If you want to drive expansion, get your sales and success aligned with customer success. That’s the view of Bobby Coy, SVP of Enterprise Sales at C-4 Analytics.
For Bobby, your growth doesn’t just come from chasing cold leads — it should also come from tapping into the value already being delivered to your existing customers.
His approach is simple: when you show what’s working with your existing dealers and stay consistent in how you share that success, you create opportunities to grow across an entire dealer group.
It was the strategy he used at Activator Dealer Solutions, and now what he’s building at C-4 Analytics. The focus is always on credibility, timing, and relevance in these four steps
🔷 Capture Success to Date
Bobby begins every expansion motion by grounding it in actual results.
At Activator, his team often started by pointing out how they had helped a dealership increase sales, handraisers, trade-ins, or service ROs. That success opened the door for a simple but powerful question: “Who else in the group would benefit from this?”
At C-4, the focus often shifts to helping clients reduce acquisition costs—a major initiative across automotive groups. No matter the outcome, Bobby’s team shares it with the client and uses it as a springboard for more outreach. “We’d share how we’re already helping, and then ask to be introduced to others who might value the same result,” he explains. This practice allows Sales and Success to align around a real, measurable outcome, not just a pitch.
🔷 Leverage Internal Name Drop
Once a success is captured, Bobby uses internal referrals to make the next outreach to a new dealer in the group feel more personal.
“We’d drop a name in the email—it might be the Director of Service or General Manager at another store in the group where there has already been success. We ask if we could share their name and what we did for them,” Bobby says.
Dealers want to know what’s working elsewhere, and peer-based name drops build trust and open doors quickly, regardless of product or service model.
🔷 Invite a Conversation
Once interest is sparked, Bobby focuses on starting a real dialogue, not a pitch. “It’s just about asking for a conversation on if they’re working on a similar set of issues to their peers and if they’d be open to hearing about how to approach that issue,” he says.
His outreach is low-pressure and tailored to each dealer group structure. With varying goals across stores, OEMs, and markets, Bobby ensures the message aligns with shared objectives, turning expansion into a collaborative, cross-functional conversation.
🔷 Continue with Value-Added Content
For Bobby, follow-up doesn’t end after one meeting. If someone doesn’t engage right away, his team stays in touch. It could share role-specific content, or share an article on a trend in the auto industry, or highlight another peer conversation on a shared topic.
“We drop them content or articles based on what we know about their role or their interests from past conversations,” he explains. Whether it’s a blog post on acquisition costs or a case study that fits their dealership, this drip approach keeps the connection warm and ensures they’re ready when the timing is right.
Land and expand—that’s the approach Bobby used at Activator and now at C-4 Analytics. By aligning Sales and Success around real outcomes and using those wins to spark new conversations, he’s created a repeatable, authentic path to growth. It’s not about chasing leads—it’s about connecting through value.