Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

[joe.pistell]

Consumers loved the idea but the biggest hurdle was signing up dealers to participate.

Ya, Dealer's know the buyer has to have skin in the game.

AI can bypass this reverse auction friction and go old school. It can easily become the app owners negotiator. It can read/write text and email, and now with Air.ai It can call and receive phone calls. It can book appointments (trade evaluation, test drives) it can get a revised insurance quote for the new car.

The NEW GAME iis for buyer and seller to have their own AI negotiation expert do the deal.

 

[joe.pistell]

Out of curiosity, what do you think it would take to build this?

Jon, the SAAS services to support this will be everywhere making this relatively cheap to build. The hard part is what Carl speaks to, crafting a model that is dealer centric (easy) and having a nation wide sales force to roll it out FAST (only the big dogs play here).

Open source and SAAS availability will make small players pop up all over. No small player can reach critical mass without the sales force.

Lastly, one could built a lite version and have some early, first to market wins.

 

[CarlAutofusion]

Yes. The dealer participation was difficult. Even when we had dealers signed up, we had people calling dealers to remind them to bid on the consumer's purchase. They had to log in and place actual bids and each lead.

Later on, to get consumer's to go through with the purchase, we started charging them a refundable $100 deposit that was returned when they bought the car but this greatly reduced the number of leads.

This was over 20 years ago so I'm sure you can probably make this work now. For one, dealers are more willing to log into websites, use tools, etc these days.

 

[Jon Singo]

The hard part is what Carl speaks to, crafting a model that is dealer centric (easy) and having a nation wide sales force to roll it out FAST (only the big dogs play here).

What if you didn't initially market it to dealers? Build enough value with consumers and dealers will have to use it, eventually.

 

[Ryan Everson]

What if you didn't initially market it to dealers? Build enough value with consumers and dealers will have to use it, eventually.

It's the age-old chicken and egg conundrum:
Dealers will only sign-up if there is a big customer base.
Customers will only sign-up if there are lots of dealers competing for their business.

I think you guys are ultimately describing something that sort of already exists in a similar form - TrueCar. Dealers "bidding" on deals aka setting their TrueCar price.

 

[joe.pistell]

What if you didn't initially market it to dealers? Build enough value with consumers and dealers will have to use it, eventually.

Ryan nailed it. Amazon, Kayak, Zillow, Etsy, Cars.com, etc., all are a 'bridge' that allows sellers and buyers to meet each other. The bridges' success hinges on how productive the UX is for both buyer and seller.

 

[CarlAutofusion]

That's a great point and I do remember one of the biggest problems is our process wasn't easy for dealers because we allowed consumers to configure the car they want, including optional equipment. That made dealer participation low for brands with complex options like the Ford, Dodge, etc but dealer participation was much higher for the simpler cars, like Honda, Saturn (remember them?) and Subaru.

 

[joe.pistell]

Saturn (remember them?)

Look out Carl, you'll qualify for your own old man emjoi.

ur process wasn't easy for dealers because we allowed consumers to configure the car they want, including optional equipment. That made dealer participation low for brands with complex options like the Ford, Dodge, etc but dealer participation was much higher for the simpler cars, like Honda, Saturn (remember them?) and Subaru.

Carl, few ppl talk about how the complexity of the vehicle configs very greatly between OEMs. I'd bet lunch all of the OEMs (especially domestics) want to chase Tesla's short options list.

 

[joe.pistell]

@Jon Singo here's a taste of how fast this is going to move. In GPT4 I added 3 car plugins (I couldn't find @Ryan Everson's)

CarGurus, CoPilot and Edmunds. I put on my car shopper hat and asked it:

"I own a 2020 Chevrolet Traverse in the Premier trim, with 21,000 miles. I like to buy a low mile used SUV like it. I am open to different SUVs that the chevrolet and I want a 2022 or newer with less than 10,000 miles. I live near syracuse NY, what are my choices?"

I got this: https://chat.openai.com/share/051fabc2-4700-4172-84ff-86c254f9c99c

I under 6 months, this is the #TipoftheIceBerg​

 

[Ryan Everson]

@Jon Singo here's a taste of how fast this is going to move. In GPT4 I added 3 car plugins (I couldn't find @Ryan Everson's)
View attachment 8033
CarGurus, CoPilot and Edmunds. I put on my car shopper hat and asked it:

"I own a 2020 Chevrolet Traverse in the Premier trim, with 21,000 miles. I like to buy a low mile used SUV like it. I am open to different SUVs that the chevrolet and I want a 2022 or newer with less than 10,000 miles. I live near syracuse NY, what are my choices?"

I got this: https://chat.openai.com/share/051fabc2-4700-4172-84ff-86c254f9c99c

View attachment 8035

I under 6 months, this is the #TipoftheIceBerg​

Taking it 1 step further:
Please adjust the prices to include all tax, title, license, and dealer fees. Only show me listings that have a clean CarFax and dealers that have a 4.5 star rating or higher.

Taking it 2 steps further:
I like car #2 and car #4. Please communicate with these dealers on my behalf to confirm availability and negotiate the best out the door rate and trade-in value for my 2013 Dodge Dart with 130k miles.


Dealers think they're clever in using AI to communicate with customers; just wait until customers have the same ability.