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/.

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The Power of an Addendum

The current supply issues are creating a unique ‘sellers’ environment for dealers of all types these days and it is unlike any market I have experienced in my 27 years in the retail industry. Whether you are currently selling cars, RVs, or powersports you are seeing customer demand potentially higher than you’ve ever seen and are rightfully enjoying the fruits of scarcity. We all know this is a cycle, and at some point, we will again see rebates, negotiating, and discounts. The fruits dealers are currently harvesting are well deserved after surviving nearly a decade of margin erosion and a continuous sprint to the bottom of the price chain.

I recently attended a couple of industry events and heard story after story about customers agreeing to purchase, and pay top dollar, for their third or even fourth choice of vehicle. On the surface, this seems like an ideal, highly successful model for dealers to live in. While it has been bountiful, I feel there are some adverse effects as well as some missed opportunities worthy of addressing.

There is an old adage, ‘when perceived value exceeds price, you have a sale.’ Right now, the perceived value is the raw availability to conduct a transaction instead of the traditional checklist of wants and needs. Simply having something to sell is all the value a customer needs to see in a retailer. The dealers I know and work with, want more; they want a customer to see value in the transaction, not just being able to conduct a transaction. Of course, dealers want to maximize on the current opportunity, but they also want to perform the balancing act of earning the well-deserved profit, as well as providing long-term value in doing business with their dealership but for years to come.

Assuming dealers are exceeding their customers experience expectations, then we’ll move on to the value of the vehicle. By value, I am not referring to the features and benefits the customer has spent hours online pouring over, but the additional value a dealer can provide by protecting some of the customers risk exposure. Customers often get caught up in the euphoria of the purchase and forget the reality of owning a car, RV or powersport toy. They forget cars get dirty. They forget RV’s get lived in and spills and accidents occur. They forget their side by side could catch the eye of a thief. The risks of these forgotten realities can be mitigated by dealers including protection products on an addendum.

An addendum allows a dealer to enhance the value of a transaction by pre-selecting one or more value-based consumer products and adding them to a ‘Why Buy Here’ of the dealership. These addendums create a unique presentation opportunity for the sales consultant and most likely leads the customer away from a decision based solely on availability, or worse price. Instead of talking about discounts to meet a competitor’s price, the sales consultant can direct the conversation to the benefit of having a vehicle location device with years of monitoring included, as well as the cash benefit to assist in the event of an unrecovered stolen vehicle. Customers will value peace-of-mind over price if they are educated on the benefits before being ‘sold’ the item or being asked to pay a higher price with no explanation of benefits.

There are a few addendums I have seen backfire on dealers. Pinstripes, although spectacular to some, generally don’t command a $1,495 increase to the cost of the vehicle. And believe it or not, there are some that don’t see $999 of value in a set of plastic mudflaps for their Honda Accord. Whereas customers do see value in knowing their vehicle is protected from everyday spills and stains, as well as having some coverage against the environmental effects to today’s modern painted exteriors. Who out there doesn’t relate to a soda, or ketchup packet spilling on their seats or floorboards at some point in their driving history?

The great part about an addendum is it helps clarify the customers value in the vehicle as well as reminding them of the unavoidable perils of owning a vehicle in today’s world. If the customer doesn’t see value, then the addendum can be removed, and you have a sold vehicle at or near MSRP. If the sales consultant properly conveys the value of each item on the addendum, then it is likely the customer will at least purchase one, if not everything the dealer includes on the addendum. Either way, the dealer and customer are in winning situations; value exceeds cost!

A few suggestions:

  • Make the addendum something of true value to your customers. Leave out frivolous outdated items nobody sees value in. Today’s buyer is too sophisticated and will see through the gimmicks of what is being attempted.
  • The success of an addendum is directly correlated in the confidence of the presentation by the sales consultant. If the dealership staff doesn’t believe in what is being offered, it will fail and most likely backfire on the dealer.
  • Disclose anything and everything. Don’t sneak anything in. Proudly display the addendum and additional cost on the vehicle. Give your team the tools to demonstrate the value of each product being offered. Value based protection products sell themselves when explained properly.
  • Live it. Like most rewarding actions in life, you cannot be passive. You must be active with your value-added items each and every day. Here are a couple ways to keep everyone focused on the value on in the addendum:
    • Walk around competitions for some additional Saturday spiff money.
    • Product knowledge quizzes focused on what makes this product so valuable.
  • Retain the customer. The addendum should have some form of tie back to the selling dealer. Don’t just sell a vehicle, win a lifelong customer. The real gains come from the harnessed lifetime value of a family in the dealership’s community. Believe it or not, people still like doing business with people they know and trust.

About the author: Ryan Nelson has over 25 years of experience in the retail industry and is a Partner at Advanced Dealer Solutions, a leading independent agency specializing in dealership development in the auto, RV and powersports industry.

To learn more about how the right addendum can benefit your dealership, please reach out to Advanced Dealer Solutions at 844-320-3722 or [email protected]