New finance company client

This afternoon, we'll be announcing that Guidepoint has been selected to supply a customized collections solution for Southfield, Mich.-based Automotive Credit Corporation. Our new finance company sales guy, Werner Scherz, put the deal together with help from our CEO and CFO. It's a pilot program to help them use our hardware, firmware, call center and, most importantly, brainpower to help them increase their collections.

This is NOT the old "box and pings" strategy that is so prevalent in the buy-here/pay-here world. That model is rife with issues --from hidden costs to privacy to overall effectivness. More than anything, lots of the GPS companies are selling their devices for punitive purposes; that is, if you miss a payment, we use GPS to repo the car.

Our model is different. It's much more consultational and based on a "behavioral change" philosophy that gets the customer in the habit of making payments on-time. At the end of the day, the dealer or the bank doesn't really want the car back - they want the customer to make the payments. Or, as we like to say: "Because you want the money, not the metal."

Anyway, here's what Werner says about the ACC deal: “We’re very pleased to partner with ACC, which is coming off of its most successful year to date in 2008, with expansion into six new states and record sales numbers month after month. They’ve established themselves as an industry leader by creating innovative programs that serve both dealers and credit-challenged consumers. We will be working with ACC to design a service-oriented program that will help them increase collections, reduce repossession and collections-related costs, and strengthen their relationships with dealers and consumers.”

Our key contact at ACC, Tony Stallworth, says this: “Guidepoint has proven itself as an innovator and leader in all of the markets where it competes. We look forward to tapping their expertise in the subprime market, as well as their proven approach of combining high-tech hardware/firmware with high-touch service delivered through their 24/7/365 response centers.”


About Automotive Credit Corporation: Headquartered in Southfield, Mich., ACC is a regional automobile finance company focused on the subprime market. ACC purchases installment contracts from both independent and franchised automobile dealers for consumers with limited or challenged credit histories who are unable to obtain financing from traditional sources. Founded in Michigan in 1992, ACC has partnerships with hundreds of dealers throughout the Midwest, East and Southeastern United States, including Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Georgia, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas, and Alabama

Targeting national dealer groups.

We've added a sales director to help develop our business among the national dealer groups like AutoNation, Asbury Automotive and multi-store chains. Her name is Tara Rahe and she joins us from Procon, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based company that's best known as a seller of GPS devices to the buy-here/pay-here market. Previously, she was a sales consultant at two Iowa-based Ford dealerships, Victory Ford in Dyersville and Finnin Ford in Dubuque.

Here's what Rich has to say about Tara: “We’re pleased to have Tara on board at Guidepoint. She's going to be singularly focused on getting Guidepoint in front of the national dealer groups, and showing them our value-add as a partner. As dealerships look for ways to increase their F&I performance and profit per vehicle, Guidepoint offers them a unique solution that is easy to sell, easy to install and easy to administer.”

Her role at Guidepoint is important for us, too, given the looming consolidation in the auto industry. At NADA last week, the talk was all about the number of dealerships that the automakers were going to need to shutter in the coming 24-36 months. GM, Ford and Chrysler alone were talking about closing more than 1,000 dealerships over the next couple of years. Most of them, of course, will be small, independent dealerships. Kind of a shame, really, when you consider the impact that locally owned dealers have on their local economies -- everything from newspaper advertising to jobs, payroll taxes and sales tax revenue.