Founder and CEO, Qelv LLCPreliminary scoping documentMay 2025
Dealership CRM: an SMS and AI add-on
Whether an add-on that texts a dealership's cold leads and summarizes every reply was worth building, answered before any code.
The questions we asked first
- Walk me through the exact steps you take today, from logging in to sending a follow-up text. Where does it slow down most?
- Is a nightly contact sync enough, or do you need real-time updates? Which 3 to 5 intent categories would help you triage fastest?
- Have you ever been blocked by carrier filters or TCPA rules? What alert would have helped?
- In the first 30 days, what single outcome tells you this version worked? What would make you refuse to adopt it?
- Then 44 feature-specific questions, grouped by the 4 use cases.
Read the rest of the sample, 5 sections
The competitive landscape
- 6 dealership SMS and AI vendors compared on focus, capabilities, buyer and pricing. The gap: none pairs two-way SMS automation with automatic conversation summaries in one lightweight add-on.
Market sizing
- A conservative addressable market from franchised and large independent rooftops, a serviceable market filtered to the 2 CRMs supported at launch, a 12-month obtainable target, and a sensitivity table on price and message cost.
Idea validation before any code
- 3 assumptions to prove, a 4-week talk, test, take-money plan with 10 recorded interviews and a refundable reservation fee as the proof of demand, and a decision sheet for each outcome.
User journeys and the first version
- 3 users, 4 journeys from connect and sync to review analytics, and a feature set mapped line by line to them, with the must-haves: TCPA send windows, role permissions, encryption at rest.
Work breakdown and discovery plan
- 10 epics sized S, M or L, each with its open questions, and 12 discovery streams in a 4-week time box, each with an effort band and a concrete output, ending in a go or no-go report.