8:07 am, April 3, 2025
One car dealer told how implementing an AI sales assistant in his business returned them to profitability.
Michael Bell, CEO of Available Car, spoke alongside Motorway’s COO James Wilson at Car Dealer Live (pictured above). He explained how its AI chatbot had sent 400,000 messages in a year, dealt with 60,000 leads and saved deals with 13% of its customers that any human salesperson would have given up on.
Despite its success with some car dealers, Wilson explained that a large portion still don’t know where to start.
Motorway surveyed its car dealers and found that more than half (57%) were interested in using AI but less than a quarter (22%) were actually implementing it at work.
Further to this it found 73% of those surveyed didn’t know where to start with AI.
James Wilson, chief operating officer at Motorway, explained: ‘Almost two thirds of franchises were saying it’s critical we implement AI now to stay ahead of the competition. There’s interest, there’s a sense of urgency, but when you look at how much AI is being used then only 22%.’
He added: ‘Generative AI, which is what we’re talking about, has only been around for a couple of years and there are solutions for every part of your business, so where do you start?’
During their talk at Car Dealer Live, he helped listeners understand one of the AI additions that car dealers can implement to directly impact sales and reduce leakage – an AI sales assistant.
Wilson explained that this technology critically moves consumers through to test drives, service appointments and more, converting leads more effectively all through the dealerships website.
Available Car’s CEO Bell told the audience how they had implemented this techology and how it drastically improved sales.
He said: ‘This has really helped us over the last 12 months. It’s returned us back to profitability, which is the main positive for the business. It’s had a huge growth in sales but, exactly as James says, it’s stopped leakage.
‘One of the stats that the guys at Impel pulled out for us is 13% of our customers didn’t respond to any sort of messaging until five messages. I’m pretty sure most of your team would have marked that lead as dead before that point, I know ours would have done.
‘That’s a massive chunk of consumers that we turned into sales last year, purely because of this product.
‘It dealt with over 60,000 leads last year, our chat is dealing with even bigger volumes than that, which are asking questions day-to-day.
He added: ‘Ultimately you know every lead is being followed up.
‘It’s sent 400,000 messages in the last year. I don’t have enough team to do that.’
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