How Carl AI purchasing teammate increased Nettbil's total sales by 4-6%

From an email winback program with 1 % click-through to an AI purchasing teammate with a 60 % response rate. No integration, no extra capacity in the sales team.

About the customer

Summary

Nettbil handles more than 100,000 inbound leads per year and sells around 22,000 cars annually. Their existing winback motion (a generic email program) produced no measurable sales effect, while manual winback by sales advisors only happened when capacity allowed. Large volumes of leads were never followed up consistently.

Carl took over the winback process as an AI purchasing teammate, continuing 1-to-1 conversations with each lead until the car is bought. The pilot launched without integrations and without adding capacity to Nettbil's sales team. The result was a 60.1 % response rate on reactivated leads, 1.2 % conversion to actual sales, and a 4–6 % lift on Nettbil's total top line.

The starting point

Two problems quietly removing revenue from the top line

In Nettbil's original setup, winback was a side task that advisors handled when they had spare capacity. Inbound leads consumed all available time, which they did most of the time, so winback was deprioritised. Two parallel problems followed:

• Inconsistent advisor follow-up. Winback calls only happened when capacity allowed. In busy periods, large volumes of leads went untouched.

• An email program with no documented sales effect. The automated email flow lacked systematic measurement of sales conversion. The only available signals were low engagement metrics, and only 1 % of emails sent generated a single click.

In short: Nettbil was paying to send emails that could not be tied to sales, while a large pool of leads simply never received another human follow-up.

Why now? The trigger to look at AI

Generative AI made it possible to deliver tailored 1-to-1 dialogue at scale, so non-converted leads could experience what feels like personal follow-up from an advisor, without a human advisor actually working every thread.

For Nettbil, that promised two simultaneous gains:

• A conversion lift compared with generic email nurturing.

• An efficiency lift for the winback team . Carl prioritises so that more time is spent on warm leads and less time is wasted on cold ones.

The solution

A pilot designed for zero friction

Carl was rolled out with the lowest possible implementation cost. That was a deliberate choice: Nettbil's leadership needed to evaluate the impact on real numbers, not on promises.

• Free pilot covering roughly 600 leads in the first round.

• No integrations required against Nettbil's existing systems.

• A simple CSV export of unqualified leads was all Carl needed to start.

• Reactivation live within 2 weeks of signing the pilot agreement.

• No additional operational capacity required. Nettbil's advisors handled leads from Carl exactly like any other inbound enquiry.

How Carl works

Carl runs persistent, polite, context-aware 1-to-1 conversations with cold leads. The model carries forward earlier context (for example which car the lead originally enquired about), respects timelines set by the customer (“reach out in 4 weeks”), and follows up automatically at the agreed time.

The difference from generic nurturing is not just automation. It is that Carl never gives up on a lead until the car is bought. The long tail of leads, exactly where human advisors typically drop off, is where most of the lift is generated.

The results

How to read the numbers

• 60.1 % response rate is roughly 60× higher than Nettbil's previous email program, and on a much heavier engagement metric (a reply in conversation versus a single click in an email).

• 1.2 % sales conversion on reactivated leads is an entirely new measurement category: previously, Nettbil could not isolate the sales effect of winback at all.

• 4–6 % lift in total sales is the KPI a CFO actually cares about: not engagement, but top line. At Nettbil's volume, that translates into substantial incremental revenue per year, generated from leads that were previously abandoned.

“After initial results, we decided to make Carl part of our core sales stack. This is how inbound consumer sales will be run in the future.”

Mats Vangbo, CEO, Nettbil

Why it works

Carl solves one specific problem extremely well: converting leads that don't close on the first conversation. It is not a marketing automation tool, not a chatbot, and not a CRM add-on. It is an AI purchasing teammate, accountable to a single KPI: that more of the dealer's existing leads end with a car sale.

Three reasons the model works at Nettbil

• Volume beats timing. When a dealer receives thousands of leads per month, it is mathematically inevitable that a large share won't be ready on day one. Carl waits, remembers and follows up over weeks and months, without getting tired.

• 1-to-1, not broadcast. The SMS and conversational format makes the lead experience personal advisor follow-up, not a marketing campaign.

• Sales advisors lose nothing. They gain time. Carl hands the lead over to a human advisor exactly when the lead is ready for a call or booking. The rest of the long, cold tail is handled by Carl alone.

What's next

Following the pilot, Carl has been moved into Nettbil's core sales stack. It is no longer an experiment, but part of how inbound consumer sales is run at Nettbil. The results have shaped how the Carl model is now being packaged for other dealerships across the Nordics and Europe.

Want to see what Carl could do for your dealership?

Book a call with our team. We will have a pilot live in under 14 days, with no integration and no cost.