Using AI To Improve Your Boat Buying Experience

Imagine it’s 2006, your family is looking for a new way to spend their time in the summers, and boating comes into the conversation. You’re not an expert on boating or boats in general; you’ve been out on the water before on a friend’s boat but that’s about the extent of your knowledge. Outside of that all you know is this is a big purchase and should be researched but you’re not sure how, you’ve recently bought a truck, so you use the same methods you used for that purchase. Saturday morning comes around and you load up the family in the truck and start driving around to local dealerships, looking, asking questions and collecting information on how much it’s going to cost and seeing what the family likes best about each style, brand and model. Eventually, you settle for what everyone likes most and you’re happy because you feel like you made a good decision. However, you only experienced the styles and brands offered in your local area. Unlike car buying, every make and model isn’t available in every town across the country. So, you were limited to what was available but was that the best decision for your needs?

Now, 20 years later there’s endless tools to make the right decisions, sometimes it seems like too much, it was easier when you were limited. Most probably start with a simple Google search, that leads to ads popping up, algorithms showing content based on search history and then more viewing and searching reveal there’s a world of possibilities. It can feel overwhelming, you’re not sure what the right move is because there’s so many options and your buying experience becomes a headache.

However, over the last 20 years while we’ve had these great developments in technology and they make search easier and more difficult but in even more modern times a specific technology has comes to life and is making waves in search possibilities. It’s not biased, it’s not bought or manipulated and it gives information based off what’s available on the internet. That technology is AI conversational tools (chatbots) such as ChatGPT, Grok, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and many more.

Instead of Googling, “What’s the best family boat on the market?” and getting a list of boat brands based on how much they paid Google to appear you can ask a chatbot the same question and get responses based on brand recognition, reviews and distributed information. But what’s better is you can begin narrowing things down by having a conversation. Next you can say, “out of those options which have the best platform for seating my family of 5?” Go further and describe where you’ll be boating and have it give you options based up bodies of water you’ll be on. You can sit down with the chatbot the same way you would a dealer except instead of being limited to the brands they sell you have every boat on the market available. When you finish your conversation and have a few different brands/models on your mind you can ask it, “where can I view this boat in person and buy it if we like it?” Boom the closes dealer to your location and now it’s time to get back in the truck and go have that in person discussion but this time you’re walking in educated and know what you want.

For an example of how this could work I want to share a conversation had with ChatGPT for this customer’s boat buying experience. We used this demo in our annual sales training to show our dealer’s sales teams across the country an inside look at the power of AI in the boat buying experience.

Conversations like this should never and will never replace the dealer experience, but what it does it allows you to be educated going into the dealership. You’ll still want to do your sea trial and discuss different options, warranties, resale values and needed maintenance. Your chatbot won’t be your salesmen or the person who helps you throughout the life of ownership, that’s where your dealer comes into play. They’re going to be able to give you the real-world knowledge, the support when you need it and that relationship is irreplaceable.

If you’re in the market for a new boat, do your research at home, become an expert on what you want before you ever step into a dealership by using tools that are available to everyone. Utilize AI to ask questions and compare everything up front from fuel usage by engine size, insurance ranges, storage considerations, routine maintenance expectations, standard verse optional features, what you’ll need for your style of boating, good locations to use specific types of boats you’re considering and so much more.

Our goal at Sportsman is to educate our buyers to the furthest extent so that they are comfortable buying a Sportsman because they’ve been educated not because they’ve been sold to. We want everyone to own a Sportsman but only if they feel it’s the right purchase and it was their decision not a persuasion. If you’re in the market for a new boat do your research and talk with the chatbot and see if Sportsman comes up in conversation!