Going off the beaten track: indirect sales at leaseplan - Teaching Note

Abstract

LeasePlan, one of the biggest fleet companies in the world, had established itself through a direct sales model targeting large fleet customers. In its impressive growth run it had largely ignored small fleet customers as these were too costly for its direct sales force to serve. Yet, LeasePlan had started to consider an alternative to its proven sales model: indirect sales through intermediaries to address the small fleet segment. Indeed, some Business Units (BU) had ventured into the small fleet segment through deals with bank branches and car dealerships. However, at LeasePlan, no standard set of criteria was in place to create synergies in managing these activities as each BU worked by its own initiative. Also, the involvement of an intermediary implied a significant risk for LeasePlan as it became the intermediary who represented LeasePlan to the customer. As a result, LeasePlan was faced with three main questions: - How to choose an appropriate intermediary for LeasePlan to work with? - How to manage the resulting working relationship between LeasePlan and its intermediaries? - How to create synergies in managing these activities across all BU's? Key Words: Services Management - Service Intermediary - Indirect Sales