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Swansway Group reveals how it is developing the Stafford Land Rover business it acquired in 2012 in this special Dealer Insight sponsored by AutoProtect.
Staffordshire-based Swansway Group is a young company, established in 2003, but clearly going places. Rated 30 in the Motor Trader Top 200, the company is also the highest dealer group in the 2014 Great Place to Work survey and 32 in The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For Top 100.
In the last three years Swansway has added Citroen, Fiat and Land Rover franchises to its portfolio of Volkswagen Group outlets. In January the group relocated the Stafford Land Rover business it acquired in 2012 to a £6.1m purpose-built site which showcases the carmaker’s latest retailing concept.
For Darren Poole, head of business, his immediate priorities included turning around sales, re-energising the team and introducing Swansway processes before opening the new showroom in January.
You were appointed as dealer principal three years ago and have just overseen a major relocation, how has it gone?
The company policy is to promote from within which provides a quick injection of the Swansway culture into a new business, so the challenge for me was changing the culture that had been present for 20 years. We rented the old building for three years, as we expected to take that long to find land, get planning position and build a new centre. We lost a few people, but only those that didn’t fit the mould. Those from the former business that work here now are totally on board with the new regime and they have security.
Did the customers need re-educating?
Working in Stafford I had heard that the business looked after service customers but probably needed a renewed focus on sales. So we held a customer forum. Ideally I wanted 10 customers to come in for a coffee and a chat but more than 50 people wanted to talk to us. They were clearly passionate about the brand – they wanted to be taken seriously.I learnt people were buying cars elsewhere but bringing them to the business for servicing. We put in a new sales team and introduced our processes. We also made a fuss of our customers. Every buyer of a new Land Rover already gets a half-day driving course at Peckforton Castle, but we also pay for a night’s stay there. That went down a storm with customers and we’ve seen growth year on year.
What has been the impact of finance on improving new and used vehicle sales?
Swansway has always been very proactive in F&I. Land Rover has only recently seen the full potential of such areas. Our F&I has increased year on year but from a base of zero, it is not where it should be but it is a long way forward from where we started. There is a growing F&I culture in the brand, it does drive customer loyalty.
How do you plan to develop your added value sales activities this year?
Carefully. We’re very conscious of the FCA and that we do it right and treat customers fairly. We have rigorous processes – one of our head office team monitors whether sales people are treating customers fairly. But because we are being forced down a more structured route, I think ultimately the FCA regulations will be an advantage for good dealers and will see us sell more product.
How have you addressed FCA authorisation and what support have you had?
We’ve liaised with the finance companies. Our financial director has taken it upon himself to champion FCA and we have a compliance manager in-house whose job is to go round and audit the process.
How is FCA authorisation impacting your sales approach?
It’s making the whole industry jittery, there appears to be a keenness to make an example of someone with a fine. I feel some of the things the FCA is asking dealers to do are to the customer’s disadvantage, for example they don’t like payments on cards. There are worse brokers of money than the retail motor industry.
As a group you do did very well in last year’s Great Place to Work Survey.
The research for these surveys is quite in-depth but produces useful anonymous feedback about the business from the staff, which the management looks at to see if improvements are possible. As part of our entry we asked our staff to come up with a few words to encompass Swansway, and they replied that it was a family, where people loved to work and to which customers were delighted to return. Our values unite us. The phrase our staff came up with is “caring, honest and proud” and that is exactly where we want to be, and we now centre-check every decision made as to whether it is caring, honest and proud.
What recruitment challenges do you have?
Recruitment is still an issue – we have one of the lowest sales staff churns in the country but we still churn. We have recruited outside the industry but we now feel that we tended to leave these recruits high and dry too soon. We inducted them, put them with the sales manager and told them to get on with it. Now we offer the new recruits a year-long induction; on the job but with an external mentor coming in once a month. They don’t have to deal with the mentor but if they do they have to buy into it. If this works over a perd of time, which I’m sure it will, those that don’t buy-in will get left behind.
What are the challenges of running a new site?
We always want more. We’re the second month into a brand-new dealership, a polar opposite to where we were but there’s still a long way to go. Older customers are a case in point. We are concerned that a farmer, for example, will feel uncomfortable walking into a place like this in his wellies, and we’ve got to sort that as they are the diehard Land Rover fans. The new site is set to deliver a customer experience like never before with total brand consistency alongside exceptional customer service and cutting edge technology. Next year I think we will see a lot of growth, due to the location and the progress in the brand. We’ll grow the people who work here, we’ll sell more new cars, more used than we’ve ever sold. Our future prospects are absolutely fantastic.
Personal File
Darren Poole
Position: Head of business,
Stafford Land Rover
First job: Dixons
First car: Austin Metro
Current car: Land Rover Discovery
Newspaper: Daily Mail
Film: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Book: Gazza – The Autobiography
Best business decision: “Joining the Land Rover franchise”
Relaxation: Walking
Gadget: iPad
