ADS March Newsletter

The month of March brings with it many changes. As the weather changes and we cruise into Spring, we shift from football to baseball, college basketball morphs into an all-consuming month long, can’t miss event, and of course, selling season! The hope of warmer weather for riding and RV’ing combined with tax return season generally means an uptick in traffic for new auto’s, RV’s and powersports!

This month also marks some significant changes for us at ADS.

We are thrilled to announce our newest partnership with Zurich. We were honored to be selected as one of their ‘elite’ agencies to represent this globally recognized brands market leading F&I products to auto and powersports dealers. “We are pleased to welcome Bob, Ryan, and the entire ADS team to the Zurich network of F&I agencies; and expanding our reach to their auto and powersports dealers,” said Todd Kaminski, Head of Business Development for Direct Markets, Zurich North America. “Their sound business processes, solid dealership relationships and tremendous client satisfaction are key characteristics we look for to help bring Zurich F&I products, training and participation program to new markets.”

This month we will be hosting an AFIP certification course in our new training center. Be sure to check out the link below and register to be part of this invaluable certification.

As many of us are knee deep in tax season, I am reminded how the profit participation landscape has changed over the years. With some of the recent changes in structures, investment options, access to unearned reserves, etc. it may be a good time to evaluate your capital and tax strategy to make sure you are in the best possible position. Please reach out to us to set up a time to for a no obligation review of your current structure to ensure you are in the best position to accomplish your goals.

A few recent headlines for you to peruse…  

Upcoming Events ADS will be attending:

Cleveland Auto Show, OH – www.clevelandautoshow.com
Agent Summit 2023, Las Vegas, NV – https://www.agentsummit.com/register/

We would love the opportunity to connect with you, please let us know if you will be attending.

Link to the full newsletter https://mailchi.mp/advdealer.com/march-newsletter

February Newsletter

A Message From The ADS Team

Just like the industries we serve; ADS has a lot going on and much to be excited about.

In the last month we have hosted the inaugural F&I training as well as a dealer group meeting in our new training facility. The space has exceeded our expectations, and more importantly it has exceeded our dealer’s expectations. Check out the pictures below to see the room in action.

Over the next few months, we will be making several exciting announcements. Stay tuned to hear about our growth and how we plan to provide even more solutions to dealers. Be sure to subscribe to our LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook pages as well as our newsletter to get the latest updates on what our team is up to.

Here are few interesting items to consider:
• January Sales Report
• Monthly payments over $1,000 hits record high
• Inflation possibly turns to stagflation
• EV’s already dropping in price
• NADA 2023 Recap – See you Next Year In Las Vegas
Upcoming Events ADS will be attending:

AIMExpo Las Vegas, NV – https://aimexpousa.com/
AFIP Bootcamp Certification – https://afip.com/events-open-boot-camp/ads-onsite-boot-camp
Agent Summit – https://www.agentsummit.com/

We would love the opportunity to connect with you, please let us know if you will be attending.

Sincerely,
Bob and Ryan

Click to view our full Newsletter.

Client Command: Democratizing the Data

In this issue of Business Spotlight, Auto Digest spoke with CEO of Client Command Jonathan Lucenay.

Business Spotlight

Think about the last time that you searched for a new car, what did that look like? Did you search locally, or within your state, maybe even nationwide just to compare prices? The big question is… how many dealerships did you go to? How many salespeople did you try to haggle with? Many of today’s shoppers are looking at deals across the country, online, and are not limited to your town’s “dealership row.” Sometimes the transaction is settled before the shopper ever steps foot in the showroom. Welcome to 2022, folks!

Thanks to innovative companies such as Client Command, the primary market area of many shoppers is now nationwide and easily accessible. Dealerships have adapted to this over the years, and now utilize DaaS (or data-as-a-service) to identify and offer their cars to these interested parties. This could mean a dealership in Lexington, Kentucky sells a car to a young woman in Butte, Montana. This… is cool, frankly… and was not the reality we lived in just 10 or so years ago. For all of the change happening in the automotive powertrain space these days, it seems retail is also feeling pressure from OEMs to perform.

Enter Client Command

In this issue of Business Spotlight, Auto Digest spoke with CEO of Client Command Jonathan Lucenay. A Cumming, Georgia-based firm with around 70 employees that is a powerful player in the dealership marketing world. After 9/11, CEO Jonathan Lucenay began to realize how the market around him was changing and how decisions were often times made emotionally. He decided to let data tell him where and who to market. Fed up with all of the DMS (Database Management System) providers that were still using tech from the 1970s as a base platform, he started to change the industry himself. He literally said that what he saw back in those days “drove me crazy.”

“Dealers were hesitant so I told our initial clients that they could just pay for the results. The impacts were massive!  The results exceeded anything most of those dealers had ever seen. That was 2001.” – CEO Jonathan Lucenay

What do they have that is unique?

The folks at Client Command have been in the industry for over twenty years, originally doing marketing and advertising analysis for seemingly ancient mediums such as radio and TV. Oh, how times have changed. After realizing the demand and opportunity for more targeted ads in the early 2000s, CEO Jonathan Lucenay began to transition his company into this new model. A model that combines inputs from a variety of sources to pair a match. Effective leaders can anticipate change on the horizon, as shown.

Their primary technology, called “Active Shopper Network,” is able to accurately track and identify nearly every person shopping for a car in the United States. The algorithm gets data from over sixty billion URLs every day and has databases to pair all of these searches to the one doing the searches. This includes data from online videos, social media, and email, along with web searches. The company was named Inc. Magazine Best Workplace 2018 and has received the US Business News Technology Elite Award for Best Automotive Marketing Solutions Provider. They do have plans to go international in the future, which will undoubtedly present it’s own new set of challenges for the team.

“The customer expects [the ads] to be real time, but they also expect them to be meaningful.”

Marketing On Easy Mode

When Auto Digest asked Mr. Lucenay what the biggest challenge is for the company, he responded that the hard stuff is what they make look easy. The business is proud to tout that they integrate billions of data sources and sift through it to get actionable data for the local dealership. This data comes from websites, search engines, ISP’s, and a variety of other sources that most of us aren’t even aware exist! Client Command supports dealerships because when they win, Client Command also wins. The have some testimonials on their website from dealers, and it seems the relationship is more of a genuine partnership than a business client. The same statement, however, applies if a loss happens. Good motivation to succeed, right? When prying further, and asking Jonathan what his team is doing to overcome this challenge of educating dealerships on their market, he stated that it’s step by step. It is a process to work with one dealership at a time to prove their value and establish that mutual teamwork. The team works diligently to enhance not just the data, but also the entire platform that is visible to their customers on a weekly basis. These days, it seems there is an algorithm for everything… but not all add true value, and Client Command is cognizant of this.

Enabling Great Talent to Succeed

The culture of Client Command is one that is built around knowing people, both the data and the person… whether this means their business partners or their own employees. The CEO made it clear that although data firms such as his sometimes struggle to maintain a certain level of “normality” in the office, (data analytics is not typically known for it’s engaging and enthusiastic workforce) he used the word “electric” to describe the energy at CC. The company ensures that investments are not only made on the software side of things but more importantly with their human capital. This enables the rest of the team to more efficiently give that ever-so-valuable people knowledge to the dealerships surrounding them.

“Big data is meaningless unless it’s actionable.”

In conclusion, Jonathan and his team firmly believe that although consumers like digital retail, dealers can adjust along with the consumers in the market. His organization is just one example of many in the rapidly-evolving auto sector that are learning to encourage and implement new and sometimes risky ideas. That is how a competitive edge is maintained.

Post was originally published by Auto Digest https://www.auto-digest.com/client-command-democratizing-the-data/.

To learn more about the platform send us a message here.

January 2023 Newsletter

And just like that 2022 has come to an end. This past year will prove to be memorable for the rapid changes in the market, the ongoing uncertainty we find ourselves living in and our continued search for a ‘new norm’.

Let’s now shift our focus to 2023 and how we can make it the best year ever. Despite the predicted retractions and continued headwinds we face, accomplishing even the loftiest of goals is possible if you take the time to go through proper goal-setting actions. There are countless articles and videos on how to set goals and methods to track them. Here are a couple of articles to help you define your goals and establish methods to crush them! Whatever your goals are, we wish you luck in accomplishing them this year.

Here are few interesting items to consider as we head into the new year.  

Upcoming Events ADS will be attending:

RV Supershow Cleveland, OH – https://www.ohiorvshow.com/
NADA Show Dallas, TX. – https://www.nada.org/nada-show
AIMExpo Las Vegas, NV – https://aimexpousa.com/

We would love the opportunity to connect with you, please let us know if you will be attending.

ADS is excited for what 2023 has in store and we know when we keep our dealer’s goals first and foremost, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

Here is to 2023 being your Best Year Ever!

Happy New Year,

Bob and Ryan

View the full newsletter https://mailchi.mp/advdealer.com/january-newsletter.

Ford CEO says 65% of U.S. dealers agree to sell EVs under company’s investment programs

  • About 65% of Ford dealers have agreed to sell electric vehicles as the company invests billions to expand production and sales of the battery-powered cars and trucks, CEO Jim Farley said Monday.
  • Ford offered its dealers the option to become “EV-certified” under one of two programs — with investments of $500,000 or $1.2 million.
  • Ford, unlike crosstown rival General Motors, is allowing dealers to opt out of selling EVs and continue to sell the company’s cars.

DETROIT – About 65% of Ford Motor’s dealers have agreed to sell electric vehicles as the company invests billions to expand production and sales of the battery-powered cars and trucks, CEO Jim Farley said Monday.

About 1,920 of Ford’s nearly 3,000 dealers in the U.S. agreed to sell EVs, according to Farley. He said roughly 80% of those dealers opted for the higher level of investment for EVs.

Ford offered its dealers the option to become “EV-certified” under one of two programs — with expected investments of $500,000 or $1.2 million. Dealers in the higher tier, which carries upfront costs of $900,000, receive “elite” certification and be allocated more EVs.

Ford, unlike crosstown rival General Motors, is allowing dealers to opt out of selling EVs and continue to sell the company’s cars. GM has offered buyouts to Buick and Cadillac dealers that don’t want to invest to sell EVs.

Dealers who decided not to invest in EVs may do so when Ford reopens the certification process in 2027.

“We think that the EV adoption in the U.S. will take time, so we wanted to give dealers a chance to come back,” Farley said during an Automotive News conference.

Ford’s plans to sell EVs have been a point of contention since the company split off its all-electric vehicle business earlier this year into a separate division known as Model e. Farley said the automaker and its dealers needed to lower costs, increase profits and deliver better, more consistent customer sales experiences.

Farley on Monday also reiterated that a direct-sales model is estimated to be thousands of dollars cheaper for the automaker than the auto industry’s traditional franchised system.

Wall Street analysts have largely viewed direct-to-consumer sales as a benefit to optimize profit. However, there have been growing pains for Tesla, which uses the sales model, when it comes to servicing its vehicles.

Ford’s current lineup of all-electric vehicles includes the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup, Mustang Mach-E crossover and e-Transit van. The automaker is expected to release a litany of other EVs globally under a plan to invest tens of billion of dollars in the technologies by 2026.

Originally posted by CNBC.



Used vehicle demand and prices continue to decline from record highs

KEY POINTS

  • Wholesale prices of used vehicles reached their lowest level in more than a year last month, as retail sales decline amid interest rate hikes, rising new vehicle availability and recessionary fears.
  • The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks prices of used vehicles sold at its U.S. wholesale auctions, has declined about 16% from record levels in January.
  • The decline is good news for potential car buyers, however not great for companies such as Carvana that purchased vehicles at record highs and are now trying to sell them at a profit.

DETROIT – Wholesale prices of used vehicles reached their lowest level in more than a year last month, as retail sales decline amid interest rate hikes, rising new vehicle availability, and recessionary fears.

Cox Automotive said Wednesday that its Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks prices of used vehicles sold at its U.S. wholesale auctions, has declined 15.6% from record levels in January through November. The index dropped to 199.4 last month, below 200 for the first time since August 2021, and is down 14.2% from the same month a year ago. It marks the sixth-consecutive month of declines.

The falling prices come as the availability of new vehicles steadily rises from historic lows, providing additional options for consumers and potentially better loan options from automaker’s financing arms.

“New inventory is finally starting to build, and that’s producing momentum in new retail sales, but that momentum appears to be at the expense of used retail. Especially it’s the traditional used car buyer that’s most impacted by payment affordability,” Cox chief economist Jonathan Smoke said Tuesday during an industry update.

Retail prices for consumers traditionally follow changes in wholesale prices. That’s good news for potential car buyers, however not great for companies such as embattled retailer Carvana that purchased vehicles at record highs and are now trying to sell them at a profit.

Retail pricing thus far has not declined as quickly as wholesale prices, as dealers attempt to hold steady on record-high pricing. According to the most recent data, Cox reports the average listing price of a used vehicle was $27,564 in October, down less than a half percent from the beginning of the year.

“They’re not wanting to sell at trough prices,” said Chris Frey, senior industry insights manager at Cox Automotive, told CNBC last month. “That’s why we’re not seeing the prices decline so much at retail.”

Cox estimates that used retail sales declined 1% in November from October and were down 10% from a year earlier.

Automakers for several years now have been battling through a semiconductor chip shortage that has sporadically halted production of new vehicles, causing record-low inventories of vehicles and higher prices. The circumstances pushed many new-vehicle buyers into the used-car market.

Cox last month estimated the total used market was on pace to finish the year down more than 12% from 40.6 million in 2021.

Originally posted by CNBC.

December Newsletter

On the heels of giving many thanks and taking stock on all we are thankful for over this past Thanksgiving weekend; we begin to look forward to arguably the most magical time of the year.

December is typically a robust month for our industries, and this year is setting up to deliver another strong finish. Dealers are seeing a bit more inventory, used car pricing has somewhat settled into a comfortable position, and the recent rise in interest rates hasn’t seemed to slow sales as much as some anticipated. Dealers should consider these headwinds in their 2023 planning and forecasting.

Here are a few items which seem to be picking up energy in our recent conversations with dealers across the country.

As the team at ADS looks back on 2022 and the many successes we’ve had, we are proud to have the partnerships we have with so many dealers and industry leading providers. Without the resolute support of so many, we wouldn’t be able to be so focused on exceeding our dealer’s goals and objectives.

Merry Christmas!

Link to our full newsletter.

November Newsletter

November ushers in the official holiday season for many; that comes with a packed schedule full of to-do lists, dinners, trips, etc. Amid all the usual holiday chaos, many of you are expected to wrap-up the current year of business as well as lay out budgets, strategies, and forecasts for the coming year.

This November also brings national and local elections to us. One of the greatest gifts we have as Americans is the ability to get out and vote. Sadly, for a myriad of reasons, many Americans (about half of eligible voters) choose not to vote in mid-term elections. A lot of people only think about voting every four-years when the presidency is on the ballot. Fact is, there is a tremendous amount being done at the state, county, and local level. State representatives, judges, city council, etc. are most likely on ballots in your area. Please get out and vote this November.

As we evaluate 2022 and the successes or opportunities we have had, we must turn our attention to 2023 and what lies ahead. As with 2021, and 2022, there is much uncertainty in the economy, supply-chain, monetary policy, etc.

Here are a few questions being asked…

Although nobody knows for certain what the future holds, we do know there will always be consumers looking to purchase vehicles. The number of consumers and the prices they are willing to pay may vary, but the founding principles of our industry will remain strong and the dealers who provide the best experience will create the greatest value.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s to another great month for everyone!

To view, our entire newsletter follow the link https://mailchi.mp/advdealer.com/november-newsletter.

October Newsletter

Fall has arrived and October typically brings us ghouls, goblins, and ghosts. This year our industry is dealing with more tricks and treats than normal…

A few of the “Tricks” dealers are facing:

There are still a few “Treats” to be found:

  • Dealers for the most part are still experiencing record, or near-record profits on the vehicles they are selling.
  • The American consumer is proving resilient despite key metrics signaling reason for concern.
  • Fixed Ops continue to be a bright spot in most dealerships, with many stores and dealer groups posting record results.
  • The NADA Mid-Year analysis shows a healthy and vibrant dealer body that continues to feed a significant portion of our overall economy.

Additionally, ADS has a few “Treats” for our dealers to take advantage of:

  • We are hosting an AFIP Certification Course October 4th and 5th in Strongsville, OH. Be sure to check out the information below and register early to secure your seat.
  • This year, ADS is a proud sponsor of Live2Lead in conjunction with one of our favorite charities, Changing Lives Foundation. This is a tremendous opportunity to take leadership lessons from some of the most recognizable names in leadership, coaching, and mentoring. Be sure to check out the information below and reach out to your ADS representative to secure either heavily discounted, or free admission.

Here’s to another great month for everyone!

View the full newsletter https://mailchi.mp/advdealer.com/october-newsletter.