what
I'm hearing is if if you were in that in
that leadership role in a
store and you just downloaded chat GPT,
you would you would get your data,
right, for you would be leveraging it
for some level of analysis, right? and
and making sure right now but there's
lots of use cases that you can do with
that data but that's one we're looking
at it as insights and analysis like you
can use it to build bots and learn oh
abs absolutely right but we're try I
think we're trying to keep it like 101
right so um you I I don't think you
would be shocked to hear that I put uh I
put my chat GPT to work for a script
right script well it's funny I think
people get a
um embarrassed to say that they use it
for things. I don't. I'm like I love
quick and fast. Um
um I like speed. I don't like wasting
time. I don't like spending a month on a
plan. Um and Chachi BT can speed all
that up if you use it right. I mean, you
can look at your business and say, you
know, give me a marketing plan. Here are
here's what's important to me. here are
the types of cars I'm trying to sell.
You know, here's my market. Here's what
my market says. And it'll de it'll
develop a plan for you. However, you may
not like or agree with all of it. That's
where you have to use your brain, right?
And critical thinking and intuition
because it's just going to spit out
information that it has
the ability to collect from
and it's not collecting from your brain.
And that's why I like conversation so
much because it
isn't it's it's real. It's unbiased.
It's actually what
happened. And you're either going to
want to hear that or not. And if you
don't want to hear it, you know, I feel
bad for you because it's okay that
you're not
perfect. You know, it's okay that your
customers are complaining about you.
it's okay that your market you think you
know your customers think your prices
are too high or whatever because you if
you're a good business person you want
to know that information frankly
it allows you to keep your finger on the
pulse you can do a lot of things that's
what I'm trying to say like it's it's
going to evolve
um and it is evolving
um in time these use cases will you know
start to become more um
focused and companies will take
advantage of um how to bring it into
focus even more
um and make it better and better and
better and that's competition and we can
provide you with the data. That's what's
exciting about what we got here at Straw
that you know that's yeah we can we
certainly can and you can you can
download the app you can start prompting
it you can keep those prompts basic
um I want to just share I think I can
share my screen
here which we don't necessarily have to
in include in the edit right so I
actually I know this is this is the
interface when I'm using chat GPT with
my uh personal account. Mhm. And I
recently I was trying to get um I was
trying to get Ken set up with using
projects in chat
GPT. And so that's when I I first seen
what it looks like. Um I'm assuming you
know your login is more similar to what
Ken sees. So, a
project like I have a Heart City Toyota
project, right? Mhm. Um, I can edit this
out or we, you know, I can give a shout
out to Kent. I used as an example, Kent
and you're more than welcome to use any
of this and uh I'd be more than happy to
even give you a voice over. But uh you
know I said give me so in the project
VIN I I uploaded um I uploaded some
documents right that that um were shared
with me or I created and then I put
instructions right I said Hart City
Toyota is a is a Toyota dealership in
this market they have competitors I I
put those instructions so now every
prompt within the project is going
to it's going to look at the
instructions. It's going to reference
the data. And so I said, give me USP
concepts, unique selling propositions,
and provide a radio script that will
help launch uh launch it. You know, the
USP in our market. It should connect
with our customers and set us apart from
uh competing dealers, entice emotion,
and provide a sense of hope and ease.
Mhm. And so the concepts are heartfelt
experience every mile, drive easy, live
better, your journey, our
promise. Pretty good. And it and it gave
me a couple of bullets to support each
of those. And then I mean it's it gave
me sound effects to lead in with. Uh
life is a journey measured not just in
miles but in moments. At Hart City
Toyota, we believe every mile deserves a
heartfelt
experience. It's not bad. It might not
be exactly what you
want.
However, the best is going to be when
you take the output and you put your you
challenge it and you put your twist on
it and you fill in some of the blanks.
So if it gives you if it ends up being
80 or
90% the way there and you just tweak it,
you got there a lot faster. So that's a
huge efficiency gain. There's no way
I've been doing this a pretty long time.
There's no way I could have written
three
scripts or even come up with the three
USP concepts in the very short amount of
time that Chat GPT provided. Yeah. No, I
agree. The actual work that it takes
worries me a little though because
that's where your experience comes from
is branding it out and coming up with
all that when it's presenting it to you
without any effort um or sacrifice on
your part. um it can create you know
less
it one of the fears about AI is it's
going to um limit um in the future um
the need for knowledge right right
um and my ability to look at what you
did and critique it comes from my
experience so if I've never experienced
it then and it's just happening for I
mean, where does the human, you know,
experience come from in 50 years when
people with the experience that we have
from actually building all that? I don't
know. I mean, I could be dead wrong. I
might be just the old guy complaining
about uh that. But, um, yeah, it's it I
mean, it's fantastic for me. Uh, I worry
about like colleges and stuff. I mean,
the college kids don't use this. I'll be
shocked. I know they have ways of
knowing whether or not you used AI for
stuff, but um I don't think it's, you
know, in in the same token, I don't know
if you're not learning, you're just
learning quicker. That could be another
thing um that I'm not thinking about. Um
I hated school for the simple fact that
I hated to sit there and go through all
the minutia and BS. I just wanted to
know what are we learning?
show me what how why and I will study it
and then give me a test. Like you could
speed up that whole, you know, learning
process potentially. Um but whatever. At
the end of the day, what you just showed
was pretty um in, you know, uh
impressive and
um I I I use it for for astrology,
right? Um for similar things and I have
chat GPT for a lot of things now. Yeah.
I don't feel like I'm getting more done
necessarily because there's still
decision making when to use it, how much
time do you have to actually execute on
it and and all of that comes into play.
So, but it's definitely an efficiency.
No question.
Yeah. So, I think there's
there's, you know, if I were if I were
in a position in a dealership,
um, I would gather reports, right? I
mean, Chat GBT is is like an an
assistant. When you have an idea, you
can just drop into that app and you
can put your idea in and get some
feedback. So, what I would do number
one is I would go to my website. I'd go
to the homepage. I would copy all of the
text and I would drop it in. I wouldn't
prompt it. Then I would go to my
inventory, new inventory, and I would
copy whatever SEO content is there, and
I would paste it in, go to my used, I'd
go to my about us page, right? Those
core pages. I would copy the text, drop
it in, hit enter, document it. That's
one method. I mean, you're a marketing
guy, so obviously you're thinking of
marketing ideas. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you
break it down, what what what is a
dealership? A dealership's just uh you
know, I always say it starts with a
lead, but marketing people could argue
it starts with the marketing. So, you
just explained some things you can do
with the marketing. Um and then we're a
lead handling business, right? So, what
can we do for that? Well, we can see
what, you know, leads have higher
quality,
uh, which ones convert better, which
ones we engage with more, um, what our
agents are, which agents are doing well
and why, and which agents struggle and
why, uh, based on the conversation,
which dealerships are doing well and
why, and which dealerships are
struggling and why, and that's the lead
handling sales side of things. Um, and
then obviously you, you know, you have
the dealership that sells cars. um you
know, draw me up a sales plan uh for my
sales team. Build me a good a pay plan
for my sales team. Build me um you know,
a um a follow-up structure that works.
Build me some email templates that my
team can use, whatever. And then, you
know, you have the used car side. you
know, which vehicles are getting um more
looks than others and why isn't this car
getting attention and so forth and so
on. And then you could go into service
and then you can go into parts and and
just use it for any just to develop the
plans. The challenge is you still need
people to execute on the plans, right?
Um, and where
I'm not sold yet is that a robot can
actually execute on the plans better
than a human or have a conversation or
build rapport or whatever. So that's
really this is really my vision my my uh
prediction of the future. Um, those who
are good at building relationships and
developing teams and leading people are
going to be
in there. That's where you want to be in
the future because a lot of the other
stuff can be done with AI. But I don't
want a robot talking to my customer
necessarily. May maybe that happens.
Hopefully it's when I'm either retired
or on to the other side.
well you and I I like human to human
interaction. Yeah. So I I thrive on it.
I like need it. Everyone needs it's a
human. Everyone needs it, man. So yeah.
And and Vin, we we align uh
perfectly. I I I'm 100%
uh behind you on on that
statement. Think of this as a way to
empower Yeah.
your team. It's not it's it's not going
to replace them. It's going to empower
them. It's, you know, and it and it at
times it could create more work, but
think about the outcome if you were to
to, you know, create a plan and now you
want to execute. My fear for people is a
lot of people do like doing the mundane
day-to-day BS stuff and just have a job.
And those are the people that need to
worry because AI can do some of the task
orientated type jobs uh much faster than
a human can. Um and that's where it gets
like well what are you going to do if
that's what you like to do you know um
but there are a lot of professions that
are in in potential trouble. Uh like for
example being a
teacher, my wife happens to be a
teacher. It the best teachers to me are
the ones that can connect with students.
It's not so much, you know, collecting
the building out the tests and
collecting the data from the scores and
all that kind of stuff or drawing up
reports and things like that. It's more
time with the
student and helping them learn is what's
most important in teaching in my
opinion. Yeah. Um and hopefully it goes
that direction is that we have more
human engagement and not less um quality
human engagement, right? And so
that's where I'm hoping it all goes. Um,
but you know, if unfortunately greed's
in a factor, and I don't mean to say
business owners are greedy.
Um, but I know that there are a lot of
businesses out there that are being told
by their shareholders, find ways to, you
know, reduce headcount, increase
profits. Uh, and they see AI as a way to
do that. I just say be careful because
you could reduce your customers too
potentially, you know, if you if you go
too fast, too heavy into it and you
don't look at the experience that's
coming out on the other end. But with
that aside, um there's so much more to
AI than than just replacing people.
Yeah. Again, I you know, think
empowering. It's it's um it's funny that
you bring up education. I didn't know
your wife was a teacher. My two sisters
are a teacher. My wife works in the
school as well. Um, so huge fan of
education and I recently seen the I I
can't remember where it is. I'll try and
dig it up and send it to you. Um, but
there's basically this this new
model where these kids uh they learn
through AI agents teaching them for two
hours a day. The remainder of their
school day is spent with them immersed
in the things that interest them
hands-on. So, if they like uh art, then
they're doing art for a majority of the
time, but they're getting the education
and they're they're scoring out like so
far above average. It's interesting to
see that model.
So I don't Is that progressive or is
that alarming? Uh only time will tell.
Right.
Well, as I mentioned, Chad GPT is only
going to get better. Said in the last
year, we've seen it uh we've seen
improved reasoning and uh how it handles
prompts. Um I actually argue with it
sometimes. It's pretty funny. uh because
I don't like the answer it's given me
because it seems pretty biased
uh in certain directions. Um but it's
better at following complex uh
instructions now. Um maintaining you
know the structure of of of what it is
in the path that you're leading down. um
you know the reason it it's it's
got it's it's
summarizing conversations and pulling
out CRM ready data. Um, and it's more
reliable and coherent. Like it can pick
up on anomalies uh in data
where like for example, I had a dealer
one time tell me that if we can't get
them the 15% lead to close, then he'd be
wasting his money with us.
Come to find
out uh people in that dealership we
discovered were deleting
leads to just to make him
happy. And so it's a
behavior. Be careful what you ask like I
don't want I want to know I want to know
how each one of my people are doing good
or bad so I can address the bad ones and
praise the good ones. I want to know
what each leads provider is actually
doing. I don't want to have this, you
know, uh, fabricated kind of number KPI
that I came up with in my head just so I
can, you know, it's like an ego effect.
Oh, I'm the best. I got to get better
than everybody else. Um, you know, my
engineers this morning were telling me
they wanted to fix all the mis u
spellings or something within the
transcripts. I'm like, or or or things
that my my people said wrong. I'm like,
"No, no, no. Don't fix it." Like, if I
worried
about, you know, my people being peruh
not being perfect, I wouldn't sleep at
night. I don't worry about it. Like,
people are going to make mistakes. Now,
we don't want to make critical mistakes,
um, but mistakes are how you learn. Um,
and we have the ability to know when
they're making mistakes, and we can
correct those. Um, and hopefully that re
returns a higher, you know, uh, uh,
probability of an appointment or a show
in the showroom or a deal because we're
getting better and better. I know I'm
paying
attention. I would question dealers that
aren't paying attention and are managing
by KPI, but they don't really know why
they're at 15% or why they're at 4%. Um,
I want to know why so I can fix it. Not
because I'm want to, you know,
intimidate people into thinking that if
they don't get there, they're going to
lose their job or something like that.
No, I want to help them get better. It's
really simple. Managing people is
setting expectations. Hey, you know, I
want you to be at this and these are the
KPIs we manage by and if you're below
those, we, you know, we'll help you get
better. Um, it's my our job as as
trainers and managers to help people get
better. if they don't want to get
better, that's a decision that they're
making. So, I don't I don't feel like I
ever fire
anybody. You know, it's like, here's
what we expect, here's how we want it
done. If they're not doing it, we bring
them back and say, remember when we
hired you and we told you this is what
we expected and here's the job
description you you signed that said you
were going to do these
things. It it's not an option, right?
And so if you don't do it, then you
can't work for us. It's it's really that
simple. Um I was actually talking to a
gentleman the other day who was a sales
manager at a store and he was telling me
about one of the sales people who sold a
lot um but never, you know, was pulling
teeth getting to follow process. And I
said to
him, where I came from, it doesn't
matter how many cars you sell. If you
couldn't I mean, don't get me wrong, I
let good sales people get away with a
little bit more than normal if they're
selling a lot. But they got to have some
they have to follow some type of process
that we have in place. You can't just
let them run wild. It just poisons the
whole entire sales team and then not not
one person is, you know, you know. So,
so anyway, the way you do that is by
developing a process and then measuring
results.
You can't manage what you can't measure
or what you don't measure.
I I'd like to talk about the measuring
results part. Like I'm a big fan of
accountability and I'm a huge fan of
data with the the marketing background.
Um you remember hearing back in the 2005
67 8 right
pre20005 to
10 every
vendor right digital was just starting
to gain traction. uh the the super early
adopters and innovators of that uh were
people like you and I where we could see
the writing on the wall. Yep. And these
traditional
agencies started developing like
traditional products in um you know
reactively not proactively because they
started you know after time and losing
budget and more budget going to digital.
But my my point in this
is AI is in a very similar place in my
opinion and every vendor has data report
dashboard and so the dealer becomes
inundated with siloed numbers.
You asked every dealer and they were
honest with you in to show me what they
look at. Um, there's probably three to
five different KPIs or they don't look
at it all. They can't. I know. What's
the point of KPIs? What's the point of
data points? It's like, show me
anomalies. Show me where things are
going down or going up or whatever. And
now I can assume and drill in and find
out what the problems are. Right. Right.
That's that's really what data is about.
But there's too many dashboards. There's
too many too much data. There's too many
data points. There's too many um log I
we're having trouble getting dealers to
log into our portal right now. And and
to me, if I was a sales person, I'd be
living in it because there's
opportunities in there. But with that
said,
um you when you talk about
accountability, like first and foremost,
realize this. You're never ever going to
be able to run a perfect operation with
people. And therefore you if people are
feeding the information into the AI,
you're probably never going to run a
perfect AI solution either. Like
nothing's perfect. It's a matter of
where is your basis and where do you
want to get to? What are your goals and
how do you get there? Forget about being
perfect. Find out, you know, focus
on how to achieve the goals that you're
you're after. And with car dealers, it's
to sell and service more cars. Correct.
How do we do that? That's the base,
right? Yep. Well, where are we? Where
were we? What are what's our inventory
level like? And you know, what's my team
like? I see too many people get blamed
for bad performance when there are other
reasons why the performance is bad and
it's not the people,
you know. So Vin, is it is it
reasonable to to say uh data analysis is
now more accessible that that AI is the
force multiplier. Okay, this this will
level the playing field. Now the
prompting
is the prompting is the is the skill,
right? Anyone can have a free chat GPT
account. Just a skill back up. So what
we were saying about the base, the data
has to be right first and then the model
has to be trained to
recognize like for example, if I put in
every conversation into a Toyota store
and I said, "Show me all the customers
that were on a Toyota uh were looking
for a Toyota." Um hopefully it can go
through all the conversations and the
leads that we put into the VCON and
inventory and all that and and pull me
the right list of data, but that has to
be tested and watched and and and make
sure that we're getting it all or or
we're not and we're not missing
anything. Otherwise, like and so that's
the work we've been doing for two years,
right? And so now, as I mentioned, chat
is getting better. So things we were
working on a year ago, they're actually
making it easier to do now. And there is
new technologies coming out. There's a
thing called MCP which gives us the
ability to a API into uh connect an API
right into uh any dig any AI tool that
didn't exist a year ago. So now it's
like a a
plug-and-play and um we we're able to
feed it data better than trying to do it
through API to API kind of thing. So
anyway, the reality of it is what I'm
saying is it's it's evolving. Um the
reasoning is improving, the prompt
handling is improving. Uh you know, it
it's it's going to get better. So um
first you need the data, right, before
you can ask it questions, right? I've
been trying to get people to input
through a
process and we miss steps from time to
time and it drives me crazy because
they're human. But it drives me a little
crazy like we forgot to put a note in a
in a in a system after we talked to
somebody. Well, humans do
that. You know what I mean? Um, so why
why did they do that? Because it
requires them to go from one system to
the other and type and D. Imagine if I
could have it just put the notes in
automatically and get the data correct.
Now I can prompt it because I know it's
it's never going to be perfect. If
you've ever taken statistics, there's
always a margin of error. Even with
data, um even with humans, with data, it
doesn't really matter. There's a margin
of error. So anyone that's out there
looking for perfection, uh is going to
make themselves
crazy. Where are the opportunities
missed?
Where are we falling short of what we
expect from our
employees? You know, what is the process
that we have in place and is it working
or is it not working? Those are things
that we can measure with AI once we have
the data
right or is our marketing working? Is
our leads working? You know, what
percentage of my customers have trades?
What percentage of those are we actually
retailing? yada yada yada. I mean, you
know, what's our lease penetration? you
know, uh what's our gross even if you if
you plug in um that data point,
right? So, I' I've made this prediction
to a bunch of different people over the
last year. Um and I'm going to save this
I know there people working on this, but
I'm going to save this for 3 to five
years from now when I'm right because
I'm going to be right. CM today is going
to be totally different than the way
it's going to be in five years.
You're not going to need to type in all
this information and click buttons and
reschedu tasks and all that. The
conversation is going to tell you what
to
do. And that's the most powerful thing
about what VCON and Conserver do is it
gives us the ability to know what's
going on in our customer conversations
at any moment in time.
The V the VCON is altering the landscape
of what can
happen to
provide a more direct
path to the results dealers
want maintaining that or enhancing the
personalization and the experience for
the customer. Fair. Okay.
just want to make sure we're on the same
page.
And for the for the VCON side of the
business, the conservative side, the
astral.ai side,
um really what we want to do is help
companies create their own
data and we do have applications and
things like that. We don't have any
plans to build a conversational CRM, for
example.
We could, but that's just a giant
project. And we're happy being that
layer of technology that helps take
those conversations and turn them into
beons and then store them for you so you
can use them when a new chatbot comes
out or you can use them when a new AI uh
generative AI tool comes out or use it
when a new application is built um that
you want to you know feed uh data to. So
that's where we are as a company at the
moment. Now we're also using it to
enhance our automotive business clearly.
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. But it's
it's not just improving our business,
it's it's
improving the result for the dealer.
Like anytime I not speaking for you,
Vin, but when I hear you say improving
our
business, what how I interpret that is
it's better for the dealer, right? It
is. Yeah. Yeah. And and I've said a
thousand times, you want to start a
business, you have to be able to solve a
problem for your customer and do or do
something um that they have trouble
doing uh or do it better than they do.
Um and then you have a
business. Like for example, you can I
could go home and make a pizza, but
someone does it better. Why would I go
home and make a pizza other than having
fun? with your kids or something, but
it's faster, quicker, easier to make a
go to a person that knows how to make
pizzas, right? Yeah. Yeah. They figured
out that they that's the bridge that
they've built. Best pizza joint in town.
And
and if it was easy to make it yourself,
uh, and you can make it better than the
pizza places, you wouldn't go there,
right?
So, we make we make better pizzas when
it comes to customer communications.
That's kind of uh I don't get me wrong,
there's a lot of dealers that do a great
job with what we do. Sure. And we don't
want every dealer um in the world. Um
but some of the applications we're
building, we feel like every dealer
could use and we're working on a hosted
version to be able to sell it to them
the way we use it here. You know,
Shroud's a great sandbox for this stuff
because we get to play with it and use
it in real, you know, in real life. Uh,
and not it's not just a concept or an
idea like some of these tools that are
getting thrown at these dealers that
haven't really been tested. They're the
new entries um that are in on AI, if
you're brave enough to sign up for them
early on, you're their strawid
sandbox. They're going to learn from you
and all the mistakes they make are going
to be at your expense. So, we're trying
to develop that without having to go
through that pain because I I would
imagine it's painful unless the dealer's
like, "Hey, listen. I know it's new and
I'm expecting it not to work." But I
don't know how many people would buy
something that they don't expect to work
is. And don't get me wrong, it probably
works. I'm just saying, does it work to
your expectations, to your level of
expectation? Is it giving a customer
experience the way you want it as an
owner with your name on the building,
right?
Well, I know number one, I know we're uh
about up on time, so I'm going to switch
gears and do a little outro here, but
um I we we put a document out uh couple
months ago uh for for
some I think it was top 20, you know,
dealer playbook for uh AI prompts. I
mean it's a starting point right so you
can use it for your data you can use it
for creative ideas you can use it for
planning and process
uh I think the the key takeaway is don't
be afraid of it don't feel like you're
missing out if you don't have time to
get into it now but if you do have the
time and the curiosity to download set
up the account and uh and dive in and
you know check
check through our channels, our website
for some resources and and we're here to
help. Mhm. So, and and I hopefully the
people listening to our podcast
understand um that
um I may not be telling you all the
things you want. I mean, I may not be
giving you the sizzle and trying to sell
Strawlet or sell our our solutions or
anything like that. I'm trying to give
you what we're seeing as a company uh in
terms of the landscape around AI at the
moment. And hopefully it it's helping
you understand it. Um if you're having
trouble or nervous or anxious about it
because as I said in the last podcast we
did, there's nothing to be anxious
about. That's
right. Well, it's nothing yet. It's
nothing. It's nothing earthshattering
yet. It's not changing your whole
business model. you still need your
teams and your vendors and everybody
else. There's nothing I haven't yet I've
not seen it work to the point where it's
completely overhauled the dealership and
made them lots of money and all this
other stuff. So, and and it does go back
to the people. So,
thanks so much for tuning in to Dealer
Insights, the podcast that keeps you
ahead of the curve with automotive
industry trends, innovation, and
strategies.
Uh, if you enjoyed today's episode,
don't forget to subscribe, rate, review
the podcast. It truly helps others find
us. And you can visit us on strait.com
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and catch up on past episodes if you've
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find Vin and myself. Uh, but don't
forget to head over to YouTube if you
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those and we'll catch you on the next
one. Thanks a lot, Vin. Thanks, Michael.