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What’s the next tool for boosting your finance and insurance department? Data, JM&A Group says.
JM&A is looking to provide F&I managers the capability to suggest add-on products based on a customer’s research habits, previous buying habits and the buying experiences of customers similar to them. F&I managers already recommend products based on conversations with customers, but JM&A is working toward digital solutions to support the evolution of the transaction.
May: Building the foundations
JM&A, an F&I product provider and training company in Deerfield Beach, Fla., prescribes F&I products on a small scale today, but “we’re making foundational investments to do it long term,” said Chris May, manager of sales process development.
Online and in the dealership, data can give dealers better insight into their businesses and the preferences and habits of their customers, May said.
JM&A can give dealerships data it gleans from reporting tool Stone Eagle, which collects 46 data points about the transaction. Stone Eagle provides information about the customer, such as name, age and gender, as well as information about the sale itself, such as whether it was cash, finance or lease.
JM&A combines the data from Stone Eagle with another financing report to break down the information into trends that could help dealers, said Scott Gunnell, JM&A vice president of sales strategy and development.
Dealers have access to their own information, and they can customize reports on their stores or dealership group. JM&A’s view, however, is larger. It can highlight F&I or other trends by region, brand or store size, for example.
“F&I is a very profitable part of every dealer’s business,” May said. “The more tools and resources we give our dealer customers, the more information the dealerships put at their consumers’ fingertips in a self-service capacity. That’s not only going to strengthen the relationship between us and the dealer, but ultimately, it’s going to enhance the customer experience. And that leads to increased customer loyalty and retention for the dealerships.”
Gunnell: Long-term endeavor
JM&A won’t become completely prescriptive overnight; it’s a long-term work in progress, Gunnell said.
JM&A is analyzing what has happened in the past to predict how new or current customers will behave. “We’re bringing a lot more data to the table to show the dealer, similar to what they get in a 20 group,” Gunnell said. JM&A reps will be able tell dealers: “Here’s where you have opportunity, here’s where you maximize opportunity, and here’s the action plan associated with it,” he said. “So we’re just combining more data sources.”
Dealers also can use vehicle performance data to determine which products are important for consumers. JM&A learns a lot about how vehicles perform “because we get ahold of them after the factory warranty has expired,” said company President Forrest Heathcott.
Data on the longevity of the vehicle and its life cycle helps dealerships predict which products a buyer of a certain vehicle may need.
“Manufacturers can often lose that relationship,” May said. But if the customer buys a JM&A service contract, JM&A will know how the vehicles perform 10 or more years after they are purchased in some cases.
The company has 38 years of historical claims, Gunnell said. It looks at each vehicle and how it performs by ZIP code. Then the company can determine the top five claims by repair sites on a certain model, for example.
“We are investing a lot of our time and resources into being able to share that data and put it in the hands of the people selling the products in the stores and into the consumers’ hands so that they have a better idea of what their real needs might be on a certain product,” Heathcott said.
JM&A aims to strengthen relationships with its dealership customers by leveraging internal data, which in turn helps those stores sell more to their car buyers, May said.
JM&A is heading in the same direction for online transactions, Gunnell said. On a small scale so far, it can use data based on the behavior of similar customers in its portfolio to prescribe what it thinks the current customer needs based on his or her profile.
All products would appear online, but customers would see recommended products first, similar to Amazon’s product suggestions.
Displaying all the products is important because “although data can be very accurate, we don’t want to remove the customer’s ability from maybe augmenting what the data says,” Gunnell said. “It’s very similar to the Amazon capacity where it’s, “Here’s what people like you have bought. Here’s a recommendation.'”
The fully online transaction doesn’t exist yet, but it’s on its way. “And we’re preparing for it,” May said. “I think data is the way we can take what we do now in the dealership and still do it in the digital world.”
Using data to sell F&I add-ons
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