Mitsubishi’s ‘Buy Online’ service was successfully launched in November 2017, with over 1,600 people creating accounts and in excess of 200 sales to date. As a result, Mitsubishi’s online buying facility could be developed further to include fleet sales in the future.

Toby Marshall, director of sales and marketing, Mitsubishi Motors UK

Director of sales and marketing, Toby Marshall, told Fleet World at the recent Eclipse Cross launch: “Fleet customers are a bit further down the line, but they’re used to dealing with companies like Lex and Leaseplan with similar systems, where they can look up rates of cars.

“There’s no reason why we wouldn’t follow suit, they still want a test drive but are happy to try new things because it’s not their cash they’re using to pay for the car – we think they’re happy to look at different ways of buying their cars.”

New tech or not, with the launch of the Eclipse Cross, Toby informed us that Mitsubishi’s fleet team are in the best position ever to get the message of this new crossover to corporate customers. “Outlander PHEV changed us quite dramatically as a company and it changed how we go to market – especially on the fleet side. So we restructured our fleet team quite significantly and took on a few more fleet sales managers.”

Toby now has a team of eight, covering different regions of the country, where they go and talk to fleet customers. They can talk to contract hire and leasing companies, national accounts and government fleets. Toby explained, “I’ve 220 cars on the corporate fleet that I can call on to get people into cars. We don’t have a press and company car fleet, which some companies do, because we believe that all cars should be prepped at the same level – everyone is important.”

Fleet managers that take a closer look at the Eclipse Cross are sure to be tempted by the competitive contract hire rates, thanks to excellent predicted residual values. The expected most popular model, the 3 trim with manual transmission, will be available to business users after an initial deposit of £2,388, for 35 months at 10,000 miles per year, at an impressive £199 per month.