AI Academy • Lesson 3

Put AI to Work at Your Dealership

You've learned how to give AI better instructions. Now let's use it for actual work — emails, meeting notes, documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and more.

Level: Basic Time: About 8 minutes Best for: Anyone ready to use AI for real work

Step 1

Start with work you already have.

You don't need to invent an "AI project." Look at the work already sitting in front of you.

An email that needs to be written. Meeting notes that need to become action items. A 20-page PDF you don't have time to read. A spreadsheet you need to understand. A rough draft that needs to sound better.

That's where AI starts becoming useful.

Instead of: Spending 30 minutes turning rough meeting notes into a recap.

Try: Paste the notes into AI and ask it to organize the decisions, action items and people responsible.

Step 2

Give AI a document.

Many AI tools let you upload PDFs, Word documents and other files. Instead of reading every page yourself, ask AI to help you understand what's inside.

You can summarize a report, find specific information, identify deadlines, compare sections or turn a long document into something easier to use.

Try prompts like these

Summarize this document in five bullet points. Then tell me which three items are most relevant to an automobile dealer.

Find every deadline mentioned in this document. Give me the date, what is due and where you found it.

Read these meeting notes and create a list of decisions and action items. Do not add information that isn't in the notes.

A Note About Privacy

Before you upload anything, think about the data.

Don't put customer information, employee information, confidential dealership data or other sensitive material into a public AI tool. Follow your dealership's policies and use dealership-approved systems when working with sensitive information.

If you use a personal ChatGPT or Claude account, there's also a privacy setting worth checking.

ChatGPT

Open your settings and go to:

Settings → Data controls →
Improve the model for everyone

Turn this setting off if you don't want new conversations used to improve OpenAI's models.

Claude

Open your settings and go to:

Privacy →
Model Improvement

Turn model improvement off if you don't want your chats used to help improve Claude.

Remember: Turning off model improvement is a useful privacy step, but it does not make a public AI tool an appropriate place for sensitive dealership or customer information.

Step 3

Ask questions about a spreadsheet.

You don't have to be a data analyst to start exploring a spreadsheet with AI. Upload the file and begin with simple questions.

1

Understand it Ask AI to explain what the spreadsheet contains and what each column represents.

2

Look for patterns Ask about trends, changes, unusual numbers or differences between categories.

3

Dig deeper Ask follow-up questions based on what AI finds.

Try this:
Review this spreadsheet. Explain what it contains in plain English, identify any noticeable trends and give me five questions I should investigate further.

Step 4

Don't stop with the first answer.

Lesson 2 introduced an important idea: think conversation, not command. That becomes even more useful when you're working with a document or data.

Summarize this report for me.

Now make that summary shorter.

Which three issues should a dealer pay the most attention to?

Show me where you found each of those in the document.

Put those three items into a table I can share with my managers.

The first answer doesn't have to be the final answer.

From a VADA Dealer

Think of AI as a resource.

One VADA member told us his dealership has focused largely on using AI behind the scenes — helping employees work smarter rather than simply putting another AI bot in front of customers.

“Our approach has been to integrate behind the scenes.”

His team also asks AI assistants the kinds of automotive questions customers are asking and pays attention to where the AI finds its answers.

Why does that matter? Your customers are beginning to use AI for research, too. In a future lesson, we'll explore a new question for dealers: Can AI find your dealership and your inventory?