Choosing the right people for fleet

Once the correct IT systems were in place, Pearson could judge to see if the team was right.

“We didn’t have the right people and we had to go through a recruitment process,” he said. It took longer than expected.

“It took us two years to get everything in place to start building. I didn’t want to go out to new customers if we couldn’t deliver the right service. A lot of dealerships go wrong when they go after business before the infrastructure is ready.”

The aim was to recruit dealer staff with fleet experience and this proved to be difficult in the Stoke area. Holdcroft took on staff with a wide range of experience and then trained them up with fleet knowledge.

It didn’t take long to train processes, but the comprehension of what fleet is took longer for staff that had never worked on that side of the business before.

Holdcroft employs its own HGV drivers to deliver company cars around the country. Pearson focused on this area because he realised that the handover process was an area customers pay particular attention to when evaluating the level of service they’ve received.

All Holdcroft drivers have branded uniforms, they know who they’re delivering to, they know what they’re delivering and they are trained and prepared to answer any questions a company car driver may have about the product.

“A lot of dealers outsource the delivery of their fleet vehicles and in my experience it is something customers complain about,” said Pearson.

“If you have a driver who is outsourced, he never gets the brand knowledge. Holdcroft has 10 franchises so it is difficult for them to keep up with all the product information, but we put them on the same sales training for new products as our sales executives.”

Drivers can explain the controls in a car – sat-nav, Bluetooth etc – they do not just “chuck the keys”, said Pearson.

He doesn’t believe in a ‘two-tier service’. There are differences in pricing depending on the size of the fleet orders companies are making, but Pearson makes it clear that when it comes to deliveries, there is one level of service and it is the best that Holdcroft can deliver. It doesn’t matter if it is a small business ordering one car or a company ordering 20.