Jaguar Land Rover has set up a specialist network of corporate dealers for both brands, with some overlap in market areas.
The new structure has been created to enable the company to benefit from new models like the Jaguar XE and Land Rover Discovery Sport which will increase dealers’ opportunities to sell into the fleet sector.
Jeremy Hicks (pictured), JLR UK managing director, said: “We told our network about our plans up to 2020 and asked them what their business would look like then in terms of workshop hours, new and used car sales, so they could start investing now.
“It saw a significant increase in dealer overheads as they prepared for the additional volume, but we set the direction upfront. The network judges you on how credible they believe your plans are. Their investment is proof of that.”
JLR has made its own investment by setting up a field team of 22 people to support dealers and fleet customers.
“We have to demonstrate that we are serious about fleet, so we have also invested,” said Hicks.
Retailers will also have the opportunity sell two service plans on the forthcoming XE to satisfy the needs of regular and high mileage operations.
The regular mileage service plan is priced £475 and covers cars up to five years and 50,000 miles. A higher mileage service plan, covering cars up to five years/75,000 miles is priced £659.
The service plans are fully transferable to new owners, cover customers for repairs or replacement parts required to pass the XE’s third, fourth and fifth year MOT tests up to the value of £750, and include AdBlue top-ups for the duration of the plan.
They guarantee regular servicing for Jaguar authorised service centres, in addition to taking a margin from selling the plan.
With 70% of the Jaguar and Land Rover dealerships under joint ownership, JLR is mirroring that approach by increasingly focusing on both brands when talking to customers. It also has a joint Jaguar Land Rover dealer council, but insists that having a single network for both brands is not a priority.
“It is happening naturally, but we won’t force that to happen. We will be pragmatic,” said Hicks.
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Bauer B2B group editor Stephen Briers has been an automotive business journalist since 1995. He has been editor of Fleet News since 2009 and before that was editor of Automotive Management for almost seven years. He now oversees both brands, as well as RAIL magazine.
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