The initial results using this approach have been massively positive, generating direct sales, but also well- qualified customer visits to the showroom, which speeds up the sales process. Being available when people are interested in your product or service is something the likes of Amazon have been able to exploit. At present, motor retailers determine when a customer can buy, through their opening hours. High Street shops have discovered that they need to be more flexible in their operations, with click-and-collect options available from many stores.

This may be too resource-intensive for smaller dealerships. However, having looked at sales diaries and monitoring workload activity, it is apparent that salespeople are often under-used during major parts of the day.

By moving the resource from the day into the evening, there is the possibility of capitalising on the customer interest. (See our interview with Knights Group on extending its working hours). Having an online salesperson responding to queries in the evening may give a competitive advantage and improve the efficiency of the dealership’s sales process. The key lesson is to have the right resource available at the right time in the right form.

Have salespeople available when customers want them

This lesson was driven home to me after the opening ceremony at the recent Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I was lucky enough to have a ticket for Celtic Park and was reassured by the organiser’s website that this was a public transport games so you shouldn’t take your car.

I dutifully obliged and at the end of the event headed back to Dalmarnock station where I was ‘kettled’ in a queue. Eventually we got to Glasgow Queen Street for the train to Stirling only to be told that it had already gone, an hour earlier. When I questioned the less-than-helpful ScotRail employee, he said they had been told the opening ceremony was going to finish at 11pm, but it had overrun by 45mins. I pointed out that surely with that information, it might have been helpful if they had delayed the trains as opposed to running them empty to their destinations.

They had plenty of trains, but they weren’t in the right place at the right time to serve the customers. Needless to say, the major benefactors were the taxi drivers of Glasgow, who made sure their resource was available at the right time and definitely at the ‘right’ price!

Maybe having sales people available at a time when the customer wants them could be a novel way forward not only for ScotRail, but also our sector.