Paperless purchase by e-mail
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• Leyland Daf and LDV dealer Lex Commercials of Wrexham has used e-mail to sell an LDV Convoy van to an American firm, It was approached initially by NESS! UK, an electronics systems supplier and a British subsidiary of Ilinois-based Northrop Grumman which has staff working at RAF Sealand, near Wrexham, and wants to run the Convoy in the UK.
All the negotiations with the Americans were by e-mail, says sales manager Tony Stephenson. "And the whole thing did not generate any paperwork, other than the cheque!"
While the Northrop sale was a one-off, Lex Commercials is increasingly using e-mail for quotations, something that holds little fear for the younger sales people.
But therein lies a problem, says Stephenson: there is a dearth of bright, well-educated youngsters choosing a career in sales and sales management at truck dealerships. He wonders what will happen when the current generation retires.
"I am 29 years old and at national meetings, the majority of the people I meet are in the 45 to 55 bracket," he says. "I'm the youngest person there."
He believes the sector could pay dearly for its reluctance to recruit from outside the truck business. "The industry can be blinkered," he says. If a vacancy arises, the response is often to try to poach somebody from the dealership down the road.
Lex Commercials is trying to solve the problem, says Stephenson. "The group has recruited six young graduates as business development executives and put them on a two-year training programme. I think we are going to see fewer, bigger, dealerships and fewer truck salesmen, but those salesmen are going to be better paid," he says.