9:11 am, November 11, 2024
Used car buying – or at least attempting it – has been dominating my week at the Clever Car Collection.
Most days I spend far too much time searching the local listings on the likes of Carwow and Motorway for vehicles that suit my budget and stocking profile.
I’ve used AI over the last year to narrow down a hit list of vehicles that meet this criteria and will search for cars daily that suit using the system.
it uses Auto Trader’s Retail Rating data, projected days to sell and looks carefully at its market health indicators when selecting what to buy.
It does mean that some weeks there are very few cars to choose from, especially as we don’t like to travel too far to pick then up.
The reason for that is I’ve had far too many wasted journeys to go to collect cars that have not been accurately described by the sellers.
The more I buy and sell used cars, the more I’ve come to terms with the fact consumers and car dealers have very different ideas of what ‘clean’ looks like.
I’m not talking shiny paintwork here, no I mean scratches, dents and scuffs that some owners think are normal.
Now we all know that 10-year-old cars have the odd dents and dings in them, but the important thing is that all parties are aware of them before committing to do a deal.
When I advertise our cars on Clever Car Collection’s YouTube channel and advertising platforms I make sure I point out every imperfection I can see.
I think this is important so customers don’t waste their time, or mine, coming to see a car that has a scratch on it that they didn’t know about.
I’ve often wondered how many people don’t come and look at our cars because of the videos, and this weekend someone called up about our Dacia Duster who hadn’t seen the video.
The lead had come via CarGurus and that platform doesn’t pull across the YouTube videos we do of the cars (not sure why). So, when the customer called, we sent them the video link to make sure they were happy with the car before coming to see it.
It was Sunday, and I was busy gardening, and because we’re appointment only we have to drop everything and head to the dealership to get the car ready for a viewing when we get a call like that.
After they’d viewed the video we got another call from the customer who decided they had something else on at that point and no longer wanted to see it.
Perhaps they’d seen something they weren’t keen on in the video, but I suppose while the lead didn’t turn into a viewing, neither the customer, nor I, wasted our Sunday afternoon with a car he didn’t want in the first place.
Anyway, back to last week and the many, many bids I placed on cars on auction channels. As you’ll see in the latest video (top), some were successful but the large majority were not. While I find that frustrating, what I find more annoying is not having enough cars in stock.
We also picked up a couple of cars last week and, similar to the auctions themselves, the collections were somewhat frustrating.
We drove to Bognor Regis on one day to pick up a Mazda MX-5. Breaking my buy close from the dealership rule, this was at least a two-hour round trip, but after selling our most recent MX-5 in super quick time I thought having another would be worthwhile.
When we got there it was immediately obvious it had been resprayed – poorly. The paint was blemished on the wheel arches, around the bonnet and the boot-lid was particularly marked.
We walked away from that one. A wasted afternoon to collect a car that was nowhere near as described.
It takes up a lot of time buying and selling used cars – and that’s before you’ve even managed to get them into stock. I just don’t think people realise the effort required in running a small used care dealership, but after nearly a year ‘in the trade’ I certainly do.
This week I’ve also launched SellYouCarToJames.com – a site produced by the brilliant DealerKit team for me that helps me acquire stock.
I plan to hyper locally target it with some help from AI. I started that plan in this week’s video, asking ChatGPT to help me come up with the marketing for the business.
As I’ve found throughout this project, it wasn’t particularly helpful. It suggested I set up a Google My Business page, which I did, but what I really want AI to do is, well, everything. I want it to devise a Google Ads strategy, help post the adverts after designing the artwork, but sadly it simply can’t.
I’ve got several interesting AI chats on the go at the moment – not with bots, I hasten to add, but real people – that will hopefully add some interesting AI layers to the Clever Car Collection business. But they’re not all quite ready just yet. More on that to come in the next few weeks…
My weekly video diaries of the AI Car Dealership Project are published every Friday evening art 8pm on our YouTube channel.
